FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL ๐Ÿ›ซ๐ŸŒ๐Ÿ“บ๐Ÿ“ฝ️๐Ÿˆ. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

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Showing posts with label William Gjebre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Gjebre. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Faux newspaper in Hallandale Beach finds out that elections DO have consequences -new pro-reform HB City Commission ends city's advertising deal with South Florida Sun-Times

So, that shoe finally dropped that everyone in Hallandale Beach and environs as well as the larger South Florida civic activist community had been hoping for and waiting for since... what seems like forever.
(Yes, election results have consequences. Even in Hallandale Beach. Perhaps you've heard.)

 That would be the shoe literally dripping with ethical and journalism conflicts of interest, rife with egregious examples of crony capitalism, plus, one of the frequent secondary issues in South Florida,
the South Florida's news media's own longstanding disinterest (and condescension) in covering certain kinds of public policy/scandal stories unless they happened in cities or places that had more cachet and pop than Hallandale Beach does.

 I was at the Hallandale Beach City Commission last month when this matter of keeping campaign promises came up,  and more than a few people in the crowd -including me- were quick to ask themselves, "So where's someone from the faux newspaper in the room to actually write this down?'

 The irony of this thought course was that because they DON'T cover the city accurately or fairly, because that would upset the apple cart and their deal with Mayor Joy Cooper, there was no one there from the South Florida Sun-Times to hear the news in-person.

 And now it's too late for them.
That city advertising money is gone for good! 
Gone With The Wind!

 I "reported" on this within 90 minutes of it happening via an email to about 150 people in South Florida, including many of you readers of the blog, but haven't written about it since because I've been waiting to add some facts and photos to what I was going to post here.
Today's Florida Bulldog story, though very welcome, caught me by surprise, hence there's not as much original content for you here as I hoped to have the first time I mentioned it on the blog this year.
But trust me, more is coming!

 People in the city who follow what goes on here are eager -even giddy- to talk about this matter, and what it represents in getting this city turned around and finally moving in the right direction -towards some semblance of normalcy and general competency and accountability.
Any journey begins with the first step.
And this is clearly a step in the right direction.




 Florida Bulldog
Hallandale Beach halts advertising in local newspaper where mayor is a columnist
By William Gjebre, FloridaBulldog.org
JANUARY 25, 2017 AT 4:59 AM
Hallandale Beach city commissioners have pulled the plug on city advertising in the local Sun Times newspaper featuring articles by Mayor Joy Cooper that drew fire from commission colleagues as “propaganda” for the mayor.
Cooper used the platform regularly before and after the weekly newspaper received a favorable — and controversial — $50,000 loan from the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). The Sun Times, according to city documents, has been paid nearly $400,000 in city advertising to publicize events since 2003, most of the money coming after the loan was made during the 2008-2009 budget year.
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2017/01/hallandale-beach-halts-advertising-local-newspaper-tied-mayor-cooper/

 Having written about this subject dozens of times the past ten years, I will be updating this blog post throughout the day.












Below, a nugget reflecting the reality of life in Hallandale Beach in 2008, as reflected in one of my emails:

 Do you recall what I wrote/joked about last year on my blog, after the city purchased space in the vanity sheet rag, the South Florida Sun-Times, and ran a completely preposterous ad masquerading as news about Pastor Anthony Sanders and the funny appraisal numbers for his property?

[001.JPG]I 

I joked that with a little more advanced warning and time, the city hall employee dispatched to write that condescending tripe on taxpayer time might've even written that Sanders was born in a log cabin -that he built himself. (A la the jokes about Chuck Norris.)
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Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Where did Millions of Hallandale Beach CRA dollars go? Years later, HB taxpayers still want answers, and the #FL state legislators responsible for preventing a much-needed JLAC audit of the HB CRA at the time still DON'T want to publicly talk about it. Seems like dรฉjร  vu, no? Sobel, Braynon, Gibbons & Jones are no Profiles in Courage!

Where did Millions of Hallandale Beach CRA dollars go? Years later, HB taxpayers still want answers, and the #FL state legislators responsible for preventing a much-needed JLAC audit of the HB CRA at the time still DON'T want to publicly talk about it. Seems like dรฉjร  vu, no? Sobel, Braynon, Gibbons & Jones are no Profiles in Courage!
So now that in 2017 the Hallandale Beach City Commission has a 3-2 pro-reform majority on it, intent on undoing a lot of the serious damage that has been done to the city the past dozen years under Mayor Joy Cooper, you probably won't be too surprised to discover that quite a lot of people in Hallandale Beach, Broward County and South Florida are STILL very interested in finding out where all the millions of Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) dollars were going for years. 
Not surprisingly, that includes me and many of you readers of this blog.

