Showing posts with label Broward Bulldog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Broward Bulldog. Show all posts

Friday, November 29, 2013

Sandbagged! Independent audit of Hallandale Beach CRA was in offing by Florida JLAC, but Hallandale Beach's beleaguered citizens/taxpayers get stabbed in the back by Eleanor Sobel, Oscar Braynon II, Joe Gibbons, Shevrin Jones and Barbara Sharief. Why? To help HB mayor Joy Cooper preserve her facade that everything here is okay; @mayorcooper

Hallandale Beach Municipal Complex, November 19, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved 

Sandbagged! Independent audit of Hallandale Beach CRA was in offing by Florida JLAC, but Hallandale Beach's beleaguered citizens/taxpayers get stabbed in the back by FL state Senators Eleanor Sobel & Oscar Braynon III, FL state Reps. Joe Gibbons & Shevrin Jones and Broward County Comm. Barbara Sharief.

Why? To help Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper preserve her facade that everything her is okay, @MayorCooper. 
You know, the mayor with the twitter account that is nothing but her, her, her, her -plus mindless govt. press releases, including many that have nothing to do with this city or county or state. 
See for yourself: https://twitter.com/MayorCooper 

They put a higher price on protecting Mayor Joy Cooper's political flank than actually helping the community -their constituents- find out where and how the $80 Million REALLY was spent. 
The very Hallandale Beach CRA that Broward IG labeled guilty of "gross mismanagement" with Joy Cooper in charge. 

Thanks to the five of these useless elected officials, we may never know. 

But we WON'T FORGET their betrayal of Hallandale Beach's residents, taxpayers and small business owners when next elections roll around next august and November.
No, we definitely WON'T forget and we will make sure that the public and the press forget, either. 
And no, this Thanksgiving weekend, we are NOT thankful for these turkeys.

More below the articles. 



Two senators short-circuit Legislature’s plan to audit troubled Hallandale Beach CRA 
By Willliam Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 
November 26, 2013 AT 6:13 AM
A Florida Legislature’s joint auditing committee is dropping its inquiry of Hallandale Beach’s questionable use of local redevelopment funds at the urging of two area state senators, one a long-time acquaintance of Mayor Joy Cooper.
Democratic Senators Eleanor Sobel and Oscar Braynon II, representing portions of Hallandale Beach, could not be reached for comment, despite repeated calls, to elaborate on a letter they signed recommending against a state audit or any action related to the controversial city spending of Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) funds.
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/11/two-senators-short-circuit-legislatures-plan-to-audit-troubled-hallandale-beach-cra/

As for the below, who even knew that turkeys like our mayor could dream, much less, of ghosts? 

South Florida Sun-Sentinel  
"Ghost' of Keith London haunts Mayor Cooper  
By Brittany Wallman  
November 26, 2013 2:14 PM EST
sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/broward-politics-blog/sfl-commissioner-lazarow-mayor-cooper-mix-it-up-20131126,0,7873057.story 

Not mentioned above but equally as guilty of denying citizens the honesty they deserve is Broward County District 8 Commissioner Barbara Sharief.

Map showing how HB is divided at FEC Railroad tracks, with everything west of Dixie Highway in Sharief's District 8 and everything east in Sue Gunzburger's District 6.
http://bcgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/basicviewer/index.html?appid=c7f7450dc0b147d4b4b9526d9b1f93e7

WHERE exactly has she been the past two years on this very important issue to all of us?
A woman who is supposed to represent Hallandale Beach's residents' best interests but who has done just about everything but the past three years?

The very woman whose Broward County Comm. district was the HOME of the majority of the corruption, incompetency and unethical behavior directly tied to the HB CRA, where there was no accountability at HB City Hall under Mayor Cooper and her high-paid minions? 

Where was Comm. Barbara Sharief resolve to do the right thing?
Missing-in-action, just like Joe Gibbons, Shevrin Jones, Sobel & Braynon.

Barbara Sharief was and continues to be in hiding on this issue, refusing to respond to public calls for her to say or do something -anything.

I know this from first-hand experience because she and her staff have ignored my emails about this issue for the past two years, though I actually know much more about the HB CRA situation than she or her staff did -or Gibbons or Jones or Braynon- and knew things that as many of you regular readers know, that even the Broward IG hadn't yet learned at the time.

