Showing posts with label public policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public policy. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Common sense questions about public policy, process and public engagement -to say nothing of financial risk- continue to dog @AllAboardFla and the Fortress Investment Group as they seek $1.75 billion in tax-exempt bonds from the Florida Development Finance Corporation for their planned Miami-to-Orlando express train, via Fort lauderdale and West Palm Beach. Some observations on what we know and what reporters should have been asking all along, but were NOT.

This is an expanded version of an email that I wrote about All Aboard Florida that was sent out around South Florida and Florida this morning shortly after I received a Twitter notification from someone at the group FloridaNOTAllAboard, @FLNOTAA who describes themselves thusly:
"We are a grassroots group of citizens who have created this page to help facilitate communication and inform residents that are affected by AAF."
floridanotallaboard.com

 Since I'd been planning on posting something about All Aboard Florida this week, once I received that message, I decided to write something today instead of waiting until later in the week.

 Those of you unfamiliar with some of the issues here and my own perspective on the frustrating and often confounding public transportation scene in Florida may want to consult my blog post from March 26th and use that as a predicate:
South Florida has once again redefined the meaning of "Free Ride." But shouldn't we all realize by now that when it comes to #TransportationPolicy in #SoFL, there's no such thing as a free ride? But #Miami pols, @Tri_Rail & @AllAboardFla can't help themslves when it comes to taking taxpayer dollars and taking credit for something BEFORE the facts are ALL in
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/south-florida-has-once-again-redefined.html

 ----------

 So, look who seems to have finally woken up from many years of his Rip Van Winkle-like slumber? 

 Columnist Michael Mayo of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, who for many years was one of the few full-throated voices in the South Florida news media willing to publicly tell the truth and speak ill of the powerful, comfortable, affluent and influential of our part area of the Sunshine State. 
That is to say, the same small handful of people of means and influence in South Florida who, over the years, have become quite accustomed to them and their favorites pet causes being catered to (and indulged in and promoted) by the South Florida press corps, no matter how wrong or dubious they were regarding an issue of public concern. 
To an extent, frankly, that would be embarrassing in most parts of the country, but which has become commonplace here, where there's a real paucity of reporters with old-fashioned notions of serving the public FIRST.

 That is also to say that Michael Mayo was someone who used to be mentioned and linked to rather frequently here at Hallandale Beach Blog, in large part because of his willingness to call things exactly what they were here in Hallandale Beach and environs with respect to the illegal, unconscionable or downright stupid things that routinely took/take place at Hallandale Beach City Hall.

 Mayo, to his great credit, unlike the majority of the news media in South Florida, was NOT content to just look away or merely swallow whole the PR spin served up by the usual Suspects at HB City Hall, whether Mayor Joy Cooper or her usual partners in dubious/unethical/shady shenanigans that embarrass the beleaguered residents of this ocean-side Broward city just north of the Miami-Dade County line, namely, HB City Commissioners Anthony A. Sanders and William 'Bill" Julian.

 But for whatever reasons -and I have my own educated hunches- things changed with Mayo and what he chose to write about and make his primary focus.
To me and several other people in my circle of friends and acquaintances in South Florida and around the Sunshine State, he seemed to retrench, which was disappointing, given how few people seemed willing to do what he did in the first place.
The change made him seem like he not only avoided going after low-hanging fruit in our area that needed to be swatted at, but not even bother to aim for high-minded fruit on the top shelf, either.

 But for today at least, he's back with some well-placed energy and moxie, asking overdue questions that others in the #SoFL media universe have been very, very reluctant or afraid to ask publicly.


"But the bigger question is this: If All Aboard Florida is such a good idea and has a reasonable chance of success, why is it falling on junk bond investors to back them, instead of AAF’s deep-pocketed corporate parent, Fortress Investment Group?"

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
All Aboard Florida bonds involve 'high degree of risk'
By Michael mayo
August 4, 2015
11:37 a.m.

Getting $1.75 billion in tax-exempt bonds approved by a state board on Wednesday looks to be the easy part for All Aboard Florida.