 And not just because it's Hallandale Beach, but the larger issue of municipal CRA performance in Florida and whether cities have successfuly thwarted the original intent of what the state legislature meant to do when they created the enabling legislation.

In fact, the Florida Bulldog's William "Bill" Gjebre has a new fact-filled article on that very subject today that I am only too happy to highly recommend to you, and link to below.

 I've even included a few links and tweets re just some of the dozens of things I've written about the HB CRA over the past nearly-ten years this blog has been in existence to give any of you newcomers to the blog some much-needed context and nuance for understanding this newest call for some much-needed financial accountability.

 Along with Hallandale Beach Vice Mayor Keith London and a few of my friends who are fellow civic activists, like Csaba "Chuck" Kulin, I've been among the most-outspoken and VOCAL critics of the operation of the city's CRA program, with me particularly liking to engage with and call-out the pathetic reporting efforts of the local South Florida news media that so often ignored the scandal that was, literally, right in front of them.

 But most could not be bothered because it was taking place in Hallandale Beach, not Pembroke Pines, Doral, Hialeah, Pinecrest, Palm Bay, Aventura or... 
Yes, that geographical discrimination that local reporters have been guilty of down here for so many years, where some stories are reported upon simply because of where they take place, not the core of the facts and the issues involved. :-(

 More specifically, how and why under Mayor Joy Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew, and a succession of City Managers, for so many years  the Hallandale Beach CRA was allowed to operate with nothing resembling the sort of basic financial accountability and oversight that you'd expect of an entity that spent millions of dollars -on the public's behalf.
With so very little tangible to show for that money that was supposed to address the problems the CRA is tasked with solving or fixing.


Florida Bulldog
New majority on Hallandale commission wants to know: Where did CRA millions go?By William Gjebre, FloridaBulldog.org  
January 18, 2017 at 5:05 AM

The new majority on the Hallandale Beach City Commission will seek the first-ever forensic audit of all expenditures by its troubled Community Redevelopment Agency for the past five years, including finding out why $7.4 million had to be cut to balance the agency’s budget this fiscal year.

Current Vice Mayor Keith London and Commissioner Michele Lazarow had been frustrated in seeking such an audit by the previous commission majority headed by Mayor Joy Cooper.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2017/01/new-majority-on-hallandale-beach-commission-wants-to-know-where-did-money-go/

























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Thursday, December 8, 2016

Surprise! Peter Deutsch and his Ben Gamla Hebrew Charter School in Hollywood STILL think they can do whatever they want to do, regardless of what the city and its citizens think




Surprise! Peter Deutsch and his Ben Gamla Hebrew Charter School in Hollywood STILL think they can do whatever they want to do, regardless of what the city and its citizens think

 Per this unsettling but-hardly-surprising news being reported today by William Gjebre in the Florida Bulldog, above, in case any of you forgot or were unaware of my negative feelings about former Congressman Peter Deutsch and his constant litany of bullying insults and threats directed over several years at Hallandale Beach and Hollywood residents, officials and even neighborhoods, in his desire to build or expand his Ben Gamla Hebrew Charter School empire in both cities, I remind you that his words were almost always delivered in public with grating contempt for others in the community, and with what I and many others perceived to be a VERY LARGE (misplaced) sense of entitlement on his part.

 Yet despite Peter Deutsch's ease of access to powerful people and resources throughout Florida, he constantly tried to paint a narrative for himself and his development efforts as being one akin to a victim -the proverbial "little guy." 
But those roles were more accurately being played at the time by the neighborhoods and the concerned citizens of our area who believed that a powerful man like Deutsch used to getting his way all the time, should NOT be able to change their neighborhood and city in what they perceived to be negative ways just because he thinks it's a good idea that can make him and his partners more money.

 I also remind you that both before and after I returned to South Florida in 2003 after living
and working in the Washington, D.C. area for 15 years, I've been a very strong and reliable supporter of Charter Schools and the variety of choices they afford students and parents.
But that support of mine doesn't mean that I think charter schools are the answer for every student or parent, or even necessarily think that most charter schools in South Florida are well-managed. 
Clearly they aren't, since the record shows that many are started by people and groups with more good intentions than common sense, good management or enough capital in the bank to do things the right way the first time for kids.

