Showing posts with label Code compliance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Code compliance. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

How plucky South Florida businessman Rob Raymond of Doctor's Toy Store used his humorous-but-hard-working personality to battle past adversity in a very competitive industry, and a city's bureaucratic avalanche of Red Tape, and got the last laugh. @drstoystore *SPONSORED POST*


How plucky South Florida businessman Rob Raymond of Doctor's Toy Store used his humorous-but-hard-working personality to battle past adversity in a very competitive industry, and a city's bureaucratic avalanche of Red Tape, and got the last laugh. 
@drstoystore *SPONSORED POST*

Over the past few years, I've taken time every so often to share with your a little bit about about my hard-working friend, Rob Raymond, Founder and CEO of Doctor’s Toy Store in Hallandale Beach. His very successful business continues to be Florida's largest Medical Showroom because of his team's combination of solid experienced professionalism and excellent customer service in giving doctors and health care practice groups the quality medical equipment they want at discount prices. 

It's no overstatement when I say that Rob is easily the hardest-working business person I've met the last 13 years in South Florida. It's not even close.

Today I'll be sharing a few anecdotes that illustrate how Rob's consistent inner-drive, sense of humor and unwillingness to sit quietly on the sidelines, are the very qualities that helps motivate him and his team more than any best-selling business book by a Harvard Business School professor or pricy weekend motivational seminar full of celebrities and best-selling authors at an upscale suburban hotel.




As I've remarked here in the past, any person who has lived for any amount of time in South Florida knows that finding a firm or business that consistently delivers good customer service is that rarest of qualities here, almost as rare as a unicorn. 
But whether at his old location on Hallandale Beach's Fashion Row or the past three-plus years at his much-larger Doctors Toy Store showroom off of I-95, everything has proven Rob's vision correct for how to run a successful business that treats both his customers and employees the correct way. 

When you deal with Rob and his team, you do not feel like you are in, well, frankly, frequently pushy and frustrating South Florida, where so many businesses take you for granted and act like they are doing you a favor by letting you come thru the door.
No, at DTS, you genuinely feel like you're being taken care of and fussed over by a longtime Midwestern family-owned business, one that sometimes seems to know you and your needs better than you do. 


Old and new clients are constantly calling or coming by, eager to see Rob and wander around the showroom like kids in a candy store, eager to see for themselves what’s new at the high-profile location with the giant American flag flying high and proudly above it.
I saw that for myself on a recent Friday afternoon visit, with customers from three different countries present, as well as far-flung Coral Gables, all seeing what's what, checking off their To Do list and mentally adding to their Future Must-Buy list.

In fact, I even saw a very successful doctor come in with his teenage daughter, a doctor who has been dealing with Rob ever since he started DTS because he liked the personal care, attention to detail and the great discount prices. What's not to like?

As always, Rob remains steadfast in seeing to it that his clients are satisfied and get what they want, now and in the future, in the way of cutting-edge medical equipment and devices at discount prices, with excellent follow-up maintenance and repair when needed. 

Nobody knows better than Rob that it's his 18 years of dedication to his clients, large and small, as well as his conscientious and intuitive nature, that has put him in the position of being the well-respected owner of the largest medical equipment showroom in Florida. 
But he doesn't take that fact for granted. 
In fact, that only serves to further motivate him to get better and more efficient. 

Rob is a very creative guy who's always thinking outside-the-box to improve his business. Always looking to make it easier for his team to do their job better. And as I can personally attest, inspiration strikes him everywhere.

Over the years that I've known him, whether from inside of his car while we were stuck in heavy traffic, inside of Hallandale Beach City Hall during breaks between City Commission meetings, or over coffee and bagels at local restaurants or relaxing in his beautiful nautical-themed backyard, I've heard Rob talk at length and in great detail about what he wanted to do with his business to help it expand. Not just bigger -better.