 The seemingly harder part for the proposed Miami-to-Orlando express train: Getting investors to buy the risky unrated bonds (junk bonds, in financial parlance), and being able to make an estimated $105 million in annual debt payments to repay the bonds.

 Read the rest of the column
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/michael-mayo-blog/sfl-mayo-aaf-bonds-20150804-story.html


This is esp. interesting in light of my tweets last week to Brian Bandell of the South Florida Business Journal reminding him of the tone-deaf and self-inflicted problems of All Aboard Florida a few years ago when it came time for them to actually engage the public in Broward County, whom they wanted to completely ignore in their original scoping meetings.

But then I started complaining about it loudly and publicly via emails, phone calls and blog posts to some responsive local officials -and certain key news media members- in South Florida, who agreed with me that given the scope of what was at stake, the All Aboard Florida geniuses core belief that they could literally force everyone in Broward who was interested in this plan -because there's a Fort Lauderdale station- to have to travel to a not-great area of downtown Miami at night, on a
weeknight when the Miami Heat were in the NBA playoffs, was probably NOT the greatest idea in the world.

But the decision to ignore Broward's residents -AAF's own future customers!- was entirely indicative of the decision-making prowess of the AAF braintrust.

Personally, I'm not against the idea, I merely find it hard to believe that in August of 2015 that there remain SO MANY basic questions, policy and process, that are both unasked and unanswered to my satisfaction, and clearly part of that has been because of the cheerleader attitude taken by so many in the South Florida press corps towards this plan.
That sort of bias and un-professionalism reminds me of the same media's attitude towards the Dolphins' terrible idea just a few years ago of forcing taxpayers to pay for stadium improvements at Dolphins Stadium, i.e Joe Robbie Stadium.
(You recall how badly that flopped, given that the owner of the team and the stadium, Stephen Ross, is only one of THE richest Americans alive today.)

The South Florida media was played like a fiddle by the Dolphins and their PR people and lobbyists, 
with several usually-solid reporters even being reduced to playing the role of little kids on "exclusive tours" of the stadium with the Dolphins then-President Mike Dee.
(Okay, you got it out of me -it was Lauren Pastrana of CBS4 News in Miami. For mojnths I watched her story out at the stadium and it made me cringe every time.)

That is to say, the media could look and listen to what was said, but seemingly couldn't ask adult questions. 
Like perfectly reasonable questions about why the Dolphins seem to have intentionally chosen NOT to repaint some areas of the stadium so that it would look worse as they and the NFL engaged in a PR battle via the media to force South Florida taxpayers to pay the freight so that perhaps the NFL might deign to have the Super Bowl played there in the future.
Some day.
Maybe!

A basic question I have had and never seen answered adequately is how will the City of Fort Lauderdale and/or Broward County government and All Aboard Florida legally keep the Fort Lauderdale train station-cum-transit center from being over-run by the army of transients and 
homeless, which has been the sad reality for the Broward County Transit main HQ off Broward Blvd. & Andrews Avenue the past few years, as anyone who has used it or gone to the McDonald's next door well knows.

It's both sad and tragic on many levels and... made worse by the fact that it is within two blocks of the Broward County Govt. HQ building and Fort Lauderdale City Hall.
But that everyday reality is also why some people don't use public transit and specifically don't go THERE.
Despite the fact that both are places that people ACTUALLY go to in real numbers.

If the public doesn't buy into a Fort Lauderdale train station/transit center right away, or have doubts about their safety and that of their family, no amount of PR spin and attempted media manipulation will prevent it from quickly becoming a No-Go Zone.
Another White Elephant monument to South Florida's long history of elected officials and "insiders" being persuaded/conned into forking over taxpayer dollars and rights for what was supposed to be, after all, yes, a private enterprise endeavor.

"But the bigger question is this: If All Aboard Florida is such a good idea and has a reasonable chance of success, why is it falling on junk bond investors to back them, instead of AAF’s deep-pocketed corporate parent, Fortress Investment Group?"
Yes, what is the reason for that lack of enthusiasm?
You can follow Lisa Broadt, aka @TCPalmLisa for live coverage of the meeting.




