Above, looking northwest across U.S.-1 at the Hallandale Beach City Hall and Police Dept. HQ, 400 S. Federal Highway,Hallandale Beach, Florida. Photo by South Beach Hoosier.
This morning I have something nice and meaty for you all to peruse and chew-over along with your Sunday morning coffee -the much-discussed and jaw-dropping Agreed-Upon Procedures and Draft Audit report for the City of Hallandale Beach performed by Marcum LLP the past year.
Yes, the 'other shoe to drop' that some of us have long been waiting for...
To call it 'dynamite' is to underestimate how much damage dynamite -in the form of stone-cold facts and observable, objective fact-patterns- can deliver in a city that is only 4.2 square miles to begin with.
Let's just say that the ripple effects can and will be felt far from this ocean-side city tucked-in between Hollywood to the north and Aventura to the south.
Suffice to say that nothing I have read in the report came as any surprise to me and instead, only served to confirm everything I have ever seen and heard in this city with my own eyes and ears the past seven-plus years.
When you know the territory and key players like I do, and place the facts gathered by the auditor as well as those already known by me and many others in this city -ones denied for years by city hall- and place them in their proper light and context -Sunshine- this Draft reads like a bill of indictment against Joy Cooper's record as Hallandale Beach mayor, a longstanding culture of corruption, chronic incompetency and naked crony capitalism the past ten years.
But not, of course, without "Special thanks" to former and current HB City Managers, Mike Good and Mark A. Antonio, who have added their very unique and special talents of apathy, aloofness, obliviousness and lack of attention-to-detail to the mix.
Folks, it's right in front of you like I've always said it was, you merely need to read it for yourselves and let the facts do the talking: the lack of commitment to public transparency and even following their own often flimsy rules and requirements; the shoddy financial controls; the ability of files and documents involving tens and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to just disappear, as if by magic.
Some very serious bad magic.
The next ten days to two weeks on my blog will feature more news and information about other HB residents running for the HB City Commission or for Mayor in 2012 who intend to end the longstanding culture, of corruption and crony capitalism present at Hallandale Beach City Hall, and to make genuine financial accountability, transparency in public policy and accountability to the public -not to mention, bring overdue common sense to bear on the city's chronic problems that are now merely kicked down the road- their starting point for making this community the place it OUGHT to be right now, not the one it is now under people who genuinely couldn't care less about those qualities and traits as they sleepwalk on the job, oblivious to what is all around them.
