Another day, another #HollywoodFL taxpayer receives POOR SERVICE at Hollywood City Hall -again! Different problem, different day, different city employee giving unsatisfactory service.

Below, another day, another Hollywood taxpayer receiving POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE at Hollywood City Hall -again! Different problem, different day, and different city employee giving completely unsatisfactory service. C'est la même chose, jour après jour. 😡

Why in the year 2026, can Hollywood Water customers STILL not use the Chrome browser on their computer or mobile phone to allow customers to make online payments? 

Why must the City of Hollywood's bureaucracy be so resolutely backwards and customer unfriendly, and why do the five elected officials who are the City Manager's boss meekly accept this year-after-year rather than prod the City manager and Dept. heads to FINALLY enter the 21st Century -and give employees an attitude adjustment?

This all comes to mind today because I happened to come across the following post at Nextdoor today.
Yes, Nextdoor, the very-far-from-perfect default complaint mechanism for frustrated Hollywood and Broward citizens, residents, taxpayers and stakeholders, since both the city and county are generally SO unresponsive to citizens queries/complaints.
Me, of course, well I prefer the more direct approach: to publicly criticize elected officials and bureaucrats to their face, and afterwards to inform a large audience of well-informed people who commiserate, plus assorted South Florida media personalities.

I've never met Annette, per se, but I HAVE met thousands of people just like her in Hollywood.
And so have you.
Yet what's changing at City Hall?

https://nextdoor.com/p/XtCf8x_7ZPQk?utm_source=share&extras=MzA0MDgzNzQ%3D&utm_campaign=1773249008708&share_action_id=ede3bef5-faf1-4e89-852f-d35f10c2ffd1

For the record, according to Google, who owns it, Google Chrome is THE dominant web browser in the USA, holding over 50% to 60% of the market share across all platforms as of early 2026.

Here's what's on the city's own website as of today:

https://www.hollywoodfl.org/m/faq?cat=34#question-335
What Internet browsers are supported for paying my utility bill online?

Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Firefox are the only browsers fully supported by our utility billing online payment web site. Though several browsers have been able to use our Internet payment system in the past, only these two have ever been fully supported. Use caution when accessing our payment system with other web browsers because certain unsupported browsers have been known to cause problems with payments.

So, a city with a 🤑 budget of millions and millions and millions... can't keep up with the times. 🤔

Yet ANOTHER reason we need my friend Cat Uden on the dais!

By the way, because it's not my intent to write more of these sorts of critical government emails than necessary, going forward, I'm going to try to remember to start posting them on my Facebook page, too, something that I probably should have been doing years ago, and not just to my blog or via a Tweet.

Dave

David Bruce Smith 

My blog, now eponymous, , formerly called Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: 

http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bruce-smith-b945b376/

Instagram: @hbbtruth https://www.instagram.com/hbbtruth/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidSmith0215

Update re the incompatible 1301 S. Ocean Drive project for multimillionaires on Hollywood Beach that The Related Group and Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy have been trying to cram down the community's collective throat for YEARS now

This is what we want to keep, and not let it simply become a memory!
A small reminder of why I and all of my savvy, sensible friends -like Cat Uden- push back so hard versus the serial, nonsensical public policy and misanthropy emanating from #HollywoodFL City Hall the past few years, both the elected Mayor and City Commission, as well as the city's imperious, feckless, and thin-skinned highly-paid bureaucrats. ☀️🌴🏖️😎. 

Hollywood Beach, Florida photo by Catherine "Cat" Uden.

Below, an edited and expanded version of the email that I sent out this morning right around 1:00 am regarding the incompatible 1301 S. Ocean Drive 26-story project for multimillionaires on Hollywood Beach that The Related Group and Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy have been trying to cram down the community's collective throat for YEARS now, despite the vast majority of the community that actually knows the pertinent facts making clear throughout that time that they are firmly AGAINST it. 

Against it today, tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. NO means NO! 

