Mark your calendar for June 4th! Latest news re controversial Hallandale Beach CRA: Keith London set to appear at Broward County Commission and urge them to heed the recommendations of the Broward IG's damning report on HB CRA, urge Broward County Auditor to perform audit and get a full-accounting for HB taxpayers of where the $70 million has gone; Need to get FL Joint Legislative Auditing Comm. more involved, per my previous emails to Sen. Jeremy Ring

Received the following message Tuesday afternoon from my friend and former Hallandale Beach City Commissioner Keith London, and post it here today with the sincere hope that many of you who are reading it now will take full-advantage of the information he provides, and start planning on being in Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday June 4th, 13 days from now.

I strongly encourage you to show your support for the things I've been writing about here on the blog for so many years -genuine transparency, meaningful oversight and real accountability in local govt.- and your opposition to the people at HB City Hall, now and in the recent past, who've actively worked to keep the public in the dark, by joining me and others to stand up for clean government at County HQ.

Below Keith's email is an excerpt of the April 23, 2013 email that I sent to Sen. Jeremy Ring of the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, a group of state legislators in Tallahassee that I've long believed needed to get involved, too, and request an audit.




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Here's some more info on the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/cgi-bin/View_Page.pl?Directory=committees/joint/Jcla/&File=index_css.html&Tab=committees

I strongly encourage you to also contact Sen. Jeremy Ring, who's actually on the Committee,  as I did, to let him know how you feel about your CRA dollars being continually squandered for so many years and the people responsible for it STILL being without any sense of remorse.

.

The Senator's email address is "Sen. Jeremy Ring" <ring.jeremy.web@flsenate.gov>

The reference below is to Bill Gjebre's Broward Bulldog article of April 23rd, 2013 titled, 
Broward Inspector General: Hallandale leaders don’t know what they’re talking about

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/04/broward-inspector-general-hallandale-leaders-dont-know-what-theyre-talking-about/

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April 23, 2013

Dear Senator Ring:

Below, just in time for Wednesday's print edition of the Miami Herald, is more proof of the longstanding corruption, crony capitalism and serial half-truths practiced by the powers-that-be at Hallandale Beach City Hall. 

It's just the latest of several shoes to drop, and certainly won't be the last.

For the good of the residents, taxpayers and small business-owners of this beleaguered community that have been lied to constantly and intentionally by Hallandale Beach City Hall, literally, for years, with millions squandered in the process, with almost nothing tangible or of value to show for it, 

I formally request that you and the Joint Legislative Audit Comm. authorize a top-to-bottom audit of the Hallandale Beach CRA as soon as is practicable.

The very people entrusted by this community to perform their duties with respect for our state's laws as well as with financial common sense and diligence, have instead serially abused that faith and their power by engaging in this illegal, despicable and incredibly incompetent behavior, and are the very same ones who have worked hardest to prevent a full-scale audit of the city's CRA from taking place over the past few years, no doubt for fear of what the public would ultimately discover.

Update re Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort; Community Meeting/Q&A at Hollywood City Hall re proposed changes to the project's lease & related documents is Thursday at 6 p.m.; What are Starwood Capital and Lon Tabatchnick/Lojeta up to now?

Received a helpful head's up yesterday from a well-informed and plugged-in reader in next-door Hollywood about a timely update on the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort; with a community meeting/Q&A scheduled for Thursday at 6 pm at Hollywood City Hall regarding the various changes to the project's lease and related documents.

This morning I officially received the news from the City of Hollywood, below:

What are Starwood Capital and Lon Tabatchnick/Lojeta up to now?
Hmm-m...

Seven weeks ago, thanks to The Balance Sheet Blog,  the conscientious “eyes and ears” of Hollywood, we knew the following: http://balancesheetblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/margaritaville-2/

I attended that semi-contentious meeting at Hollywood City Hall (and recorded it) and I think it's fair to say that even among the Margaritaville supporters in the chambers and within the general public as a whole, there is definitely growing resistance to letting this little melodrama play itself out much longer, as was made clear by the not-so-sanguine comments of Comm. Peter Hernandez towards the end of the meeting.