And as anyone who has ever heard Rob speak at Hallandale Beach City Hall during public meetings knows, Rob has not been shy about sharing his thoughts or advice for improving the Quality of Life in this part of South Florida for both businesses and residents alike. And in asking the city to treat and serve its residents and businesses much, much better than it has been.

Rob knew from experience that an important factor for the products he had was the buying experience itself. If you are physically present at the point-of-sale, have you received a positive experience that inspires confidence in your future buying decisions? 

But it's equally true that a high degree of a client's satisfaction comes from the quality/usability of the product itself and the degree of CONSISTENT quality customer service they receive after a purchase, including their trust in the quality of the repair work done by DTS's experienced professionals on-site. 
(And who doesn't prefer better and quicker?)

Again, for him, it wouldn't suffice to simply have a larger location, it had to be a location that was more efficient and offered a dynamic quality.

Rob's expansion dreams of just a few years ago, of being able to have doctors and other health care professionals come in from all over South Florida or the world, and be better able to see his medical equipment and devices in a much-more attractive, dynamic and more-natural fashion -with lots more space to walk around- has become a reality
And seeing is believing.


The Dr's Toy Store tour! https://youtu.be/XyC30eFDhgM



Whether approaching the north entrance to Doctor's Toy Store on S.W. 30th Avenue via Pembroke Road, I-95 Exit #19, above, or via Hallandale Beach Blvd., I-95 Exit #19, below, you can't miss the giant American flag!





History has proven Rob correct, as the DTS showroom off of I-95 has helped ensure even more positive word-of-mouth for DTS among existing clients, because nothing beats the power of positive personal recommendations from people that you know and respect. 
Rob was the friend in the industry that people always wanted to know, but never had before.

I recently spent part of an afternoon with Rob at Doctor's Toy Store, where he is a bundle of calm, focused energy on the telephone dealing with doctors. Focused like a laser beam!
But speaking to his clients not from some plush corner office, but rather surrounded by his employees near the entrance of the showroom, who, themselves, are constantly being phoned, emailed, faxed and DM'ed from every part of South Florida, the U.S. and overseas with orders and questions.

I spoke with Rob, not about his well-known talent for analyzing, diagnosing and fixing equipment problems for his demanding clients, but rather about some of the obstacles that were put in his way over the years, including fairly recently.
Perspective is a great thing, and one of the things that Rob related to me is how often it's been the case in his life that adversity and disappointment helped propel him and his business forward, often winding up far more successful than planned from the detour. 

But that is not to say that the feelings of disappointment and pain are brand new, they really sting.
Nobody wants to hear from someone that the negative things they are going to say or the negative decision about them, is actually a positive in disguise. 
But perspective is what helps you turn that lemon into lemonade, and that is something that Rob has consistently done.

Rob had related to me in the past that before he started DTS, he had been fired from a previous job, despite doing a very good job for his employer. But we soon got off onto another subject as we so frequently do when he and I are together, so I never got the full story.

But on our most recent visit, he said that the experience of being fired, despite his doing everything expected of him, really jarred him. 
So much so that it caused him to have a heart-to-heart conversation with himself about what he was going to do next.

He decided then and there that his personality being what it was, that what he needed to be was an entrepreneur, and not spend any more time being someone who was working 40 hours a week for someone else.
He also reasoned that this would benefit his very thorough and conscientious nature in dealing with customers.
He'd be able give them his best every time, including his knowledge of what was going on within the industry, and they would either like it and stay as customers, or they wouldn't.

But they wouldn't be able to say later that he hadn't offered great discount prices AND great customer service. But what he wouldn't have was any self-doubt, since he would now be his own boss. There'd be nobody to complain to anymore.

Rob started his medical equipment business with a very small, anonymous-looking building located on W. Dixie Highway in Hallandale Beach. 
Success was slow at first, but Rob's near-encyclopedic knowledge of medical equipment soon proved its worth, since within a few years, he had managed to get enough steady, reliable customers to be able to lease the high-profile location he enjoyed for so many years on the east side of NE 1st Avenue, the backbone of the city's once-vaunted Fashion Row district.