I encourage you to do so.

Adios!

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Thursday, March 26, 2015

South Florida has once again redefined the meaning of "Free Ride." But shouldn't we all realize by now that when it comes to #TransportationPolicy in #SoFL, there's no such thing as a free ride? But #Miami pols, @Tri_Rail & @AllAboardFla can't help themslves when it comes to taking taxpayer dollars and taking credit for something BEFORE the facts are ALL in

South Florida, and NOT to its credit, has once again redefined the meaning of "Free Ride." But shouldn't we all realize by now -after so DOZENS of fatally-flawed transit decisions and an equal number of poorly-executed plans- that when it comes to #Transportation Policy in #SoFL, there's no such thing as a free ride? 
But #Miami pols, @Tri_Rail & @AllAboardFla can't help themslves when it comes to taking taxpayer dollars and taking credit for something BEFORE the facts are ALL in

Below is a slightly-expanded version of an email that I sent out early last night, after reading the article and tweets below, to just under 200 concerned citizens, pols and news media reps in the Sunshine State, and to transportation reporters and columnists across the U.S.A.
I was not able to send all the tweets to them, so... include them here




 Miami Herald
Tri-Rail would offer free rides to Overtown district residents in station deal
Douglas Hanks, Miami Herald
March 24, 2005

Tri-Rail would offer free passes to large numbers of Overtown residents in exchange for public funding of a new Miami station, part of a deal aimed at piecing together $69 million in tax dollars to bring the commuter line to a privately funded train depot downtown.

The largely state-funded Tri-Rail would offer free passes to residents inside Miami's Overtown/Park West taxing district in exchange for extracting about $30 million from the entity for construction of a Tri-Rail platform in All Aboard Florida's rail complex that's about to begin construction in downtown Miami.

 Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article16221608.html



Miami Today
Tourist taxes add-on a creative way to finance vital transit  
Written by Michael Lewis on March 25, 2015
If Miami-Dade commissioners succeed in a creative drive to increase two of our three tourism taxes by one percentage point each, they can amass more than $60 million a year to build mass transit.
Anyone who tries to get around this county knows how vital this is, because bonding this guaranteed revenue could provide several billion dollars to start building transit immediately.
Read the rest of the column at:
http://www.miamitodaynews.com/2015/03/25/tourist-taxes-add-on-a-creative-way-to-finance-vital-transit/


























A few things worth knowing while you digest the facts and anecdotes above and try to make sense of it all:

 In case you forgot -or never knew- the person who led the effort to change the City of Miami's former CRA district and create a new CRA district -done as part of the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County's foolish efforts to build a new taxpayer-built baseball stadium for the Florida Marlins- is none other than Marc Sarnoff.

Yes, the outgoing City of Miami commissioner at the center of this story, now a paid CRA Director, and, oh yeah, someone trying desperately to elect his wife as his successor on the Miami City
Commission. Really.
Hastag: #Context

Now perhaps those of you who doubted me last year when I -alone in South Florida- publicly asked why the one-and-only public All Aboard Florida public scoping meeting scheduled in Miami-Dade County last year was taking place in a crime-ridden area that future users of the train between Miami and Orlando would never willingly visit without an ample display of security.

In case you forgot, this one-and-only AAF public scoping meeting in M-D was scheduled to be held at night, during the week, at a place where, IF you entered its address on Google Maps like I did and looke at it via Street View, what you saw was the side of a liquor store with debris everywhere.
Again, REALLY.

As opposed to, well, having it at a centralized location in the county with plenty of parking spaces outside and plenty of air conditioned seats inside on a hot day that would ACTUALLY draw future paid train passengers for rides to Orlando?
Afterall, AAF is trying to cast as large a net as possible for passengers, aren't they?

Trust me, for their business plan to be successful, their core audience can not consist of just poor people and people who lack a car to make the drive up to Orlando.
But look how clumsily and amateurish it was handled when they had lots of time to decide what they were going to do?
That's called portent, my friends...