This was not at all helped by what in my opinion appeared to be the general evasiveness of some of the Starwood Capital team members present in their responses, as they seemed more tight-lipped than you would think they'd be at a public meeting involving something that the Hollywood community is so emotionally and financially invested in -and for good reason, too.

That's especially true given the history of this project and the fact that Starwood Capital and their new pal Lon Tabatchnick were asking for something from Hollywood's elected representatives, NOT giving them something to make the medicine go down faster.

Some of the Starwood Capital folks almost seemed genuinely upset that the City Commission wanted more specific answers from them than they were prepared to give, but then I saw this phenomena all the time on Capitol Hill, too, where well-prepped people hit a wall after a while, and became increasingly disconnected to the larger picture.

Specifically, that happened more frequently than you'd imagine it would at Congressional hearings I attended in the 1990's held by what was then called the House Telecomm. & Finance Subcommittee, under then-Chair John Dingell involving the U.S. financial services industry, some of which were both highly-publicized and highly-controversial.

As of today, I don't know with certainty who'll be speaking on Thursday -besides, likely, Hollywood City Manager Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark, whom as regular readers of the blog know, I'm a big fan of- but I genuinely hope that we hear the answers directly from Starwood and not from Lon Tabatchnick's attorney, or from a hired-gun PR whiz.
Guess we'll all find out soon enough...

The community meeting is NOT being called "As The World Turns," but you can be excused for thinking that it ought to be after all this time, with yours truly at 99% of those public meetings from the beginning.

View this in your browser

The City of Hollywood will be holding a Community Meeting to review the proposed changes to the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort Lease and related documents along with a question and answer period on Thursday, May 23rd at 6:00 p.m. at Hollywood City Hall (Room 219).

The Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort is proposed for construction on an approximately 5 acre parcel of city-owned land between Johnson Street and Michigan Street on Hollywood Beach.

The Community Meeting will be followed on Wednesday, May 29th at 5:00 p.m. with a Joint Special City Commission/CRA meeting.  This meeting will also be held at Hollywood City Hall (Room 219). City and CRA Staff will present the proposed changes to the City Commission. Representatives from Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort, LLC, including Starwood Capital, will also be in attendance. 

For questions, please contact the Office of the City Manager at 954.921.3201.

------
Later...

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Developer tweaks Margaritaville contract with Hollywood
By Susannah Bryan, Sun Sentinel
5:38 p.m. EDT, May 21, 2013
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/hollywood/fl-margaritaville-hollywood-update-20130521,0,2186680.story

Election Day tomorrow will give Los Angeles voters either their first woman or first elected Jewish mayor, in Wendy Gruel or Eric Garcetti. Garcetti has the LA Times endorsement, a 7-point lead and counts seriously attacking traffic as one of three most-important tasks at hand; Is there someone like Hallandale Beach's Dr. Deborah Brown in Los Angeles, someone who will walk up to volunteer campaign workers of someone she doesn't support and tell them and anyone around them that their candidate is "the devil"? Like she did in HB last year. If you know, let me know!

KCAL news video: Latest USC Price/LA Times poll shows Eric Garcetti with seven point lead over Wendy Gruel in LA Mayoral race, with 11 percent of voters still undecided.

As Election Day in the U.S.'s second-largest city looms tomorrow, and Los Angeles voters getting either its first woman or first elected Jewish mayor, Eric Garcetti and Wendy Gruel have spent the last days of their hard-fought campaign battling for Black voters and for the favor of fickle Undecideds, who like being fussed over, but who find it hard to commit.
Just like Hollywood's central casting.

It all makes me wonder if any of the middle-class Los Angeles neighborhoods where my SoCal friends live have someone like Hallandale Beach's Dr. Deborah Brown living amongst them.