 That said, Peter Deutsch's ability to successfully and continually "game" the system at so many different levels of govt. and official oversight, using a variety of legislatively-approved legal advantages that residents and neighborhood groups opposed to him didn't enjoy -or even knew existed- might NOT have stood for as long as it has if even a few more honest reporters and columnists among South Florida's press corps had ever done the right thing at the time and fully disclosed the exact nature of those curious advantages -and how they were obtained! 

 But as we know now, at the time, my own blog, Hallandale Beach Blog, and the Florida Bulldog, were unique in South Florida in consistently trying to ferret-out useful, important
information for the public to know about what had been taking place below-the-radar with Ben Gamla. 
Unique in being places where honest people could come to learn and understand how the public policy playing field got so one-sided in the first place that local governments often didn't know until public meetings had started that their usual procedures and tactics 
regarding planning and approving land use were precluded, and that Deutsch would get the benefit of any doubt.

 Just as happened in Hallandale Beach, when he and Ben Gamla got the last laugh on the city's bumbling, out-foxed staff. 
That's why this is the 23rd time I've written about Peter Deutsch and Ben Gamla on the blog.
My last blog post about Ben Gamla Hebrew Charter School was on October 3, 2013, titled, What will Peter Deutsch do Thursday night to try to win over angry Hollywood neighbors/residents who want no part of any Doral Ben Gamla Preparatory Academy in their neighborhood -or the arrogant Ben Gamla parents and their galling sense of entitlement and antipathy towards others? My educated guess is that Deutsch doubles down and is as arrogant as ever
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/what-will-peter-deutsch-do-thursday-to.html

 Florida Bulldog
Lawsuit: Rescind variance for ex-U.S. Rep.’s Hollywood charter schoolBy William Gjebre, FloridaBulldog.org
December 8, 2016
The city of Hollywood violated municipal law when it approved a request by the controversial Ben Gamla middle-high school to stop maintaining a rooftop vegetation area that was a key consideration for a zoning exception allowing the school in a residential neighborhood.
This and other allegations made in a lawsuit filed by the Citizens For Responsible Development Inc. ask the Broward Circuit Court to rescind a Hollywood Planning and Development Board-approved variance for the school to operate without the rooftop green space at the facility headed by former U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch (D-FL).
The school, which has drawn neighborhood opposition since it was proposed and opened during the past three years, was able to build a larger complex on its property at 2648 Van Buren St. by pledging to provide green area on the school’s roof rather than creating an open space recreational area elsewhere on its property, according to the complaint.
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2016/12/lawsuit-rescind-variance-for-ex-us-reps-hollywood-charter-school/

Hollywood City Hall, photo by me, South Beach Hoosier.© 2016 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved. 
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Tuesday, October 20, 2015

An open letter to Florida CFO Jeff Atwater about the long overdue need for CRA reform in Florida. Today's Florida Bulldog expose by William Gjebre is a perfect example of why these spending/ethical reforms were needed... YESTERDAY: @Florida_Bulldog: Fort Lauderdale to use “poor people’s money” to subsidize transit for affluent?

October 20, 2015

Dear Mr. Atwater:

Per the enclosed story from this morning's newest expose in the Florida Bulldog, 
'Fort Lauderdale to use “poor people’s money” to subsidize transit for affluent?,'
I had some quick thoughts to share with you.

I do so because your record in public service shows that more than seems true with 
99% of the elected officials in this state, you've proven to be someone who shows 
via word and deed that you believe in both the spirit and letter of Florida's laws 
governing public accountability and spending, not just the abstract idea of them. 

Given my experience in Hallandale Beach, which I have recounted to you previously, 
where over a period of years, tens of millions of HB CRA dollars were mis-spent with 
no genuine accountability and no meaningful oversight, -where the Broward Inspector 
General's damning report showed high-ranking, highly-paid city/CRA staff 
essentially went on the 'honor system' with recipients who were friends of HB 
City Hall, including NOT even requiring CRA fund recipients to show any evidence 
they were actually doing or making progress towards what they claimed they'd 
accomplish with the CRA funds- I keep waiting for the Florida Legislature to do what
they keep saying they want to do, namely, tighten-up CRA rules so that clearly-understood 
rules are set so that both the public and the cities will know in advance what city CRA 
Boards can and can NOT do with CRA funds.