Yes, but then THAT is precisely the kind of planning we've come to expect from the same AAF folks who've always got their hands out for more for the public purse, forgetting that many of us still recall how much they bragged and patted themselves on the back early on for how much theirs was a "private" enterprise.

The same people who did NOT even plan on hosting a public scoping meeting anywhere in Broward County for its taxpayers and consumers last year until I embarrassed, shamed and publicly flogged them, via several high-profile emails and blog posts that were cc'd to the South Florida, Orlando and Tampa Bay area  news media, and a handful of people with power and influence in Tallahassee with
an interest in logic intersecting with reason at least, well, OCCASIONALLY in public policy

Me, via the blog last May, which generated more than a few not-so-happy phone calls and emails to people who thought they'd pulled a fast one:

More Transit Policy Woes in South Florida: With stealthy and self-sabotaging friends like All Aboard Florida and SFRTA/Tri-Rail, pro-transit advocates in South Florida don't need any more enemies; 'All Aboard Florida' fails to schedule a single public scoping meeting in Broward County this Spring despite Fort Lauderdale being a proposed station, while SFRTA chief refuses to answer a simple question -Will Hallandale Beach have a station under the proposed Coastal line plan?; Just because you're pro-transit doesn't mean you have to ignore displays of transit incompetency or mismanagement when you see it!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/more-transit-policy-woes-in-south.html

After I publicly outed AAF's ill-conceived plan to ignore the very Broward public -and its future customers- who'd no doubt be asked to pay in some manner or form towards a new public train station and assorted infrastructure in Fort Lauderdale, they wised-up and decided to throw one together in Fort Lauderdale.
Wow, talk about disrespecting their own core consumer audience!
WHO would intentionally do THAT???

Not that the people at AAF and the assorted City of Fort Lauderdale and Broward County geniuses have yet to figure out how they'll keep Fort Lauderdale's sizable homeless population from camping en masse in and near any new public train station.
That, of course, is proposed for but a few blocks from Broward County's present central bus depot, off Broward Blvd.

You know, right in the middle of the area where, as has been reported upon for MANY years, homeless people drink (and often defecate) everywhere, as is entirely self-evident to anyone paying attention.
With the City of Fort Lauderdale City Hall but a stone's throw away!
But they just ignore it.

Why?
Unfortunately, because like so many levels of government in South Florida, with rare exceptions -like open-minded Coral Gables City Manager Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark, whom I knew and trusted implicitly from her years of being an Assistant City Manager and City Manager in Hollywood, who consistently talked-the-talk and walked-the-walk on transparency and public input on public policy- they're always thinking that a PR-driven strategy will inevitably trump a logical and well-planned public policy and goal that actually requires genuine public input.

But what they almost always fail to appreciate is that the public buying-in, if the plan is smart and sound, esp. financially, almost always results in genuine public success achieved SOONER, not just the mere illusion of it.

That same unfortunate attitude I think also explains why so many public places in Florida in general and South Florida in particular seem so resolutely mediocre, second-rate and ill-conceived.

Is that what we really want with train/commuter stations that ought to have been built 40 years ago, when I was a kid growing up in North Miami Beach, which perhaps could have kept South Florida from physically expanding beyond reason -and infrastructure- including building stadiums and arenas far from core supporters, when logic would have seen them built near well-planned train stations, which would have benefited everyone, including the team's bottom line?

As a longtime public transit advocate, in Chicago, D.C./Arlington County as well as in South Florida, I think not. 

 But just because we see the important role of public planning and public transit doesn't mean we support breaking the public bank to do so, and pretend that car-centric South Florida is, overnight, going to become transit-friendly, and therefore can sign-off on gold-plating everything so that Marc Sarnoff can see his reflection on a plaque of names for years to come.
What are -and where are?- the benchmarks that AAF and Tri-Rail should have to reach in order to get the deal they want?

My experience is that simplicity and ease-of-use will count for more with the people who actually use a train station in the future, since that's what they will tell their friends, family and work colleagues,
and no amount of PR dollars can ever equal that.