Someone with strong connection to the City Hall teat and powers-that-be, in her case, to mayor Joy Cooper, and who has no qualms about showing up at polling sites and boldly walking up to volunteer election workers of candidates she doesn't support, and just a few inches from these campaign workers faces, loudly proclaim that their preferred candidate is "the devil." 

You know, like she did repeatedly in Hallandale Beach last year at the city's Ingalls Park precincts on the city's SW side, to volunteer supporters of HB mayoral candidate Keith London?

Yes, that would be the same Dr. Brown I've written about here on the blog before with the curious -and which some in the community would say borders on fictitious- loan and grant applications that give the appearance that her group was/is a non-profit when the IRS says differently.
The very same Dr. Brown whom the Office of the Broward Inspector General wrote about in their damning final report a few short weeks ago.
Allegations she used money her group was given by the city for purposes for which it was NOT intended, like, well, let's just say unethical conduct and let you read it yourself.

But then again, having received money for years from City Hall, including many large grants just under $25,000 from former HB City Manager Mike Good, she already knew from experience that city officials would never check on what she did with CRA funds, that since as the IG report says, they DIDN'T. 
Yes, no double-checking information or accountability from the city before the vote and zero after the money is dispensed.


Excerpt from March 6, 2013 Broward Bulldog
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/03/broward-inspector-general-slams-hallandale-for-gross-mismanagement-of-cra-funds/

The final report will recommend to the county that it look over its legal options “to prevent the ongoing abuse of the CRA process and recover those funds that may have been misspent,” the preliminary report says.

In Hallandale, there was an apparent lack of regular monitoring by the CRA of who got its funds and how that money was spent.

In one case, the report says, a nonprofit grant recipient spent nearly $5,000 in funds to make a payment on her time-share at the Westgate Resort in Orlando, make payroll payments to herself and her brother and on other things.

“We found probable cause to believe that Dr. Deborah Brown, the founder and director of the Palms Center for the Arts (PCA), engaged in criminal misconduct in the handling of a $5,000 award the PCA received from the CRA,” the report says.

Brown could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

The matter has been referred to the sheriff’s office and the Broward State Attorney for prosecution.

The reason I ask is because I've been closely following the back-and-forth of the Garcetti-Gruel campaigns the past few weeks via videos on various LA TV station websites and the LA Times and... well, there's a lot that needs fixing in LA no matter who actually wins, because many voters have just about reached their limit on govt. waste and inefficiency and cronyism.  

I ask because I had breakfast on Sunday morning yesterday with a friend of mine who, like me, had supported Hb City Commissioner Keith London against longtime incumbent mayor Joy Cooper.
But unlike me, he's a longtime HB resident, so someone with even more perspective than my nine years of living here and seeing the chaos and dysfunction up-close.

While I was flitting about with materials and messages from one election site throughout Hallandale Beach to another on Election Day for Keith, and my friend Csaba Kulin and Michele Lazarow, who were running for the City Commission, my Sunday morning tablemate was working the crowds of HB residents arriving to vote at Ingalls Park in southwest HB, just one block south of Hallandale Beach Blvd.

(Yes, as some of you long-time readers of the blog may recall, that also the place where the City of Hallandale Beach used to have its recycling site. The one that had no directional signs on nearby streets, much less, on main drag HBB, letting people know exactly where it was. Now the city foolishly has no central recycling site for residents to use even while much of the city lives in places where recycling something other than newspapers simply doesn't take place, due to the city's apathy, like smaller condos and apts. As usual, the city seems clueless what to do to capture that market, despite how obvious it is. For starters, you make it as easy as possible.)

If any of my friends in LA know who Dr. Brown's counterpart in LA might be, or even have seen media reports about the activities of such a doppelgänger, please drop me a line and share the 411.

View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.

Garcetti: "Enthusiasm" High Day Before Election. NBC4 new video: reporter  Toni Guinyard speaks with mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti on NBC4's "Today in LA" May 20, 2013.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Los Angeles Times

Greuel, Garcetti court black voters on final weekend

By James Rainey and Seema Mehta 

May 19, 2013 8:09 p.m.