A continued willingness to suspend reality and ignore inconvenient and troubling facts and the people who will tell you the truth is NOT a good sign in an elected official, and is actually proof that Barbara Sharief is NOT a genuine leader by any stretch of the imagination as most of us know the word.

Well, when you know that Sharief didn't even show-up at the June 4th County Commission meeting where the issue was brought-up, you could see that she wanted no part of being on the right side of financial accountability and ethics.
Months later, given her own financial and ethical situation, we see the double irony of that and wonder if her absence was even more revealing than we first thought.

Trust me, those inconvenient facts WON'T be forgotten as she runs for re-election next year, having to explain to the news media and area residents and voters why she so completely and willingly abandoned her own constituents, just like the power-craven and egotistical Sobel, the useless and high-living Jones, and the completely-invisible-in-HB Braynon, whom nobody has ever seen or knows from Adam.

As for Joe Gibbons, District 100 state rep. and former HB city commissioner of no particular distinction, who actually has the gall to run to replace term-limited Sue Gunzburger on the Broward County Commission for District 8 despite his sub-par performance and the fact that his wife and kids have NEVER lived here since he was married, the truth about Gibbons with respect to many ethical and policy issues has been known for years, despite the media's chronic inattention to detail.

Gibbons is only fooling himself if he thinks his recent stunt of showing-up at a HB City Comm. meeting for a few minutes when some kids are making a presentation -with their parents in the Chambers- and then splitting after they left, impressed anyone.
Gibbons can't change his stripes.
(And Gibbons is now so typecast by his abysmal track record in office that even the name, position and caliber of his supporters -and what they represent- are actually a big plus, almost a paid commercial for his opponent, former Hollywood City Comm. Beam Furr, who didn't run for re-election last year.)

Gibbons is both ineffectual and a carpetbagger, and a longtime apologist for the corrupt and incompetent status quo at HB City Hall that so thoroughly mis-served the public.
The very place he did nothing positive to change while he was there.
He is a knee-jerk in every respect that matters.

In case you those earlier recent blog posts of mine laying out the case or the predicate for better understanding these four characters ignoring what was happening with the millions miss-spent at the HB CRA, here they are for you in chron order:

Nov. 2:  http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/latest-news-re-hallandale-beach-cra.html

On Sunday at some point, I'll have much more here on the blog to say in detail about Comm. Barbara Sharief's own failure to lead on an issue of great and urgent concern to this 

often-neglected community, and look out for the best-interests of HB residents -me and my neighbors.

But I will tell you one thing right now and that is that based on my conversations with people around town and the county, I believe Sharief has not only long since lost the benefit of the doubt of any concerned and well-informed HB or Broward citizen who cares about the true facts and wants a better-run county, she has no chance of ever recapturing it.
That's gone for good.

I'll also have some news and facts about her that may surprise many of you.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Don't say it with flowers, say it with subpoenas! Subpoenas finally drop on the heads of Hallandale Beach officials, including Mayor Joy Cooper, and now the Joint Legislative Auditing Comm. is showing genuine interest in getting the WHOLE TRUTH from the HB CRA about what happened to all that money. Yes, the scandal in Broward County involving MILLION$ that the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and their Dana Banker & Rosemary Goudreau have been ignoring for months. Future owners of the Sun-Sentinel, please take note!

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

Local10 video: Hallandale Beach CRA accused of misspending $2.1 Million
Broward County Commission takes no action on audit request.
Reported by investigative reporter Bob Norman
Published On: Jun 04 2013 07:11:25 PM EDT, Updated On: Jun 05 2013 11:01:19 AM EDT

http://www.local10.com/news/cra-accused-of-misspending-21m/-/1717324/20425002/-/3mpae4z/-/index.html
My comments after the article. 
-----
Broward Bulldog
Legislature asks Hallandale for answers about CRA spending; Subpoenas land at city hall
By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org  
June 10, 2013 AT 6:15 AM
The Florida Legislature’s joint auditing committee is wading into Hallandale Beach’s questionable spending of local redevelopment funds, demanding that city officials explain the use and handling of those funds.
Legislators who head the committee also are urging the city commission to ask Florida’s Attorney General for a new opinion to clarify how Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) funds can be spent. City leaders have challenged a previous opinion.
Read the rest of the article at:

While all you regular readers of the blog know by now that I've written FL state Senator Jeremy Ring about the HB CRA scandal before, perhaps some of those fact-filled emails I also sent to the fair-minded state legislators on the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee and certain members of the FL House and Senate leadership who still genuinely care about public accountability and the public good, emails that I've never mentioned before, have finally worn away their natural skepticism that things here in Hallandale Beach at the CRA could really be as bad as we all knew they were in fact.
Nothing like having the facts on your side in an argument, and we've all collectively had facts by the mountain-lode from the very beginning.