But being the ever-observant person that he is, Rob soon noticed that there was a clear and disturbing sense of inequity in the way that small businesses in Hallandale Beach were dealt with by City Hall, and more specifically, the city's Code Compliance Dept.
It seemed to matter more than it ought to whether or not you were a person or business that was deemed to be "friendly" with HB City Hall and the people running things there.

He soon learned from other area business people that many were getting cited and fined over all sorts of picayune things that had never before been a problem. 
So what had changed they wondered?
Nobody at HB City Hall would say.
So Rob started asking questions publicly and stating what was clear -the city had an inconsistent policy of enforcing their rules and yet the City Commission and City Manager were turning a blind eye to it.

Rob also noticed that based on the stories he was hearing, the city's Code Compliance employees often didn't seem to know the written rules of the city's handbook as well as he did, after looking them up to double-check the facts.
Even worse, he was hearing from too many business people he knew and trusted in the city that if you called the Code Compliance Dept., it was next-to-impossible to ever get any any two employees to agree on the answer to any problem you called up with.
That's how much Red Tape there was -the city's own bureaucracy didn't know their own rules.

Small business owners like Rob need a high degree of certainty to prosper, especially price/expense certainty, and in a small city, they also need to know that every other business is being treated the same by City Hall officials, regardless of that business' size or number of years it has been in the city.
Yet what Rob was learning was disturbing - that sense of normalcy you'd expect was simply not how things were being done in Hallandale Beach.
It seemed like someone, or several people, had an agenda they wanted to see become reality. But who?

And, he wondered when he and DTS were going to be publicly made an example of, like other neighboring businesses. He didn't have to wait long.

Sooner than he expected, but quite predictably in retrospect, Rob and his business started being told by the city that things that they had been allowed to do for years in the neighborhood were, now, suddenly wrong or illegal. 
Not that the city could actually point to anything written in their book of rules.

If you can believe it, they were actually cited because of how many of the store's nicely-designed trucks could be parked -in their own parking lot!
Really!

Over the years, I've heard Rob complain dozens of times about how large and indecipherable the city's Code Compliance handbook was.
But unlike some people who might just complain privately, Rob would show up and share his views at City Hall during City Commission meetings.
Like me and many of the civic activists and concerned citizens of this area, we were not going to be concerned about the feelings of city employees if they were going to be so self-evident about showing a clear bias in how they interpreted the city's own rules.
No, we were not going to just roll over.

Rob was often very amusing in his telling of the crazy tales that were the reality in the city, but it was always with the same caveat that the people on the dais could understand -businesses in Hallandale Beach could and would relocate if the city didn't get their act together and stop hounding businesses for no logical reason other than parochial politics or reasons of personalities.


If city employees were going to cite HB businesses for violations, they better be able to identify something written in the city's handbook.

Rob would often call me up late at night after getting home from a long day at the store and ask me, practically giddy, if I knew the story about what had happened at a particular area business, and hint at the nonsensical reasons being offered up by the city for citing them.

Sometimes he was so motivated for me to know about it -and perhaps mention it on my blog or in my well-known FYI emails around the area- that he would offer to drive me by the location to show me for myself what he was talking about and angry about. 
But at other times, he would simply send me emails with very clear photos that showed that the city was once again in the business of harassing businesses. 
Apparently, to send them a message.
It could not have been more obvious.

Like most of you reading this now, Rob and I both hate bullies, but we in particular hate it when those bullies are elected officials or highly-paid government bureaucrats -say, at Hallandale Beach City Hall- using taxpayer-paid government resources to do their personal bidding and enforce their's or someone else's personal agenda.

But as Rob knew at the time, but what many people at HB City Hall didn't quite appreciate,
was that many of the business owners were already at their wit's end, and really would make good on their threats to move out of town.
They hated the chaos, inconsistency, incompetence and sense of unfairness.