The powers-that-be need to create train stations in Miami and Fort Lauderdale with the same mindset used to create the current international airport in Oslo, where so many first-time visitors feel exactly as I did in 2013: completely at-ease and not the least bit confused or overwhelmed.
Something I know about from using O'Hare so often for so many years in the 1980's while living in Chicago, Evanston and Wilmette.




You actually WANT to linger.
That surely counts for something, no?

 Heia Norge!
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Wednesday, December 24, 2014

#BorisBus - A public policy must-read over the holidays: "Boris's Bus (A Political Journey)" by The Guardian's London blogger Dave Hill, @DaveHill, who's been chronicling energetic London Mayor Boris Johnson's controversial effort to place his stamp on London's future transportation scene




Here's the series in reverse-chron order:
Boris's Bus (A Political Journey) Boris Johnson's wish to create a modern successor 
to London's legendary Routemaster buses has been a signature policy of his mayoralty. 
The Guardian's London blogger Dave Hill has been following the unfolding saga of its creation

Dave Hill's main blog on London is here:  
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/davehillblog







It goes without saying that we could really use this willingness to shake things up in government in Florida, especially South Florida, to say nothing of having double-decker buses along certain main streets.

Then again, ever since it started less than 10 years ago, the Broward County Transit express bus that runs on traffic-clogged US-1, back-and-forth from Aventura Mall to downtown Fort Lauderdale, the Buzz #1, after leaving the Aventura Mall, next to its food court near Macy's, does NOT stop at a single bus SHELTER in Aventura, Hallandale Beach or Hollywood. Really.
Waiting bus passengers get to wait and wait in the rain, sun, wind...
Just like bus passengers at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport waiting for public transportation, whether visitors who have just landed and eager to get to their hotel, or airline, vendor or Homeland Security employees simply looking to get home, who also have to wait for it at a place with NO shelter, NO benches to sit on and with NO posted bus schedules present. 
It could hardly be less well thought-out and half-assed.

And the people manning the information desk inside the airport consistently CAN'T tell you where the one-and-only bus stop at the airport is, as I discovered first-hand there this summer when I did some investigating and snooping around.
The signs for it are seemingly an afterthought. 
The whole enterprise is a #RealityCheck for #BestPractices.

I've got a photo-filled blog post on that embarrassing transportation situation, esp. at the airport, coming sometime in January, and will publicly question how -yet again- Broward County citizens/taxpayers are clearly being mis-served by Broward's bureaucrats on something that is NOT that complicated, and yet is clearly being botched.

Yes, Broward, the same County that has an Advisory Board for every matter and problem under the sun, real and imagined, but which does NOT have an Advisory Board for the Airport, one of the principal economic engines we have here.
That is something that clearly needs to change in the near-future and with meaningful citizen representation, too. 

To make that change happen, in the new year I plan on speaking directly to the people and interest groups who make the decisions in this County. 
Then we'll see who wants to do what's best for the public and who wants to keep doing what clearly ISN'T working. 
#Resolutions
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Thursday, October 16, 2014

He's no Houdini! Why Hallandale Beach Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders is so worried: He can't hide anymore from his crony capitalism and dismal record of words & votes against logic, common sense, financial accountability -and HB's future Quality-of-Life. The tide of change against him is rising, NOT fading. Vote for Kulin!


Contents below are a slightly-expanded version of an email I sent out last night to people all over Hallandale Beach, Hollywood, greater Broward County and throughout South Florida who care about cleaning-up one of the most incompetent and corrupt local governments in all of Florida, the City of Hallandale Beach.

He's no Houdini! Why Hallandale Beach Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders is so worried: He can't hide anymore from his dismal record of words & votes against logic, common sense, financial accountability -and HB's future Quality-of-Life. The tide of change against him is rising, NOT fading
Dear Friend of Common Sense in Hallandale Beach,

Hallandale Beach Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders is worried.
And he has good reason to be worried.
He's NOT an escape artist like Houdini, and his dismal and ruinous record in office is all around us! 
Right where we can see it.