HB City Hall, on the other hand, had it much easier.
There, highly-paid city employees only had their never-ending desire to keep Mayor Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew happy, and spending money where she wanted it spent, without having those pesky problems of caring what actually happened to the money or even whether it was spent the way it was supposed to, albeit, for impermissible purposes.
Finally, a few rays of sunshine...

This afternoon, former Hallandale Beach Commissioner Keith London, a friend, sent the following comments out over the transom, and I thought they were worth your attention.


 

Everyone,

Last week Commissioner Michele Lazarow and I spoke to the Broward County Commission regarding the “Gross Mismanagement” by Hallandale Beach of its CRA.

On Friday I received a copy of the letter from the Florida Legislature Joint Legislative Committee demanding specific action(s) by the city of Hallandale as outlined in the Broward Office of the Inspector General official report title “Gross Mismanagement”.

As a “concerned citizen” I also spoke with the Florida Auditor General’s office and requested they perform a complete audit of Hallandale CRA under Florida Statue Chapter 163. I was pleased to see their office was copied by the Florida Legislature Joint Legislative Committee letter on Friday.

In addition, the State Attorney’s office has issued subpoenas to the city of and at least one elected Hallandale Commission member seeking documentation into the “criminal investigation” of Deborah Brown.

The above information is vastly different than the story Cooper portrays in her writings in the Sun Times last Thursday (the newspaper which receives $50,000 annually from the City and a CRA grant of $25,000) – click here.

The State Attorney’s Office, Florida Legislature Joint Legislative Committee, Florida Auditor General, Broward Office of the Inspector General, and The Broward County Commission will surely enjoy reading the rants of denial in her article while the investigation continues. 
-----
* I'll have a video posted here very soon of the comments that Keith and HB City Commissioner Michele Lazarow made last Tuesday before the Broward County Commission so that you can hear them for yourself.

Officially, those photos that I sent some of you by email last Tuesday afternoon of Keith London and Mayor Joy Cooper at the Broward County Comm. meeting ran at the Broward Politics blog, so if you were to go to the Sun-Sentinel's website, they don't appear in search results.

Here's the link to the reader comments to the strange S-S photo gallery of Tuesday, the one that incorrectly implied that Mayor Cooper would speak, which if the Sun-Sentinel's Tonya Alanez had simply read the agenda docs, she'd know that was NOT going to happen.
Not that they went back to correct that, after-the-fact, as would happen at most newspapers!

And where's any mention of what was actually said about the HB CRA at that meeting, either in the morning or later in the afternoon on Tuesday?
There is NONE.

If you want more proof of the Sun-Sentinel's obliviousness to this story, consider this.
If you do a search on the S-S website itself, there's nothing on their website about the HB CRA scandal or what Keith London or Comm. Michele Lazarow have said about it, whether last Tuesday or in the past few months, even though it's clearly news.
0 results for ‘"Hallandale Beach CRA"’. Showing 0 results for"Hallandale Beach CRA".
Sort by: Relevance | Date
No Results Found
So, obviously, there's also no high-minded editorials from them about the HB CRA scandals and HB City Hall's longstanding lack of ethics.
LOL!

In fact, what Michele actually says or does or thinks about any issue of any kind at HB City Hall has never caught the attention of the S-S since her election in November.
Nothing about a single issue in 7 months according to their own records!

Yes, despite everything that has happened here over those same seven months.

Your first reaction upon hearing this likely to shake your head and say 
"How in the year 2013 can that be true?"
There's your local news coverage, Sun-Sentinel style.

Some well-informed people around Broward have been suggesting something to me for many months and now I'm officially going to share this bit of groupthink with you, though that was before I started hearing last week that subpoenas were on the way:

They believe that Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo has thrown in the towel on HB and is no longer going to get exorcised by what  happens here, since he believes that the Broward State Attorney's Office doesn't want to do their job and neither does FL Attorney General Pam Bondi's office, either.