Over a period of a few short years, the City of Hallandale Beach, thru its troubled CRA and Board of Directors, promised business owners along Fashion Row that a series of initiatives would be taken that would improve both the flow and aesthetics of what was essentially a one-way street that was well below acceptable standards in terms of parking.
But for years the very business owners who had invested in the city on that street received nothing but lip service and double-talk from HB City Hall, and never got reasonable answers to their very reasonable questions.

Which is how it came to be one day in February of 2014 that Rob and I and several concerned business owners and residents in the area were among those in attendance for several public meetings involving the poorly-run Hallandale Beach CRA.
Meetings that we suspected would be more of the same old dog-and-pony shows we had seen in the past that were held to try to pacify the local businesses and area residents and try to keep the festering Fashion Row problems from getting into the media even more than it had.
But at the first meeting, held at 5 PM no less, Rob and I and everyone else saw for ourselves how bad things really were.
Much worse than we thought!

At that meeting, the then-new CRA Director made his first public appearance at a store located on the street near Rob's then-showroom to discuss what everyone thought would be an update on all the promises the city and CRA had made in the recent past.
Promises that local business owners were counting on the city to keep.

Yet rather than be open and accommodating as you might expect, eager to make a good first impression, the new CRA boss was patronizing and condescending to everyone there. 
At one point, this highly-paid bureaucrat even told all the people in the room that he "didn't work for them." Really!

Rob was sitting a few seats over from me and we just looked at each other in amazement and shook our heads.
After hearing something like that, it can only go downhill. 
It did!

Perhaps 35 minutes after he arrived with some other city bureaucrats in tow, the CRA boss fled the the meeting in a huff, the audience dumbfounded, after he was asked some perfectly reasonable but pointed questions, including from Rob and myself.
Even by the low standards of Hallandale Beach that we had become used to, it was a pretty shocking performance by a city official.

And what do you know, just a few days later, at a Hallandale Beach CRA meeting held on cool Monday night, a high-profile person who who is great friends with the powers-that-be at HB City Hall and who owns much of the properties in the immediate area, i.e. is a landlord for some struggling businesses, publicly denounced the city's promises of finally instituting their positive initiatives.

Hmmm.. that's odd. Why would someone who owns so much land there be in favor of more chaos instead of some long overdue attention, structure and improvement?
Could it be because he had some ideas for the area himself? Why, yes!.

The reality, largely unspoken in the room, but known to Rob, myself, our mutual friend Csaba Kulin and a few other people in the room, was that this man had purchased several homes and parcels in the area that he wanted to assemble.
And as the city's own public records clearly show, he had actually met with the HB City Manager, Mayor and members of the City Commission many more times than would be logical in a very short period of time immediately before that CRA meeting.

Well-informed people like Rob and I knew that this person's ultimate plan would be greatly harmed if the city actually improved the public street that had been an eyesore for so many years -because of how poorly it had been maintained and the lack of adequate public parking and street lighting, ruining several small retailers- because what this man wanted was panic by the area businesses, not resolve.

Rob and I knew that this businessman with the City Hall connections wanted the existing businesses along NE 1st Avenue to begin to panic at the prospect of seeing the city not keep their promise to spend money for improvements, and be forced to close, so the businessman could then swoop in and perhaps get the property himself at a greatly discounted price, perhaps to build a large development there.
What sort of way is this to run a city?

I hardly need tell you at this point that straight shooter Rob Raymond was not going to have any of this secret scheming by someone to make worse an area he cared about and wanted to see improve.

Rob spoke up then and has continued to speak up for local businesses in ways that other groups in the area should be but aren't.
And Rob has continually kept me up to date about what was going on below-the-radar on that street and in the city with respect to the city's plans for that area of the city which would greatly improve overnight when and if a Tri-Rail Coastal station is put anywhere in that area within walking distance.