And chief among these is NOT continue to use them as slush funds and "found money" 
to pay for the things involving public policy that those in charge DON'T want the public 
either to get wind of or have any real input on, regardless of how many people it might 
ultimately affect.
This continuing misbehavior by local government corrodes public trust and alienates 
people who do believe that CRAs can serve a very useful purpose.

After all, how can I trust someone in government who will do whatever they want 
whenever I'm not looking?
I appreciate that you're no longer in the legislature and are sensitive to the limits of your 
own office's authority and official duties, but if the legislature is going to keep punting, 
why not consider launching a public campaign to bring some of these excesses to light, 
and create some momentum for more pressure to be exerted to make the needed reforms
that Florida residents deserve?

The current system, and the repeated reluctance of city/CRA attorneys to tell their 
bosses to rein-in their worst instincts, puts the honest public officials in Florida who DO 
believe in transparency and genuine public engagement in difficult positions, especially 
when their bosses or their colleagues who don't believe in openness, want to continue 
to keep their thumbs on the scale to get their way and keep the public thoroughly 
disadvantaged -and in the dark.

Given all the spending horror stories that have taken place throughout the state with 
respect to CRAs, why is the effort to finally enact meaningful CRA reforms in Florida 
NOT being pushed seriously NOW in Tallahassee?
Just wondering, since the public knows that it's LONG OVERDUE

I just posted this letter to my blog.

In the near future, I'll be happy to post any response that you and your office or any of 
the state legislators receiving this email as a cc choose to respond with. 
------------
end of letter

Here's the article and the tweet about it that I encourage all of my blog's readers to share. 



Florida Bulldog
OCTOBER 20, 2015 AT 5:41 AM
Fort Lauderdale to use “poor people’s money” to subsidize transit for affluent?
By William Gjebre, FloridaBulldog.org 
OCTOBER 20, 2015 AT 5:41 AM
Fort Lauderdale’s recent approval of a no-bid contract to update the plan for the troubled Northwest-Progresso-Flagler Heights Community Redevelopment Agency has raised concerns about a lack of public input amid a rush to add projects not in the current plan at the expense of community needs.
Scott Strawbridge, who serves on the CRA’s 14-member advisory board, has called for outside review of the agency after he and his colleagues were informed that City Manager Lee Feldman signed a $24,500 contract with a private firm in August to amend the current CRA plan, last updated in 2001.
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2015/10/fort-lauderdale-to-use-poor-peoples-money-to-subsidize-transit-for-affluent/
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Wednesday, January 1, 2014

New year offers hope for Hallandale Beach's long-suffering citizens to end their city's long-standing reputation as a South Florida laughingstock & punchline: the home of so much long-standing incompetency, secretiveness, red tape and anti-taxpayer attitudes at City Hall under Mayor Joy Cooper. Recent moves by HB commissioners to pocket unused travel funds is perfect example of what needs to be held up to critical public scrutiny; re My 2014 endorsements for candidates to sweep out the mediocrity that infests City Hall, and increase public accountability, oversight and expectations of city employees

New year offers hope for Hallandale Beach's long-suffering citizens to end their city's long-standing reputation as a South Florida laughingstock & punchline: the home of so much long-standing incompetency, secretiveness, red tape and anti-taxpayer attitudes at City Hall under Mayor Joy Cooper. Recent moves by HB commissioners to pocket unused travel funds is perfect example of what needs to be held up to critical public scrutiny; re My 2014 endorsements for candidates to sweep out the mediocrity that infests City Hall, and increase public accountability, oversight and expectations of city employees
A recent Bill Gjebre article in the Broward Bulldog on the sad and pathetic state of public policy/legislating in the ocean-side city I live in here in Broward County struck me as the perfect point of departure for my first blog post of the year, since it so perfectly encapsulates so much of what is presently (and has been) wrong with the current five-member Hallandale Beach City Commission and the ingrained culture of self-dealing and crony capitalism that permeates HB City Hall.

So much incompetency and anti-taxpayer attitude that it actually repulses a majority of its own citizens with something to contribute and causes many who lack staying power to NOT get involved at all in the first place. Which explains why year-after-year, there are always large number of vacancies on the city's various advisory boards that never get filled.

