Butler1Mike YouTube Channel video: Hallandale Beach Mayor Cooper contradicts herself, saying that she didn't vote for the city's overly-generous pension plan in 2001 that lasted for many years, but then defends the pension plan that the city had that has (or will) make multi-millionaires out of several employees, including three former City Managers, as entirely appropriate for a city so small. Yes, here as she has so many times over the nine years that she has been mayor, Joy Cooper shows herself to be one enormous ball of contradictions, which is why there is never an intersection of logic and reason and genuine taxpayer accountability in her city. Just her doing whatever she wanted, saying whatever she wanted, and flying by the seat of your pants! Uploaded October 31, 2012. http://youtu.be/xhlnEezjZGU
http://www.youtube.com/user/Butler1Mike
No Broward city let's you down more consistently and more predictably when it comes to attention to detail than...
For those of you who were there last Saturday morning at 6:45 a.m. like me, how awesome was it to see all the hustle-and-bustle and nervous energy of so many voters, candidates and their friends milling around the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center, the only site in the city for Early Voting, and just as about any of us could've predicted, about half of the city's parking lot lights and safety lights around the Center were NOT working.
When it was near pitch-black.
Just like last week, last month and last year.
Just like 2008's Early Voting!
Like it always is!
All October 27, 2012 photos below by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
The light above in the foreground is from my camera's flash, otherwise none of the signs would be legible to you.
Looks like the lights on the access route from S.E. 3rd Street were out, of course!
Not that the police or the police chief who drive on it constantly ever notice and do something about it.
Nope!
Yes, you'd never know by the appearance of so very much neglected maintenance that the city's Police Dept. HQ was just steps away, given how very lax the city has been for so many years about basic safety and common sense and liability issues.
"Liability," what's that?
If you're like me, how funny was it to see the myriad candidates and their devoted friends and family members handing-out their campaign palm cards to voters lined-up on a median strip in the parking lot, south of the Cultural Center -and outside of the "no campaigning zone"- waiting patiently for a Broward Supervisor of Elections official to come out and have the first few people come inside to exercise their right to vote, and yet the folks at the end of the line could NOT even read the palm cards they were handed because they were so far from a working light and it was so very dark?
Yes, good times, indeed!
So, do you see all the dozens of Early Voters lined-up at 6:57 a.m.?
Who needs city Dept. heads and employees who actually show a little foresight once in a while, and who earn their salary thru hard work and attention to detail, when you can, instead, have SO MANY of the sort that we seem to have been blessed with here in Hallandale Beach?
Government employees who have a larger sense of entitlement -and a seeming chip-on-their-shoulders- than would seem normal based on the constant sub-par look of the city, both aesthetically and maintenance-wise.
City employees who, for whatever reason, perhaps tradition, think that their performance is NOT Job One, but rather an abstract idea that they never have to actually reach, just pretend to aspire to at Dept. meetings.
After all, if we've learned anything in nine years of living here, it's that there are absolutely no consequences to employees' continued poor performance or chronic bad attitude or perpetual surliness to taxpayers, the real bosses, of course.
(I sometimes wonder what it's like in the cities where all those City of HB employees live, since so few Dept. heads and regular employees actually live here, otherwise perhaps they'd take more pride in their job. Clearly, not, though.)
Yes, the fact that it's been known for several months now that this location would be the City of Hallandale Beach's ONLY site for Early Voting made it entirely predictable that on the first day, many voters would think they'd beat the rush by showing-up to vote first thing at 7 a.m.
And for those of you reading this far from these shores, yes, even here in sunny South Florida, at this time of the year, it's very dark at 6:45 in the morning.
Of course, most of these voters, unlike most of us who regularly attend civic meetings or City Commission meetings at or around Hallandale Beach City Hall, and thus, who already know how bad things are safety-wise around City Hall and Bluesten Park two blocks away when the sun is NOT out, could't have planned for how very poorly prepared the city was.
I guess it was a good thing, after all, that there were no surprise guests from the Romney-Ryan team showing-up as some had been saying via the grapevine and some emails I received the night before, since even with the TV camera lights, with so many city lights out, it would've been hard to do anything that would've looked good on TV, either LIVE or recorded for airing later in the day.
Yes, I'd gone there early that morning after getting no sleep overnight to lend some encouragement to some friends who are running for office as pro-reform candidates -Keith London for mayor, and Csaba Kulin, Michele Lazarow and Gerald Dean for City Commission- observe a bit and and snap some photos and video of the activities.
But instead, even while doing those things, I walked into what was yet another discouraging reminder of how poorly-run this city has been under Mayor Cooper the past nine years, and how consistently poor performance has no consequences for employees, no matter who they are or how much money they make.
Changing that pernicious culture of entitlement, bad attitudes and sleepwalking performance at HB City Hall, of making sure that Hallandale Beach taxpayers REALLY DO receive a dollar's worth of work and services for a dollar's worth of taxes, and, finally having real consequences for city employees who are NOT performing up to the public's expectations, no matter who they are, is why I'm voting the way I am on Tuesday.
If you live here and really care about what sort of future this city will have, of what kind of quality of life you and your family can enjoy, I strongly suggest you do the same.
Vote London, Kulin, Lazarow & Dean, YES for City Charter Question #5, and NO to all the other HB Charter questions.
It's now five days and counting 'till the day you can finally reclaim your city back from the very people who have taken you and your neighbors for granted, have constantly tried to squelch your rights whenever they could, and who have made an art of wasting your tax dollars in ways that would be laughable if they weren't so painful and expensive.
There are four candidates in this city who have stood-up when it counted -including right now.
You already know their names - I just said them
Not perfect people, of course, but people much like yourself who genuinely care about this city's future, and who fervently believe that this city's residents deserve -at a minimum- to be properly respected once again by a Mayor and City Commission that doesn't continually embarrass them thru their repeated poor judgment and ethical lapses.
Imagine that?
Actually represented by a Mayor and City Commission with some genuine integrity, and represented by people who are properly-prepared for public meetings, and who aren't afraid of the hard work and heavy-lifting that will surely be required to get this city out of its current slide into irrelevancy.
You've said for years that you wanted honest and hard-working people in charge at City Hall who would fight for real reform and financial accountability, and finally clean-up this city's poor image.
Well, now it's up to you to actually show-up and vote for it and the candidates who will make it a reality.
Well, now it's up to you to actually show-up and vote for it and the candidates who will make it a reality.
What sort of city do you want to wake-up to next Wednesday morning?
THAT'S the question you as a voter have to answer positively when you get the chance.
http://kulin2012.com/