It was these many, many broken promises by Hallandale Beach City Hall, this petty personal harassment from them, that Rob remembered when it came time for him to consider where to move his business when the time finally came for him to make his longtime dream of a much-larger medical showroom a reality.
A place with the size, proximity to I-95 and high-visibility he needed.

In the end, Rob left Hallandale Beach and moved west to next-door Pembroke Park, where they were happy to welcome his business into town, on the west side of I-95.
Literally, across the street from Hallandale Beach, but in attitude and behavior, a million miles away from the petty, bureaucratic Red Tape kingdom of Hallandale Beach. 

Old customers and new all love the convenience of being able to get in and out easily from I-95 and not having todeal with Hallandale Beach Blvd.'s notorious traffic.  
Once again, Rob Raymond gets the last laugh and continues to prosper at his new location!

Below: One of the 12-plus Doctor's Toy Store vans you can spot everyday throughout South Florida any major highway between Palm Beach and Homestead.










Above: Before finally heading home, Doctor's Toy Store owner and founder Rob Raymond checking his messages one last time.
As always, Rob adds a unique personal touch of insight and humor that nobody else can.

Rob's friendly outgoing personality, quick sense of humor and near-encyclopedic knowledge of medical equipment old and new is truly dazzling. 
That personality of his goes a long way towards explaining how over a period of just 18 years, he has TRIPLED the size of his old showroom, and is continuing to satisfy his clients demand for medical equipment at discount prices with conscientious, top-quality customer service. 
His clients know that they are his number-one priority.

Doctor's Toy Store
2512 S.W. 30th Avenue, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009
(954) 457-0075  1(877) DRS-TOYS

Follow @drstoystore https://twitter.com/drstoystore


Doctor's Toy Store YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/doctorstoystore

*DTS sells and repairs probes
*DTS has leasing and financing programs available
*Weekend and evening hours available by appointment
BUY   SELL   TRADE   REPAIR   EXPORT



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.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

When providing a Sun-Sentinel reporter with much-needed context re HB, we're reminded again of Comm. Lewy's penchant for craveness, verbosity & duplicity and City Manager Antonio's knack for under-performance

Above, one of the small army of City of Hallandale Beach vehicles -in this case, Code Compliance- that never ever move from their spot in front of or behind the HB City Hall/Police Dept. HQ complex off of U.S.-1/Federal Highway, even while residents and visitors often have to drive around and around the complex looking for a place to park. It's been like this all around the complex for well over eight years and the powers-that-be, Mayor Cooper and City Manager Antonio, continue to ignore resident's calls to keep city vehicles in the back. A few summers ago, a dry one in comparison to normal, I actually took photographs of a couple of COHB cars that had the same exact thing: spider webs that went from the ground to the back tire and then to the bottom of the back seat door on the Driver's side. That's the anti-taxpayer attitude that passes for normal here! March 21, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. 


Below is a copy of an email that I wrote last Friday night to South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter Tonya Alanez, who along with Sun-Sentinel columnist and blogger Michael Mayo, were in attendance at the March 7th Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting, sitting just a few feet away from me, as I recorded certain parts of the meeting and watched the usual antics of the Joy Cooper Rubber Stamp Crew, this time, as they tried to prove a negative -why the Marcum LLP report was actually, well, apparently  good news.

Yes, just ignore those 250 or so "exceptions" Marcum made note of in doing a very shallow review of just some records the city was willing to cough-up, not the array of ones the citizens of this community wanted reviewed for other factors, including fraud, given the millions of tax dollars involved.

No, this is NOT that promised review of the March 7th meeting I mentioned a few posts back, where there were a number of public policy issues that really stood out and demand your attention and notice.

For instance, Comm. Alexander Lewy foolishly making a motion to preclude the elected city commission from actually speaking on the matter of the RK Associates development project on N.E. 14th Avenue so the public in the Chambers could hear their rationale for voting however they were going to vote, on an agenda item I had forgotten was even going to be discussed that night.