They further believe that Mayo sees writing a column about HB, like he once did fairly frequently for a few years, as a losing proposition, and that he no longer thinks it's worth the time or effort because nobody cares what happens here.
In that respect, he'd just be like News4, NBC6 and 7News, who have been invisible on this story.

* Attention future owners of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
Here's your snapshot of newsroom editor Dana Banker's commitment to fair-minded local news coverage as viewed thru the prism of someone who lives in my city and who is well-informed -nothing.
And let's not forget Rosemary Goudreau, the editorial page editor under whose leadership nothing about the HB CRA scandal has ever appeared in print.
You know, in case facts matter.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Follow-up email to FL Gov. Rick Scott about MILLION$ more down the drain at Hallandale Beach City Hall. MORE of what we already knew and always suspected and now it's Q.E.D. yet again -Bill Gjebre in Broward Bulldog: "Hallandale city managers erased millions in code violation fines with little oversight"; @MayorCooper, @SandersHB, @AlexLewy

Palm tree obstructing the sun's powerful rays  at Hallandale Beach City Hall. And if there's any City Hall in Florida that needs more sunshine and scrutiny, it's Hallandale Beach's. May 28, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

Below is a a copy of my Tuesday morning email to Florida Gov. Rick Scott, with copies to various Florida Legislative leaders and other public officials and interested parties throughout the Sunshine State, about the latest details to come out on what's been happening in one of the most unethical, incompetent and anti-taxpayer outposts in Florida, Hallandale Beach.
There's even less financial accountability and management oversight than we thought, and we didn't think there was very much to begin with.
And the shoes just keep dropping...

For some of you newcomers to this blog, in case you forgot whom I'm referring to in paragraph six regarding the very curious pensions changes that were made by someone at HB City Hall that netted million$ more to certain high-ranking people, by someone that HB City Hall won't name, it's former City Managers Mark A. Antonio, Mike Good, R.J. Intindola and former City Attorney David Jove

They're among the handful of people that this city's most well-informed and active citizens personally blame for the tens of millions of dollars that have been wasted and squandered the past 5-6 years, and whom logic and reason dictate should receive the highest degree of scrutiny by by public officials and law enforcement personnel in Tallahassee and at the Broward County Courthouse.
I've deleted the email addresses for obvious reasons.

-------------



To: Gov. Rick Scott
cc: FL Attorney General Pam Bondi, FL CFO Jeff Atwater, Sen. Don Gaetz, Sen. Jack Latvala, Sen. John Thrasher, Sen. Joseph Abruzzo, Dominic Calabro of Florida Tax Watch, Broward Inspector General John W. Scott and Tim Donnelly of the Broward State Attorney's Office

April 3, 2013

Dear Governor Scott:

Tens of million$ of tax dollar$ squandered here, tens of million$ of CRA dollar$ squandered there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Sadly in the case of the city I've lived in the past nine years, Hallandale Beach, citizens have seen tens of millions of dollars continually squandered with no genuine accountability or oversight by either elected officials, or, highly-paid but incompetent city officials, despite all of them having a moral and fiduciary responsibility.

And now we saw yesterday, via one of the articles below, that our well-founded suspicions have been confirmed as fact with even millions of dollars having been given away as party favors by the current City Manager and her two predecessors in forgiven fines.

I'm sure you won't be too surprised to learn that the current City Manger doesn't want to end her power to play Santa Claus, saying that actually having the elected City Commission make the decisions about waiving fines over $50,000 would slow down the bureaucracy!

Governor Scott, it's this city's longstanding incompetent bureaucracy, fiefdoms and mis-management that's responsible for literally ruining this city's current morale and future Quality of Life in the first place, by saddling current and future taxpayers with exorbitant bills for services that are NOT rendered: clean competent government.   

And even now, three former City Managers, a former City Attorney, and a couple of dozen highly-paid former and current city employees are now laughing all the way to the bank, courtesy of beleaguered Hallandale Beach taxpayers, thanks to a very mysterious decision made over ten years ago regarding pension payments that were changed to exclusively benefit about 40 highly-paid city employees.