Polls show Garcetti ahead but Greuel favored among African Americans. The winner will be either the first woman or the first elected Jewish leader in the mayor's office.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mayor-daily-20130520,0,2746694.story

The LA Times endorsement of Eric Garcetti from February 17th, for the primary, was leagues ahead of the sort of thing you ever read in South Florida newspapers, both in terms of length and in gravitas.

Titled, Eric Garcetti for mayor He's the candidate with the most potential to rise to the occasion and lead Los Angeles out of its current malaise and into a more sustainable and confident future," it concluded with this:

Voters at first embraced Villaraigosa because they saw in him the power to inspire. Garcetti has that too, but in a different, quieter fashion, and he backs it up with experience in City Hall, a share of troublesome mistakes and 12 years of achievement. If he avoids a tendency to be glib when he should motivate, and if he avoids the tendency to allow his finesse to give way to a desire to be all things to all people, he could be just what Los Angeles needs. At this time, out of this field, he's the best choice for mayor.

Now that's how you write and end a persuasive editorial!
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/endorsements/la-ed-end-0217-mayor-20130215,0,7012293.story

KCAL/CBS LA News video, Profile of LA mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti
February 28, 2013 8:16 AM
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/02/28/la-mayoral-election-preview-eric-garcetti/

The above profile includes the following nugget:

But perhaps Garcetti’s most ambitious goal is to tackle the city’s notorious traffic problems.
“We have to reduce our traffic in Los Angeles. And I want to see five different rail finished or well underway by the time I leave office,” he said. “It’s the only way we will be able to get enough people out of cars to be able to really make a dent in the traffic that is choking our lives.”

Tuesday night you might want to be watching here to see LIVE election results
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/live-video/

Heja Sverige! Got up early to watch LIVE worldwide streaming of Sweden's World Hockey Championship celebration in Kungsträdgården in Stockholm via Aftonbladet

* NOW: LIVE worldwide streaming from Stockholm of Sweden's World Hockey Championship celebration in sunny Kungsträdgården via Aftonbladet's great  coverage is at
http://www.aftonbladet.se/sportbladet/hockey/landslag/hockeyvm/article16807248.ab

You can be quite sure that the Miami Herald's online presence and effort won't be one-tenth of this if the Miami Heat win the NBA title in two weeks.

More pithy observations later today on last night's impressive 5-1 win over Switzerland for the World Championship from Globen Arena in Stockholm, the perfect ending, which I listened to via Sveriges Radio. 

*Sunday's Switzerland-Sweden hockey match for the IIHF/World Championship will be televised tonight -Monday- in the U.S. on NBC Sports Network, DirecTV Channel 220 at 10:30 p.m.

Demark's Emmelie De Forest wins 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Mälmo, but Anouk gets 12 points from Hallandale Beach Blog, and around here, that matters more; all blog-related emails from readers today were from readers who LOVE Anouk's song, and who'll now consider purchasing the new CD of the talented Dutch singer they'd never heard of until today -but have since "discovered"; 'Sad Singalong Songs'

eurovision YouTube Channel video: Emmelie de Forest - Only Teardrops (Denmark) - LIVE - 2013 Grand Final, Eurovision Song Contest 2013 Grand Final.  Mälmo, Sweden
Uploaded May 18, 2013. http://youtu.be/p3f9v8ebuD4

Denmark's earnest Emmelie De Forest wins the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Mälmo, but Anouk & The Netherlands gets 12 first-place points from Hallandale Beach Blog, and around here, that's the only vote that really matters.
And yes, we vote early and we vote often.


eurovision YouTube Channel video: Anouk - Birds (The Netherlands) - LIVE - 2013 Grand Final, Eurovision Song Contest 2013 Grand Final.  Mälmo, Sweden

Uploaded May 18, 2013. http://youtu.be/n5iazXvMw5o

I'll have a post in the coming days on the singing hits and misses of the show and an overview of what I thought worked and didn't work production-wise, so this will be my quick recap.