Perhaps Lewy did so because developer RK has a solid and consistent history of late of NOT living up to their word or the signed agreements with the city on behalf of the city's taxpayers, something you'd think that City Manger Antonio felt was worth mentioning.
He didn't.
Surprise!

Those of us paying close attention to these matters the past few years already know, though I doubt that would include either Comm. Lewy or Sanders, given that they voted for the motion along with Comm. Ross and Mayor Cooper.
Surprise!

When I showed-up for the evening meeting I hadn't planned on speaking during the Public Comments on that agenda item, but after witnessing Lewy's galling gambit, and listening to an incredulous and quite reasonably-exasperated HB citizen, Michele Lazarow, ask Lewy to explain why he felt the need to make such an unusual motion -which I may've have witnessed maybe once in the past six years that I can recall off the top of my head- and her NOT hearing a good response from Lewy the Liar, I decided that someone need to be reminded of the pink elephant in the room.

After admitting I hadn't planned on speaking, I reminded everyone there in the room and at home watching via their computers, with great specificity, that RK was a serial violator, picking on but the lowest-hanging fruit -their complete failure three years later to comply with the city's signage requirements in the Publix grocery store parking lot off of NE 14th Avenue and HBB, per the surveillance cameras and the next-door Publix Liquor store.
The signs were supposed to be present when the liquor store opened but three years later -NADA!

I know about this because I'm the person who three years ago walked the city's wet-and- shriveled-up paper Code Compliance complaint into Publix and handed it to their on-duty manager, after seeing it lying on grass near the parking lot one rainy day while walking back to my home from a walk up to the beach and back.
Like me, it was soaking wet, and it looked to have long since been separated from the wooden stick it had been attached to, far from where anyone at Publix or RK would ever have sees it.
Yes, a case of Classic HB Theater of the Absurd!

Again, those required signs were STILL missing three years later!

And as if I could have scripted it better myself, that night, RK said it wanted to provide LESS than the required number of parking spaces the city's own staff was asking for.
Surprise!

Last I heard, they STILL owe the public parking spaces for other parts of their retail complex north of Hallandale Beach Blvd. over where the Kirova Ballet studio is located, towards Diplomat Parkway, but...
But again, this isn't THAT blog post!

-----
March 16, 2012




Dear Ms. Alanez:

re your article, Hallandale Beach bans 'human signs' but halts enforcement
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fl-hallandale-human-sign-ban-20120315,0,6117918.story
Hmm-m...if you knew the true facts, you'd know why that Lewy quote from your article is a perfect combination of faux sanctimony and utter hypocrisy, and even more than is usually the case with any self-serving thing Comm. Lewy says, it's a case of consider the source...
"Without any type of regulations, we would have sign wavers on every single street corner and every single block," Commissioner Alex Lewy said
Let me explain why.


As is customary in most American cities, the hefty candidate packets given to all city candidates in Hallandale Beach by the City Clerk's office upon filing have a section that details the city's own rules regarding where campaign signs can and can't be legally placed within the city.
(Did you know the City of Hallandale Beach also forbids candidates for any political office from using (independently-owned) bus benches within the city limits?)


So, given this information, you'd naturally think then that the same city Code Compliance Dept. that actually cited Comm. Keith London in 2010 for having his one campaign sign on his own front yard -since only one is allowed- a few inches too close to the sidewalk, WOULD see all if not some of the many illegally-placed Alexander Lewy campaign signs in front of and around HB City Hall itself for days and days during both Early Voting and prior to the 2010 General Election in November, right?


I mean especially since the Code Compliance office is right there at HB City Hall, and most of the cars in the City Hall parking lot off of U.S.-1 are assigned to Code Compliance, despite the fact that MANY MANY MONTHS often go by when those vehicles DON'T MOVE, while city residents continually strain to find a place to park for important evening meetings there, right?