And almost as if they needed to square the circle on their own jaw-dropping incompetency, many months after it was first requested, the City of Hallandale Beach STILL can't produce contemporaneous documents that say who the individual was at HB City Hall who decided, without City Commission approvalthat these particular city employees would get their prior years of service paid-out to them at a MUCH-HIGHER rate than they actually earned at the time.

In fact, HB City Hall STILL claims it doesn't have the full list of these former and current city employees who have benefited enormously from this mysterious decision by this mysterious official that will cost HB taxpayers millions and millions more than it should.
What does all of this tell you about the scope of HB City Hall's lack of accountability to residents, taxpayers and small business owners?
And the crazy part is that we still have in place many of the very same individuals legally and morally entrusted to do right by the citizens of this city, but who were and are so irresponsible about fulfilling their responsibilities that they didn't ever bother to verify any information submitted to the city for city/CRA grants or loans, before or after the funds were handed over to so-called non-profits, at least some of whom were actually NOT legally considered non-profits at the time by the IRS.

Not that this salient legal distinction prevented City Hall from giving the money away to their cronies anyway, because as the city's very own documents have shown, there was never any appropriate follow-up to ensure that the funds were being spent properly or even as they were intended.
Really.

Do you see the unmistakable fact pattern that's present here, year-after-year?
Governor Scott, THAT self-evident fact pattern of illegality, incompetency and gross mis-management is our daily reality in this city.
Where's the cavalry?

Broward Bulldog
Hallandale city managers erased millions in code violation fines with little oversight
By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 
APRIL 2, 2013 AT 6:23 AM

Broward Bulldog
Split Hallandale commission votes to give Miami developer Tibor Hollo big break on fines
By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 
MARCH 22, 2013 AT 6:13 AM

And just a reminder, sir, it's all true and verifiable!

Sincerely,
DBS

-----
Tuesday's email was the logical follow-up to my March 14th, 2013 email to Governor Scott about longstanding unethical behavior and corruption at Hallandale Beach City Hall,

My open letter to Florida Governor Rick Scott about the longstanding corruption and incompetency at Hallandale Beach City Hall and environs re the HB CRA: More shocking proof of what I've written you several times in the past: Serial malfeasance and millions of dollars squandered by public officials as State laws/ethics were ignored, and with little genuine public oversight or transparency. Broward Inspector General Scott assails Hallandale Beach for past and continuing "gross mismanagement" -possible "criminal misconduct"; @MayorCooper, @SandersHB, @AlexLewy

http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/my-open-letter-to-florida-governor-rick.html

It started out like this... and got even better...


FYI: Some follow-up to my March 7th email to you about longstanding culture 
of corruption and incompetency at Hallandale Beach City Hall: 


Broward Bulldog
Hallandale mayor, ex-city managers defend millions in suspect spending to county agents
By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 
MARCH 14, 2013 AT 6:10 AM

And the pull-quote?
Probably this:
City records regarding payments to non-profit groups were so lacking, the report said, that investigators were “unable to reliably assess the amount of possible losses suffered by the CRA as a result of ‘misapplication of funding by non-profits.”

Florida law does not permit the CRA to fund charitable donations to non-profits, the report said.

Monday, August 6, 2012

When it comes to ethics problems in Joy Cooper's Hallandale Beach, and elected officials' attempts to evade responsibility, there's no sense like common sense, and CityEthics blogger Robert Wechsler has plenty: "An Interesting Agency Independence from Ethics Enforcement Issue in Broward County"

When it comes to ethics problems in Joy Cooper's Hallandale Beach, and elected officials' attempts to evade responsibility, there's no sense like common sense, and CityEthics blogger Robert Wechsler has plenty: "An Interesting Agency Independence from Ethics Enforcement Issue in Broward County"



I forwarded this to about 15O people around South Florida less than thirty minutes after it was first posted online a month ago, on July 9th, and thought that I'd gone ahead and linked and re-posted my email here, but over the weekend, I saw that I'd left it in Draft all this time, never having actually hit "Post." Oops...

Important reminder: more than three years after the city's purchase of property owned by him and his wife, Jessica, Comm. Anthony A. Sanders still refuses to publicly answer residents questions or explain what really happened and why the city was so eager to overpay for that property when they had no written plan in place for its future use.
Sanders clearly believes he can bluff his way thru to re-election in November.

Better late than never -and still 100% correct in his reasoning...