Comm. Sanders knows that after six years of his consistently unsatisfactory performance in office, six years of his continually being shown as not only un-informed but also consistently
dis-connected from the legitimate concerns of the majority of HB residents and small business owners, six LONG years of his consistently being disrespectful of them while casting votes that've negatively affected them and their family's present and future Quality-of-Life, that the tide of change against him is rising, NOT fading.

Despite his recent (ill-chosen) boast in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that he was perfectly prepared to stand by his record in elective office after six years, the reality is that Comm. Sanders CAN'T defend it. 
The unintended irony of this, of course, is that his record can also NOT be defended by his own supporters among the anti-reform Cooper Rubber Stamp Crew, or among City Hall's selfish crony capitalism crowd of friends. 
Friends who love being rewarded for being friends of the powers-that-be: with COHB and HB CRA dollars.

But then that only stands to reason, since despite six long years of opportunities to do so, Comm. Sanders himself has been unwilling to defend his own record and votes with anything even remotely resembling logic or reason. 
Not just at the time Comm. Sanders was casting his predictable Rubber Stamp votes, but unable even to explain those votes and policy views with any degree of persuasion or conviction in the minutes, hours, days or weeks AFTER he's cast those same votes against
common sense and financial accountability, often at the same time.

Most of us who have paid even the slightest amount of attention to what happens in Hallandale Beach and its neighboring cities know that Comm. Sanders has never had to publicly defend that woeful record of poor performance, despite how egregious many of Sanders' actions have been, whether in the area of his questionable ethics, uniformily poor
judgment, or even his failure to consistently show-up at public meetings fully-informed and prepared to ask cogent questions, as the HB community has a perfect right to expect of any elected official.

What's particularly galled so many of us is that Comm. Sanders has been aided and abetted in that effort by a largely pliant and sleepwalking South Florida news media, that, with a few rare exceptions, never wanted to directly challenge Sanders' myopic and upside-down world view, to say nothing of personally holding him and his ineffective words/votes to account for the reality of the abymally poor governance we see in this city no matter where we go.

Now part of that is because Sanders, even after so many awful years in office, always wanted to play the role of voice for the disaffected and forgotten in this community. 
As IF that could in any way be explained by his six years of ALWAYS voting FOR real estate developers, no matter how incompatible or harmful the individual project was to the nearest neighborhood or the city at large

And year-after-year, the local South Florida news media -with a few exceptions- has lacked the mettle, gumption and attention-span to directly and publicly challenge Comm. Sanders on that faux pose of his, though the facts are clear they could've clobbered him using his own words and votes whenever they chose on a whole host of issues.
But sadly for us, the news media has consciously chosen NOT to challenge and press Sanders to fully explain his strange utterings and troublesome votes up on the dais. 
That failure has only exacerbated the growing sense of frustration and alienation in this city among reasonable people who simply want it to be MUCH BETTER than has been allowed to be.

One of the few shining exceptions to this apathy by local South Florida journalists has been Local10's Glenna Milberg.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/video-local10s-glenna-milberg-examines.html
actsofsedition video:  Local10/Miami: "City's pricey purchase." 
On July 26, 2012, Local10 reporter Glenna Milberg went to Hallandale Beach to learn more details about the curious case involving Pastor and City Comm. Anthony A. Sanders' rushed sale of his and his wife's property at 501 N.W. 1st Avenue to the city in 2009 -when the city had ZERO written plans for what it would actually do with the property afterwards!- for about $89,000 more than it was actually worth. Sanders continues to stonewall Hallandale Beach taxpayers about the exact details of this deal as he has now for over three years, and he refused to speak with Milberg on Thursday. Outside of the city-owned property that the city now receives $10 a year in rent for, Mayor Joy Cooper's explanation was unconvincing for HB taxpayers. Three years later she continued to hem and haw when asked simple questions -and to defend the indefensible- as she still can't logically explain what the rush was to buy the property at a higher price, esp. if there was no definite plan in place. It was left to former Comm. Keith London -the only vote against the purchase and Cooper's re-election opponent in November of 2012- to again explain why this deal was so egregious from HB taxpayer's point of view. It's just one of the dozens of inexplicable and nonsensical things that I've personally observed with Hallandale Beach taxpayer or CRA funds under Mayor Cooper's reign since I moved here. Uploaded July 27, 2012. http://youtu.be/XlOgkrL9CWI


People like you and your neighbors who want policy arguments at HB City Hall to be over commonly-agreed-upon facts and the best way to make good ideas become a reality, the exact opposite of what we've had in this city for far too long, with Sanders always on the wrong side of both common sense and history.