But I did want to mention that I thought that the "Stockholm smorgasbord" skit was the best of the interval bits, with host Petra Mede singing and dancing and acquiting herself quite well and showing why she was the surprise choice to host the show, even if as Karl at the Scandipop blog tweeted Monday, she overdoes the accent when speaking English.

Petra Mede's English accent is just too much. Too much. It's like a parody that doesn't stop. Tone it down love. #Eurovision
— scandipop (@scandipop) May 13, 2013

The skit also had the advantage of not just being funny, but also true.
I hope to be able to find a clip of it and post it here soon so you can all see for yourself.

I watched the show from beginning-to-end, and then the after-show interviews as well, and only had about 3-4 times when the SVT Play feed seemed to stall or there was a momentary blip, and all but one of those came during the judging.

That's always the deadly-dullest part of the show, as viewers are forced to listen to people from 39 countries stall for time with their little amusing anecdotes instead of simply reporting their own countries results via the awarding of 8 points for 3rd place, 10 for second and 12 for first-place.

As it happens, this year, Emmelie De Forest's status as winner was already perfectly obvious when they still had about 4-5 counties to poll, as we could see in the background while host Petra Mede was forced to continue asking a question that was already moot.

Norway's Margaret Berger finished fourth.

All my incoming blog-related emails from readers on Saturday were from people who just LOVE the song, some of whom even wrote that they'll now consider purchasing the new 10-song CD of this wonderfully-talented Dutch singer most said they'd never heard of until today. 

That's the power of blogging.

'Sad Singalong Songs' now available in stores and at iTunes, probably for about 8,99 € or about $11.50 USD.

That's a very good deal, indeed.

I also suggested they tale a close look at the official video for "Birds" as seen below on her VEVO YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/AnoukVEVO

and consider subscribing to it, as I already was.

AnoukVEVO YouTube channel: Anouk - Birds, from her new CD titled 'Sad Singalong Songs'. Uploaded May 15, 2013. http://youtu.be/xPDYbuaXlA8

If yours truly was involved with a major Hollywood studio and I had an upcoming drama project involving someone like Cate Blanchett or Rachel McAdams or a similar genuine acting talent, especially a period piece pre-1960's, I'd figure out some way to get this song in the movie before somebody beat me to the punch.
With Anouk singing, nobody else.

More info, photos and video at http://www.svt.se/melodifestivalen/

Eurovision Song Contest finals are tonight in Mälmo, the Christmas Morning of Europop! Anticipation is in the air and the smart money says that the title will be a battle between Norway's Margaret Berger and Demark's Emmelie De Forest; Anouk's 'Birds' has a powerful ending; #Eurovision2013

SVT video: Norway's representative at Eurovision 2013 is 27-year old Margaret Berger shown singing "I Feed You My Love" during Thursday's Semifinal Heat.
http://www.svt.se/melodifestivalen/norge-i-eurovision-2013-margaret-berger-i-feed-you-my-love

Eurovision Song Contest finals are tonight in Mälmo, the Christmas Morning of Europop! Anticipation is in the air and the smart money says that the title will be a battle between Norway's Margaret Berger and Demark's Emmelie De Forest; Anouk's 'Birds' has a powerful ending;
#Eurovision2013

Margaret will be singing her ballad ‘I Feed You My Love’ while I'm feeding myself some cheddar-flavored popcorn and watching the show LIVE from Sweden around 3 p.m. Miami time on my desktop, via SVT Play, wondering if anyone will pull an upset. http://www.svtplay.se/

Who wants to be a star? (Som vill vara en stjärna?)

We'll know in a few hours.


Video: All the Scandinavian nations are represented in the finals: Iceland, Norway, Senmark, Sweden and Finland. Above, left-to-right: Denmark's Emmelie De Forest, Sweden's Robin Stjernberg and Norway's Margaret Berger.
Article: Vilken fest – Nordiska superfemman i final, Träffa de nordiska artisterna – som alla gör upp om segern i lördagens final av Eurovision Song Contest 2013.