And when a citizen's advisory  group is actually doing something helpful and invaluable, like the CRA Advisory Board, HB Comm. Alexander Lewy, Comm. Anthony A. Sanders and Mayor Joy Cooper strip it of some of its most intrepid and valuable voices -in rather transparent fashion- because those voices are asking hard questions about what has been going on for so many years at the direction of and approval of the the City Commission/CRA Board and City Manager's office, with little to no genuine oversight or accountability as the Broward IG's final report on the city explained in great detail.

Why invest the time and energy when you know that the City Commission and City Manager's office don't really care what your group thinks and will just ignore, rewrite or bury what you have to say and what your group has uncovered?
That, of course, only encourages the very forces that already control this city that are loyal to Mayor Joy Cooper and keep it a laughingstock and punch line for South Florida's news media. That is, to the extent the latter pay attention at all, which is rarely and always with a desire to NOT really delve into what -or rather WHO- is at the nexus of almost all of the city's longstanding problems -the ego and ambitions and failed policies of one woman: Mayor Joy Cooper.

I think if you've read this blog for any amount of time, you can immediately see what this article really paints a picture of -an ugly portrait of a poorly-managed city that is led by people who are not qualified to lead.

Broward Bulldog
Hallandale commissioners approve taking from the city, giving to themselves
DECEMBER 30, 2013 AT 5:51 AM
By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 

Miami Herald's version of Thursday's Broward Bulldog article that ran on Tuesday morning, includes some honest reader comments..
and the URL for that Tweet:
I strongly urge those of you with a Twitter account to Retweet it just like every HB item you find there.

As most of you know, personally, on this subject, I favored an approach where the elected HB City Commission voted publicly for a reasonable salary increase, and it either passed or didn't, so that the money trail was clear and unambiguous.
But in any case, I did NOT want to see ANY taxpayer dollars allocated towards a travel allowance being given to the commissioners as a parting gift.

Frankly, I'm completely dumbfounded that Bill Gjebre did not ask the most obvious question: Why, after all these years in office, over ten years, is Mayor Joy Cooper perpetually unable or unwilling to make hard choices when it comes to where she goes on the public dime and actually live within the generous limit?
Why is she even given one cent more? What's the justification? 

The reason she does that is that she knows the same thing we do -that there are 
NOT even three people with integrity on the current city commission to speak on behalf of the public at large. 
Their collective weakness empowers her to grab for more than she should have, more than is reasonable, just like all bullies do.

We know from practical experience that part of this equation is the that to  degree that is never written about or discussed publicly by the media, Mayor Cooper uses these quasi-govt. functions to further her own personal and political agenda. And not just a little, but a lot more than the majority of the people at these events.

After all, it's where she gets to shoot the breeze with her govt. cousins, corporate cronies and lobbyist pals who don't live here, and yet who keep telling her what a great job she's doing.

Like the folks at American Traffic Solutions (ATS), the red-light camera company from Arizona that rewarded her so generously at campaign time last year. And right before last year's election, what did she write about in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel when they foolishly asked her to write a Guest Op-Ed about the subject?
To the surprise of nobody, she wrote -somebody wrote!- something that sounded suspiciously like it could've come straight from the ATS PR Dept.

And just as I wrote at the time on this blog, the Sun-Sentinel exacerbated the situation by 
NEVER disclosing anything about Mayor Cooper's relationship with the company, or, their own chummy relationship with the various FL politicians involved with the politician-led Leagues: Cities, Mayors, Counties.
How much do they give them anyway? Or the Broward League of Cities?

Good question, how come nobody in South Florida's large press corps ever thinks to ask and investigate? Nobody ever puts a microphone directly in that group's leaders' faces and ask them why they are so afraid of disclosing that information to the very people who make their little club possible, taxpayers.
And what about those large legal bills/lobbying subsidized by citizens all over the county that includes payments to people who seem to have a wheelbarrow full of conflicts. Especially with Broward taxpayers, who are tired of being fleeced.

Where IS the list of how much in taxpayer money each Broward city gives the  Broward League of Cities, one of the least-transparent non-profit groups in the whole county, as I've mentioned previously with respect to their website?

Tell me, when Mayor Cooper was head pooh bah of the FL League of Mayors, consistently adopting and recommending anti-taxpayer moves in Tallahassee, and the other members of that group bemoaned their money woes in their cities, what do you think she told them?
Do you think she said what a great job ATS was doing of giving HB City Hall lots of loot and could do the same for them?
I do.

