As if the years-and-years of former Hallandale Beach Commissioner William "Bill" Julian's habit of routinely parking in Handicapped/Handicapped Access/NO Parking spaces all over this small but dense city while in office wasn't bad enough, as he set a terrible example of someone successfully being able to use their perceived power as a shield to get and receive special treatment that regular residents of this city couldn't get and wouldn't expect -due to HBPD always looking the other way- or, his infamously trying to triple City Commission salaries over lunch at a City Commission meeting with no TV camera to record his selfish and delusional words and actions for posterity, having claimed in press accounts that he and the rest of the Commission deserved "executive" corporate salaries -for their part-time job- there's yet another particularly galling nugget about Julian's queer and anti-democratic notions of civics and a participatory democracy that far too few people in this community know about.
That is, until now.
Bill Julian's car in 2008 parked in the Handicapped access parking spot at North Beach, where at at the time there was only one Handicapped spot and one Handicapped Acess spot on surfaced parking, with the fine for illegally using the latter being the same as for the former. March 21, 2008 photos by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
Another day at the beach, another day of entitlement!
Bill Julian: Red white and blue -and illegally parked! Yet again!
It's a very telling and troubling anecdote that says much about Julian and his strange ideas, notions and alternative universe, a world he probably much prefers to reality, since there, at least, his consistently bad judgment and bad votes on public policy that hurt both individuals and the city collectively, never require him to sincerely apologize or express remorse for all the lasting damage he has done to this community, where he had power far beyond he what he could competently handle, just like Comm. Anthony A. Sanders does now in the opinion of so many of the most-informed people in this city.Yes, Julian really does think he's entitled!
I quickly referenced this anecdote on Wednesday night, speaking next-to-last among a dozen or so Hallandale Beach citizens who were overwhelmingly against the original motion of Comm. Alexander Lewy, Agenda Item 11 B,
B. AN ORDINANCE OF THE MAYOR AND CITY COMMISSION OF THE CITY OF HALLANDALE BEACH, FLORIDA, AMENDING CHAPTER 12 "ELECTIONS," SECTION 12-04. QUALIFICATION OF CANDIDATES TO ESTABLISH CRITERIA AND PROCEDURE FOR CALLING A SPECIAL ELECTION BASED ON THE IRREVOCABLE RESIGNATION OF A COMMISSIONER AND SETTING OF QUALIFYING PERIOD IN CONFORMANCE WITH STATE LAW; PROVIDING A SEVERABILITY CLAUSE; PROVIDING A CODIFICATION CLAUSE; PROVIDING AN EFFECTIVE DATE; PROVIDING A REPEAL CLAUSE; PROVIDING A CONFLICT CLAUSE; AND FOR ALL OTHER PURPOSES. (FIRST READING) (STAFF: CITY ATTORNEY) (SEE BACKUP) (Staff Report, Supporting Docs)
This one issue brought close to a full room to the City Commission Chambers on the same night as the NFL's 2012 opening-night kickoff, with the Cowboys at Giants game on national TV while we were busy observing our local government chasing its tail and finding out -yet again- that nobody in the city really knows what the city's charter says or means.
After spending most of my three minutes reminding everyone in the room and watching on TV about some true and inconvenient facts surrounding aspects of the HB Charter Review Commission -and yet more broken promises and poor to non-existent oversight by former City Manager Mark. A. Antonio, which I will detail here in a separate post soon- and refuting with facts the predictably disingenuous and dishonest remarks uttered earlier by a few people, including Andrew Markoff, who even on a group he sought to join proved to be an outlier once again, I hurriedly spent the last twenty-five seconds of my three minutes reminding everyone once again of how truly lacking in character and judgment former HB Commissioner and CRC member Julian, was and remains.
Julian, who's running again in November after coming in a well-deserved third in a two-seat race in November of 2010, has seemingly never learned from any of his experiences and dozens and dozens of egregious mistakes while in office for ten years, and his support of Lewy's efforts, detailed by Lewy himself in an email he circulated last week, is entirely in keeping with that dismal track record Julian earned, and which this town bears the scars for.
That dubious track record of ten years is why he came in third, after all -people remembered what he said and did.
Here's the rest of the story that I couldn't fit in and mention on Wednesday night... which I'd originally planned on posting here on Tuesday but was unable to.
Unfortunately for both common sense and the wallets and purses of HB's residents, taxpayers and business owners, trying and succeeding in in doing something both ridiculous and anti-democratic has a long and undistinguished history at Hallandale Beach City Hall.
After all, who'll ever forget former Comm. Bill Julian famously musing from his seat on the Commission dais on whether he should bring forth his idea for an ordinance of a residency requirement that would mandate that all candidates for city office in Hallandale Beach have lived in this city for THREE YEARS before being eligible to run.
Really.
Showing the sort of very bad judgment that was long Julian's trademark in office for ten long years, Julian had convinced himself that this ordinance of his would ensure that only well-qualified candidates ran for local office here, as if simply living here for a finite period of time and breathing our air made residents either well-informed or articulate about the public policy issues confronting this city.
Showing his well-known parochialism, it never even seemed to have occurred to Julian that
it wasn't HIS job or the City Commission's to decide for all of us who got to run for local office
in this town.
It's called a democracy for a reason, and as long as someone met the reasonable eligibility requirements, that decision to run was solely up to any potential qualified resident, NOT to incumbent politicians who had a vested self-interest in discouraging people from running against them.
Especially well-informed citizens who know the issues better than the Commissioners, their worst fear.
Julian's idea was so preposterous and so patently unconstitutional, that even bump-on-the-log
then-City Attorney David Jove found himself forced to explain some very basic concepts of
democracy to Julian on why such a thing would never fly, due to its unreasonable and capricious nature.
It would also subject the city to a barrage of lawsuits the city could never hope to win,
since the ordinance was so clearly unconstitutional on its face.
You'd think that an elected official living in the 21st Century in a modern American city would
have the good sense to implicitly understand this, but once again, Comm. Julian did NOT.
He had to have it explained to him before he pulled his idea off the table.
You won't be surprised to hear that Julian, now a Commission candidate in November, fully
supports what Lewy, Cooper and Sanders were attempting to do to Hallandale Beach's citizen voters at Wednesday night's City Commission meeting.
Yes, it's classic Julian being Julian, always with the bad judgment, in or out of office.
Julian the outlier, always the person who fails to pay attention, fails to grasp the obvious and who consistently put his foot in his mouth and embarrass the citizens of this community.
The worst enemy of Bill Julian is a smart voter who pays attention and who possesses a good memory.
Julian the outlier, always the person who fails to pay attention, fails to grasp the obvious and who consistently put his foot in his mouth and embarrass the citizens of this community.
The worst enemy of Bill Julian is a smart voter who pays attention and who possesses a good memory.