(What a party - Nordic super fifth in final, Meet the Nordic artists - all of which makes up the victory in Saturday's final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2013)

17 May 2013 19:49; Reporter: Mirja Bokholm 

Backstage look at a rehearsal, as it happens, Margaret's.

Margaret Berger gears up for #Eurovision. Watch her rehearsal, a guest performance, and her greeting to Scandipop! scandipop.co.uk/margaret-berge…
— scandipop (@scandipop) May 15, 2013

Outside the arena, first rehearsel. Outfit of the day: #pants #americanapparell #sunglasses #burberry… instagram.com/p/ZGQbs4vGrS/
— Margaret Berger (@MargaretBerger) May 9, 2013

SVT video: Denmark's entry, twenty-year old Emmelie De Forest was the fans' and critics' pre-competition favorite and sings the very catchy tune, "Only Teardrops."


Sweden's entry is 22-year old Robin Stjernberg singing "You," as seen here at the 2013 Melodifestivalen in Stockholm in March.

Not that it seems to have much of a chance to win, but one song I wanted to bring to your attention is a song sung by 38-year old Anouk Teeuwe -a.k.a. Anouk- from The Netherlands, called simply enough, 'Birds.'
The lyrics are okay, though I'm really NOT so crazy about the phrasing, but I just love the music and the orchestration!
The last minute of this song is sweeping and awesome!

THIS is what an adult female singer who knows what she's doing sounds like, not some dopey twenty-something who wants to be a carbon copy of any of a dozen iconic female singers we can all think of and name who are so copied to death, with the same mannerisms -and desire to hit high notes for no reason other than to show off- that it's positively draining the life and originality out of popular music in the U.S. and why so much of today's pop music is SO awful and dull.
And why so many so-called stars of today can't sing LIVE, only lip-sync and we can all name THEM!


MrHaagsesjonny1 YouTube Channel video: Anouk singing 'BIRDS'  (The Netherlands]- From first Semifinal heat of 2013 Eurovision Song Contest, Malmö, Sweden. Uploaded May 14, 2013. http://youtu.be/jAe9b-9xA7c
I selected this particular video since it shows the lyrics. 
Starting at 2:05 thru the end, this song is wow! 

This song makes me think of a really memorable song from a good 1970's film that comes up when a female character is thinking long-and-hard about what she will do to change the course of what's been happening thus far.
That, or a song you'd hear in a Broadway show where you wish the whole play was as good as that one song that you are humming the next day at work

Of course, that's the oldest story on Broadway -a musical with one good song or one good act in search of others!

What do you think of it?

Is it just me or does Anouk's face somewhat resemble actress Peggy Lipton, circa mid-1980's? http://www.spokeo.com/Peggy+Lipton+1/Feb+26+1984+Other+Photos#4887941:28568541

I wish I was smart enough to know how to describe it here on the blog in the precise and cogent musical terms and phrases I need to make myself understood, but the first time I heard the last minute of this song, and every time since, it immediately made me think of parts of the orchestration for the version of Cole Porter's "Night & Day" as played in the fictionalized 1946 film of the same name with Cary Grant playing the life of the Hoosier-born Porter, one of my all-time favorite bio-pics, even with some of the artifice.
That orchestration is like honey to me, so whenever that's playing on TCM, no matter how many dozens of times I've seen it, I can't help myself and watch it again. Always.

I just wish I could explain it!

Last-minute addition at 2:55 p.m.