Six years later, with Sanders continually failing to rise to the responsibility, and in fact, to be found wanting by the majority of Hallandale Beach residents, even among those in NW HB, Sanders knows that the real disaffected people in this city are the very citizens,residents and small business owners like you who for years have been made to feel like uninvited and unwanted outsiders at your own City Hall.

Forever being treated shabbily, callously or even publicly insulted, by both an autocratic mayor and a power-hungry city manger, as they and their bureaucratic minions continually tried to flip norms of public democratic participation on its side, so they alone could be
left alone to form this city in their own image(s).

Far too often, despite our best efforts to positively change the culture of entitlement and self-evident wrong-way driving up on the dais, we were forced to watch in silence as this happened, with Comm. Sanders sitting up on the dais totally oblivious to what was taking
place, and not at all interested in putting HB residents and small business owners first, not forever second to someone else's interests.

Since Comm. Sanders can NOT defend that abysmal record of his, naturally -along with his cohorts among the Cooper Rubber Stamp Crew- he's eager to change the subject of this Commission race to something else, anything else -and distract voters from his own inability to make a positive difference for the whole community.
Year-after-year. 
Please don't let him get away with it again!

IF there were actually honest-to-goodness candidate debates and public forums in this city, venues where HB residents and small business owners like you could speak truthfully about their legitimate concerns and fears, without Mayor Cooper and City Manager Miller constantly interfering -or running to protect Comm. Sanders from his own words and actions on the dais- trust me, my good friend, HB civic activist Chuck Kulin, would be constantly reminding Comm. Sanders that he was running against HIM and Sanders' failed record for reasons that he'd only be too happy to enumerate and articulate, with facts and precision that make the case.

But now in the last 20 days, even after all of Chuck's hard work on his campaign, absent those public venues to directly challenge Comm. Sanders and his votes directly on the record, and the news media's reluctance to print or air what so many of us know about Sanders' record in a way that aligns with what most of us have grown-up thinking is reasonable to expect in an election campaign, Comm. Sanders is relying upon the friends and cronies of Mayor Cooper and the myriad businesses who deal with HB City Hall to finance him and run interference for him.
Anthony A. Sanders/Commission Seat No. 1 Qualified as of 6/19/2014M4, M5 , M6, M7, M8, G4

People who are determined to keep this seat on THEIR side, opposing needed reforms and more meaningful public accountability and public input.

That’s why I need your help and am writing you now. 
Three weeks from this morning we'll all wake-up with the knowledge that the opportunity
to positively change things in this community has come and gone for another two years.
Do you want to wake-up feeling good that morning, energized and positive that this city can FINALLY start being the sort of place we can all take pride in, or, do you want to be suffering from a headache, knowing that things CAN and often DO get worse in this city
when consistently ineffective and inattentive incumbents are returned to their seats at City Hall?

If you want it to be the former and not the latter, please contact Chuck and offer to help him in this campaign however you can, doing what you can right now to show Comm. Sanders that he is going to be replaced by someone who can and will be a positive can-do voice for
you, common sense and financial accountability.

Chuck Kulin
1835 E. Hallandale Beach Boulevard, #130, Hallandale Beach, Florida 33009
Cell 954-804-2210 
E-mail ChuckKulin2014@gmail.com
www.chuckkulin.com/

It seems to me that we are so close to winning this pivotal seat, and so close to sending Sanders packing -but we can only get there when everyone looks themselves in the mirror and is willing to expend some time and effort in changing the dynamic and reality of this city.

There's now less than 20 days left.
What are YOU going to do?
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