CityEthics.org
Robert Wechsler's blog
An Interesting Agency Independence from Ethics Enforcement Issue in Broward County
Mon, 2012-07-09 09:31


I've written about the issue of ethics commission jurisdiction over independent agencies and authorities, which arose in recent years in such places as Jacksonville, Louisville, and Palm Beach and Broward counties in Florida. The issue has arisen again in Broward County, in a different and interesting context.

Read the rest of the blog post at:

Monday, July 9, 2012

Csaba Kulin's reasonable questions about the Broward IG's inspection, Comm. Sanders' continued stonewalling, Comm. Julian's laughable threats, and their poison-pen cheerleader, Andrew Markoff, who continues to show his naïveté with every comment he makes. They desperately need apologists, and does he ever fill the bill!


501 N.W. 1ST Avenue, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009-3301
Why was it so urgent for the City of Hallandale Beach to quickly purchase this property from Anthony and Jessica Sanders if there was no actual plan in place for what the city would do with it afterwards? A property the city now receives $1 a year in rent? (Yes, one dollar.) How was it that Josh Brown was able to use the address of a non-profit in a city-owned building as his election campaign address? Who let that happen? 
Just some of the questions Hallandale Beach citizens continue to wonder about and want answers to as the Sanders continue to stonewall the Broward Inspector General -and the HB citizens that Comm. Anthony A. Sanders is SWORN to serve. 
Csaba Kulin's reasonable questions about the Broward IG's inspection, Comm. Sanders' continued stonewalling, Comm. Julian's laughable threats, and their poison-pen cheerleader, Andrew Markoff, who continues to show his naïveté with every comment he makes. They desperately need apologists, and does he ever fill the bill!

For the record, I should note that the reasonable comments and questions below from my friend, fellow Hallandale Beach and Broward civic activist and Hallandale Beach City Commission candidate Csaba Kulin, were first posted online at the Broward Bulldog in response to Bill Gjebre's July 5th, 2012 article, Broward IG questions former Hallandale commissioner about CRA deals, newspaper loan
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/07/broward-ig-agents-quiz-former-hallandale-commissioner-about-cra-deals-newspaper-loan/


That is to say, before several of Andrew Markoff's subsequent slimy, factually-inaccurate and deliberate race-baiting comments directed towards Csaba and other pro-reform residents of Hallandale Beach who commented there.
People, who, like me and many of you reading this, want genuine transparency with real financial accountability at City Hall.

That is to say, unlike Markoff himself, who's not only happy to continue to sing the praises of the powers-that-be, but also continue kissing the butts of the folks in power now, like Mayor Cooper and Comm. Sanders.


In fact, he's so besotted with some people in town that he's quite literally asking us to completely disregard all the years we've had of seeing Bill Julian consistently make a fool of himself in office, and would somehow have us believe that Julian is now an acceptable candidate for elective office, despite what we have witnessed with our own eyes.


Julianthe antithesis of what any responsible community would want due to his lack of scruples, bad judgment and years on the dais of sheer Elmer Fudd-like befuddlement.

(Julian's years of parking his car illegally in Handicapped and/or Emergency parking spaces where everyone could see it, all over town, doubtless requires a solid few months with a very experienced psychiatrist. But then how would he explain away his own despicable behavior for years? His coping mechanism seems to be pretending that you either don't know or don't see him doing it. Hmm-m... Yes, that's normal!)

Given what they have had to put up with for far too many years, Hallandale Beach citizens have had absolutely enough nonsense and lack of candor from this city's elected officials and highly-paid city employees to last them a lifetime, and they are ready to make that fact known come election day.


While it may be news to the likes of a Markoff or the Miami Herald 's Editorial Board, in the year 2012, Hallandale Beach residents DON'T have to turn a blind-eye to the continuing
incompetence and financial melodrama of and complete lack of candor from perpetually-befuddled Comm. Anthony A. Sanders, just because he is African-American.
No, we don't have to employ double-standards like what Markoff would prefer, we merely need to be consistent about what is or is not acceptable behavior and performance in office.

Which is why we're going to continue to treat Sanders like every other two-bit pol who's quickly found himself in over his head, and who can't justify with a straight face, why anyone not related to him -or named Joy Cooper- would want him on the scene one day longer than necessary, given his sorry and undistinguished track record.


Nobody EVER leaves a HB City Commission meeting muttering to themselves afterward, "I didn't really understand the issue until after Comm. Sanders spoke and explained it."