-----

Just a short note before I go to sleep, having received Steve's email/Substack post, at bottom, late tonight and not immediately seeing it in my inbox because of my watching the Winter Olympics on TV: The current Hollywood City Manager, Mr. Keller, is someone whom I have never liked or supported -and who in any case is on his way to retirement in a few weeks.

IMO, he's already checked out and is biding his time. So all that said, he is NOT of a mind to actually do the right thing for the area's citizens re the incompatible 1301 project before he walks out the door, as far as saving THE most natural remaining part of Hollywood Beach for posterity.
Mr. Keller does not care about that part of Hollywood Beach's future, nor does he care about the past memories that so many of us have with it and why, even if we actually preferred using the beach area near what used to be the one-and-only garage off of Johnson Street, we DO want to see it preserved exactly AS IT IS.

So that said, there's no point in any Hollywood resident thinking even for a moment that he's suddenly -magically- going to see the light and change his spots when he's already more than halfway out the door for good right now.

In his letter below to the Broward Planning Council, which I hasten to remind you, also includes Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy, the individual who more than anyone else in Hollywood has tried to cram this Related Group project for multimillionaires -with its $4 million dollar starting prices- down the throats of the vast majority of the community who zealously opposes it, Keller rather conveniently forgets to mention several salient facts, only one of which I will share with you now, owing to the lateness of the hour, 12:55 am. Wednesday morning.

Among the most important of these facts is that Mr. Keller consciously neglects to mention in his recitation of the history of how the City of Hollywood first managed to obtain the 1301 S. Ocean Drive parcel in the first place from The Summit condominium is that there was a precondition/codicil in the contract that the City of Hollywood had to agree to, and then sign an acknowledgement of, in order to receive the parcel years ago.

That precondition was an important one: the property could ONLY be used for community/

recreation/educational purposes. 

Period.

I myself have personally attended several public meetings in Hollywood since this project came forward as a P3 project, replete with all the secrecy of The Manhattan Project -designed to keep residents and stakeholders in the dark- and heard people say they were on the Board of Directors of The Summit condominium -located across the street on the north of 1301- and publicly declare that they have copies of the germane docs that show that the clause was put in the deal to ensure that the City of Hollywood could never go back on the deal in the future. 

Their biggest fear?
A perfectly understandable one given where The Summit is located on State Road A1A and Hollywood Beach, and how the pay-for-play local government hereabouts is conducted: The City would sell the land to a developer that would build something there in the future.
Perhaps something that would tower over The Summit and ruin thereby ruin both its ambiance and the views that at least some residents there enjoy and were paying a premium for, both at the time, and in all of the ensuing years.

IMO, the City of Hollywood is breaking that original deal with The Summit and any halfway honest judge -even in Broward County- viewing the relevant docs would agree and rule that this project simply can not go forward.

And that, of course, would leave Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy with egg on his face, having to explain to the very people at The Related Group and its 1001 minions and the other developer friends of his who dumped close to $100k into his 2024 re-election campaign coffers in its closing weeks, why HE could not get it across the finish line.

But of course this is only one of the many things that is both completely unethical and wrong with the deal. My blog is full of fact and photo-filled posts making those points in ways that are easily understandable in making the case AGAINST it

Letter from Hollywood City Manager Sides with Private Developers on 1301 Project Land Use Designation.
Broward Planning Council Meeting Set for Feb. 26, at 10 am, Room 422, Broward County Government Center; Follow Up Article Coming
Steven Paul Schneider
February 17, 2026
Letter from Hollywood City Manager Sides with…
https://stevenpaulschneider.substack.com/p/letter-from-hollywood-city-manager/comments

See also the anti-1301 Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100080492761252 and Cat's campaign Instagram page at 

https://www.instagram.com/catudenforhollywood/

Dave

David Bruce Smith  

My blog, now eponymous, formerly called Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: 

http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bruce-smith-b945b376/

Instagram: @hbbtruth https://www.instagram.com/hbbtruth/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidSmith0215