Scoresheet for tonight's #eurovision show. Thank you @schlagerfiasko. twitter.com/Scanditwitchen…
— Scandinavian Kitchen (@Scanditwitchen) May 18, 2013

-----

@MargaretBerger https://twitter.com/MargaretBerger

In Florida, red-light camera supporters at FDOT HQ tinker with yellow-light timing and make FL roads MORE UNSAFE -but more profitable for greedy cities- while in Chicago, the city's Inspector General has blasted the city's red-light ticket program (designed by Redflex) after an audit, saying that Mayor Rahm Emanuel's "City Hall cannot back up claims that its controversial red-light camera program is designed to make intersections safer"; $100 Million in revenue in FL off of red-light cameras!

City Hall cannot back up claims that its controversial red-light camera program is designed to make intersections safer, according to a watchdog's report released Tuesday.

Now THAT'S how you start a news article about a municipal government intentionally engaging

in fraud to keep propping-up a program largely for revenue!
And it isn't even Hallandale Beach, though it would be equally true if an audit was done here.

Chicago Tribune

Inspector general blasts red light ticket program

By Hal Dardick, Clout Street, 

6:42 p.m. CDT, May 14, 2013 

City Hall cannot back up claims that its controversial red-light camera program is designed to make intersections safer, according to a watchdog's report released Tuesday.

Inspector General Joseph Ferguson said the city cannot provide documents to prove that the cameras went up at intersections with the most side-impact crashes. He also questioned why cameras remain at intersections with no recent history of such crashes, which the $100 ticket-issuing "cops-in-a-box" are designed to prevent.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-inspector-general-blasts-red-light-ticket-program-20130514,0,3892179.story

A predicate for understsnding thsi IG report is my previous post of November 24th, 2012 on the shenanigans taking place in Chicago, titled, :

More Red-Light Camera shenanigans: National Journal's Mike Magner has warning for U.S. drivers about unscrupulous cities' amber-colored money trap: Yellow means Green & $$$ - "Dreaded Yellow Light May Be Trap for Traffic Violations" -on purpose. And Rahm Emanuel's Chicago, with Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., is the most brazen of all

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/more-red-light-camera-shenanigans.html

So when will we see this sort of news headline about Hallandale Beach's red-light camera program that for years has been Exhibit A for South Florida municipal governments greed and willingness to look the other way on public safety, and as was the case here, the Police Dept.s refusal to make records public that would allow citizens to see whether the city was putting them where they'd do the most good or where they'd get the most revenue?

Or a reasonable explanation from FDOT District 4 Secretary James Wolfe about why it took them a year to place a red-light camera warning sign somewhere on west-bound Hallandale Beach Blvd./State Road 858 near NW 9th Terr., that was actually visible to drivers, instead of the one that was hidden between palm trees, as photos I've taken and posted here for years have proven?

Or an explanation from Wolfe about why, YEARS LATER, there are STILL ZERO red-light camera warning signs on HBB/State Road 858 approaching U.S.-1/South Federal Highway in either direction, unlike the approaches to HBB at that same intersection?

Unbeknowst to most of you, some of us have actually been talking seriously about timing certain HB and Hollywood intersections with stop-watches to see if they even meet the federal DOT legal standards.

I'll be filming some of them this weekend if the weather looks okay. 

Why?

Because of what we already know and can see with our own eyes, and great enterprising reporting like this by Noah Pransky of WTSP-TV that proves what we've long thought: $100 Million in revenue in FL off of red-light cameras. 

, 

Shorter yellow lights criticized as trap for drivers: A subtle, but significant tweak to Florida's rules regarding traffic signals has allowed local cities and counties to shorten yellow light intervals, resulting in millions of dollars in additional red light camera fines. Quoted in story: FL state Senator Jeff Brandes, FL state Rep. Ed Hooper, FL state Rep. Mike Fasano and FL state Senator Jack Latvala.
http://www.floridatoday.com/videonetwork/2384133376001/Shorter-yellow-lights-criticized-as-trap-for-drivers

Florida quietly shortens yellow lights, resulting in more red light camera tickets

Noah Pransky, WTSP-TV, Tampa/St. Petersburg

http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20130515/NEWS01/130515020/Florida-quietly-shortens-yellow-lights-resulting-more-red-light-camera-tickets