A clear majority of this city, the very people that Sanders has continually dis-respected for 46 months with his smug attitude and complete indifference to them, have had enough of his behavior and conduct and his unwillingness to tell the truth in a public setting without city employees whispering sweet nothings into his ear.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/ig-investigation-finally-plus-more.html

Like most people with common sense, a majority of HB residents rightly recognize a duck (or rubber stamp) when they see one -or two or three or four- sitting on a long dais at City Hall.
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...duck!: Ross, Julian, Sanders, Lewy.
They are exactly what they look like, though the local press corps seem to go out of their way not to mention it, which is why we do.


What this community most certainly doesn't need any more of is Markoff's smug elitist liberal sensibilities and double-standards masquerading as fairness.
Especially since Comm. Sanders has had plenty of time to rise or fall based on his own words and actions, and he has been found wanting -in the extreme.


The simple truth is that people like Markoff must attack and besmirch folks like Csaba, Mike Butler, Keith London and myself and others who want a degree of normalcy for this city, and must make up stories and anecdotes about their pique because what are their alternatives, to actually talk about what's happened here with candor?
No. that's the last thing they want - an accurate accounting.

Nope, folks who can't accept that they're on the losing side of history, and defending the indefensible to boot, do NOT want to talk about reality with someone who really knows the facts.


He's free to defend the city's status quo powers-that-be that have created a reality for residents and taxpayers that is so unappealing and unremarkable, since that's his choice, but then choice is something that he would deny others, since if there's nothing else that you should have picked-up on about this Markoff character it's that this arrogant, elitist and self-appointed city Political Commissar, has never learned that no matter what your politics are, you never win by feeling that its your job to hector other people with lives of their own and telling them what THEY ought to be doing in the community.
As if it was up to HIM.


And yet in far too many of his online screeds, somewhere in the text, even when it has nothing to do with anything, Markoff has been ballsy and arrogant enough to take some people to task for NOT doing what he thinks THEY ought to be doing, as if it was up to him to decide, not them.
Can you imagine?


Other than bashing Comm. Keith London, who, like me, tried for a while, perhaps too long, to be friendly and civil to him and educate him a bit about local govt. and politics in Boward, there's nobody that Markoff enjoys bashing online at various places in his simultaneously creepy and patronizing fashion more than yours truly, even though though the truth is that I ought to spend less time on this blog ruminating about this city's present and future. than I do.


But despite what I think I ought to be doing, Markoff he is forever expending time and energy writing a half-dozen or more paragraphs about me and what I ought to be doing, and forever writing snide personal remarks apropos of nothing other than his odd fixation, which, by the way, for the record, is NOT at all flattering.
Trust me, online stalkers aren't funny and I didn't say creepy by accident.

At this point, Markoff's only real value is entirely comic -watching him chase his Tall Tales, while avoiding the truth that threatens to undermine the Alternative Universe he has carefully constructed in his own mind.

So, that said, more than usual, consider the source when you read Markoff's weird, inaccurate and off-putting online comments anywhere, esp. as it relates to me or anyone I know, like Csaba below, who has earned this community's trust and respect the old-fashioned way -from talking-the-talk and walking-the-walk.


His honesty, insight, consistent integrity and tireless work-ethic are exactly what we need on the HB City Commission to clean up the mess we've got now and get this city moving forward -finally!

Above, Hallandale Beach City Hall Complex at night, photo of August 7, 2011 by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved
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Well there certainly hasn't been a lack of attention paid to what is being written and said here about the current Broward IG investigation of Hallandale Beach.  
It's a shame that so much of what is being written here shows a lack of knowledge of the facts. Where to start?

Andrew Markoff, what is it that you don't quite understand about "No plan"?
Former City Manager Mike Good had no written or approved plan for the purchases of land and homes in Northwest HB. 
None.

If there was a plan, regardless of who devised it, that actually existed, we'd all know about it because there would have been meetings or workshops when it came up.
If there was a plan, Mayor Cooper and Bill Julian would've been taking credit for it for years, and many people in this town whom you are constantly denigrating but whon are performing a real service, as well as myself, would have filed public records requests at City Hall to either see it, or get copies of it to see what it actually says and try to make sense of it. 
And maybe even some TV or newspaper reporters would do so as well.