Who was she representing at those meetings, the people of HB?
No, herself.
One hand helps the other, especially at election time.

You doubt me, look at how they react when their ATM might be removed...

WTSP-TV, Tampa
Florida red light cameras would be strangled if new House bill passes 
6:55 AM, Dec 28, 2013
By Noah Pransky
Florida's League of Cities has come out strongly against RLC reforms and repeals.
http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/article/350392/8/Florida-House-going-after-red-light-camera-reforms

Speaking of no, who at HB City Hall is prepared to actually tell her no?
It's embarrassing that such a small city allows a thin-skinned bully of so little actual accomplishment and distinction to walk all over it time and again.

You might recall that a few years ago the ENTIRE five-member HB City Commission went to the FL League of Cities annual blowout in  Orlando -everyone!- even while much-larger Hollywood sent one person.
Correct, and among them that year that the same woman who refused to do her job, then-Comm. Dotty Ross, who refused to leave her office on the 2nd floor of City Hall so she wouldn't have to vote on whether or not to fire then-City Manager Mike Good. 

Not surprisingly, then-Vice Mayor Bill Julian didn't have the common sense to direct the then-City Attorney David Jove go up there and tell Ross that she was breaking the law and had to come down or live with the resultant legal consequences.
Ross's absence prevented a legal quorum from being present, even though as I 
documented at the time, she was not only there at City Hall, so was her car, which didn't drive itself to HB City Hall.

Her failure to appear and vote unless there was a conflict of interest was a direct violation of state law and her oath of office, but what happened to Ross?
Nothing. Broward SAO Mike Satz and Co. being their usual underwhelming selves.

As the news year dawns, just a reminder of a few things: 

a.) In the new year, I won't be voting or endorsing anyone running for HB City Commission who is unwilling to consistently show integrity, backbone and forthrightness, especially on important financial and public policy matters. 
I will only support and endorse someone who articulates a consistent reformist point of view that champions citizen/taxpayer/small business rights, and makes clear that they are in favor of MORE public accountability, oversight and transparency at HB City Hall -and actual, 
tangible performance of its employees, not the current unacceptable situation of anything goes.

Why does this matter?
Because Bill Julian said in 2012 that he'd learned from his (many, many) mistakes and would act and vote differently on the dais if given a second chance.after being kicked-out in 2010 and coming in third in a three-way race..
He got elected almost 14 months ago but where's the tangible proof of him following through on those promises to the community do better and act more prudently on behalf of residents and taxpayers? 

b.) I also won't be supporting anyone who can't/won't figure out how to send even one public email in the course of their first few months in office, much less their first year in office, outlining their priorities for the city and laying out the specific steps they favor in accomplishing those goals. What's the plan?

c.) Everyone has individual strengths and weaknesses they bring to bear on a campaign,as well as different ideas for making this city the better place it ought to clearly be already but isn't, largely because of th awful public policy advocated and approved by the Cooper Rubber Stamp Crew.

That status quo majority is literally strangling the life out of this city, and as I kow from many conversations with people who have invested in this city, chasing some small businesses out-of-town thru HB City Hall's red tape and continued incompetence.
All made worse by City Hall's unwillingness to hold individual city employees and Dept. heads responsible, including the Police & Fire Dept.

That's precisely why getting many MORE people in town involved and having honest 
public discussions and debate is the only chance we have of saving the city.
That will be impossible without the genuine support and meaningful numbers from residents living on A1A.
Any approach that ignores this reality is doomed to failure.

So with that in mind, if a candidate doesn't appear to be capable of the sort of city-wide consensus-building we need, a straight-talker who is capable of hosting even one public meeting within a few months of their being elected, outlining their goals and what they see as the biggest problems to resolve within the city, I will let you know and you can act however you think is best.

In case you hadn't noticed or preferred not to be reminded of it because it's so dispiriting to consider, with respect to both b and c above, our current reality with both Commissioners Julian and Lazarow is such that although both got elected almost 14 months ago, each has failed to pass even the very low threshold I suggest.

Zero emails to the public at large or even a pretense of discussing public policy on a website of theirs so that HB residents would know what they were thinking,
Zero Q&A public meetings with HB residents, to say nothing of having anything approaching the scope and citizen interaction of what former Comm. Keith London did so successfully for so many years.
Yes, it's exactly what it looks like.
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