But nobody has done any of those things over the years for the simple reason that there is NO PLAN.
It's the worst sort of helter-skelter, with no logical ultimate purpose that anyone at City Hall or anywhere else can explain with a straight face.
That's the whole problem!

There was no written policy, there was no oversight and accountability, just reckless spending by the City Commission because they decided they wanted to buy something.

This is why your strange constant defense of the urgent purchase of Comm. Sanders property makes no sense to anyone who was paying attention to things in 2008.
Since there was no plan to use that land for some larger purpose that the commission was in favor of, such as assembling smaller parcels together to either build something themselves for the community, or even to assemble the parcels for the purpose of selling it in total to some company or developer to make it possible for them to construct something that was needed or wanted, with the city banking that money, there was no logical reason to rush the purchase, much less, make the purchase.
No reason at all.

All these years later, the city taxpayers gets a dollar or so a year in rent for that property from a non-profit that has also received lots of money from the city.
So where's the rationale, why was it purchased when it had no purpose, and why doesn't the city sell it to someone who will build something there that will create jobs and pay taxes?

Also, why is it that in all the places you leave your comments, you have refused to acknowledge your own connection to one of the groups that is under investigation by the IG, the Palm Community Action Coalition? 
What exactly is it that do you do for them, and what is their actual purpose, since the documents on the city website are very vague.

I would love to see a public list of members of the Board for this group, that includes its boss, Jessica Sanders, so if I see one of them around town I could ask what they actually do for the money, and why it's such a big secret?
Also, why is it that this group, of all the so-called non-profit groups in town, the newest one, the one with the commissioner's wife in charge, is the only one in the city that gets office space and use of city personnel and resources at the Hepburn Center? 
Why? 

Now onto Bill Julian, who was so quick to attack me for making the following reasonable comments in a previous Bulldog article, happy to intentionally mischaracterize what was actually said between us at City Hall following a meeting, in order to make himself look good here.

The Broward County Inspector General should move as soon as possible to either indict or clear those people that proposed or voted for these giveaways. Mayor Cooper, Commissioner Sanders and former Vice Mayor Julian are on the November ballot and they MAY be a target of the investigation.

Julian then says: Casba, I have asked you if you would run your campaign as a gentleman, and it looks like you will not, as expected. Since you have no records of any service in Hallandale , I guess sending out e-mails is your plan to be a commissioner. The voters are much smarter than you would believe, and they will know the truth, about you soon enough.I have a ten year record of service to the people of Hallandale, and that is known to all residents as I have lived here for over 57 years.

I will be calling the IG. and volunteer to answer any questions they might have.

Well, Mr. Julian finally wants the same thing I was asking for since this investigation was made public -clarity and honest answers from people who know them. 
He now says he wants his name cleared ASAP. 
His attempts to turn my comments back on me have only served to show who's really going to “campaign as a gentleman.”
He can't even tell the truth when there's nothing to gain from lying.

While it's a good thing he volunteered to talk to the IG, the truth is that since he's running for office, he didn't really have much choice, did he? 
In a word, no.
Now, everyone else at City Hall should follow Julian’s example and talk to the IG and completely disregard Markoff's advice, apparently based on watching so much TV, but ignoring reality and appearances.

I for one am looking forward to Comm. Sanders and his wife finally telling everyone their side of the story, but it's not unreasonable to ask why such a simple thing has taken  almost four years? Especially if you did nothing wrong.

More than anything it shows the complete lack of candor and leveling with taxpayers that Comm. Sanders has been known for ever since the mayor put him on the commission in 2008 with Julian's help, since he repeatedly refused to meet with residents of NE before the vote on the Diplomat project.
I guess he couldn't be bothered.

In my 30 years of working for the Cleveland Archdiocese, my boss, the Bishop, would never have allowed me to wear two hats in any sort of business situation. 
I had a choice, one or the other, and like all bosses, if I didn't do that, there be problems for me.
That's why I'd like to hear how it is that the ministry of Pastor Sanders and the official duties of HB City Comm. Sanders can be reconciled now or in the future, without him making a choice, one or the other?

And like many people in this community, I wonder why he and his wife seem so oblivious to the appearance of all these things over the past four years, and are only now willing to say anything, or why she can't get a job that doesn't involve receiving money from the city directly or indirectly. It all seems very curious and more drama than we need with all the problems this city has.