And then when you add in all those myriad political campaign signs that have been plucked by Code Compliance for whatever reason, whether illegally or not, and which remain in the back seats of those very cars for days if not weeks at a time, as anyone who has been to City Hall at those particular times knows, including former candidates, well, it's so noticeable that observant people like me even snap photos of the signs in the cars, and see the same signs inside, day-after-day.


But to answer my own question, no, the city's Code Compliance office DIDN'T see those Lewy signs just feet away from their own cars, they just look the other way. 
That's how things are done here.


There's your enforcement of sign ordinances in this city -special rules for special people.


That is, unless you walk into City Hall and wait 10 minutes like I did for someone from that office to actually come to the public window so you can tell them and make a formal complaint when they say they'll get to it.
Unless you won't leave until you actually send a city employee outside their own building to pick the illegal signs up, and then wait and follow the city employee to see that they actually do it, since the signs have either been there illegally for days or the better part of a day, depending upon what day it is.
"Without any type of regulations, we would have sign wavers on every single street corner and every single block," Commissioner Alex Lewy said.
It never ends with him. 


Later...

City spokesman Peter Dobens said the city is confident that its ordinance is constitutional but as a precaution has suspended enforcement while awaiting additional legal review and an opinion from City Attorney Lynn Whitfield.

"The city doesn't believe that it is a free speech issue, because it's clearly an advertisement. However, when it came up, that's when the city said, 'Let's take a look at it,'" Dobens said.

Now that's funny!

It's really too bad that as has been the case for YEARS now, the Sun-Sentinel, the Herald and all of South Florida's TV stations missed the two public meetings, where the City Commission showed no interest in the First Amendment rights of HB business owners, as well as the city's P&Z meeting weeks before that.

I'm sure that if this had been attempted in another city closer to, well, the oblivious Herald's own HQ, given the likely economic results, it would've gotten some coverage, but if it happens in HB, no, everyone in the news room just shakes their head and says, "No, we'll pass."

Not that this lack of living bodies in the back of the room stopped me:
Regulating signage & advertising during a bad economy? Oh, so that's the ticket to economic recovery in Hallandale Beach
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/regulating-signage-advertising-during.html

As it was, when I specifically asked the city's staff at the P&Z meeting during public comments whether or not any of those affected businesses, especially the ones that the city was clearly targeting, had been informed about the proposal, that meeting as well as the upcoming Commission meetings by the city, i.e. them, to ensure some degree of fairness, given that nobody was there, they basically shrugged their shoulders.

There's your evidence of the City of Hallandale Beach going the extra-mile for local businesses!

And yet how entirely predictable was the result of the city's actions?

I already knew from experience that there would be a drop-off for the affected businesses, and as you dutifully reported...

Seven out of 10 customers said they came to his gold-buying business because they remembered his Uncle Sam sign holders, Ezekiel said. Business is now down about 40 to 50 percent, he said."We're crippled enough in this economy, there's no reason to cripple us more," Ezekiel said. "It's like a billboard, they constantly see it, he makes them laugh, he makes them smile and they remember and they come in."
When the business closes up, and it becomes yet another one of the many, many empty storefronts in this city, esp. on HBB in particular, be sure to make plans to come back around HB City Hall and ask the same city commissioners who voted for it whether they have any second thoughts, and even better, just whom do they think is really going to rent those storefronts anyway, some upscale businesses looking to relocate?
Really?

And yet even while they purport to be working towards solving a problem few people think is a real problem, the city looks the other way as the folks from PAL -who already get plenty from HB taxpayers, with little oversight- can put up their advertising signs, sandwich board signs and even city-owned electronic message boards all over town, regardless of whether it's fair or even placed in a safe location, something they don't do for even the city's own important meetings.

Yes, like the Golden Isles Tennis Center where the mayor plays, whose sandwich board sign has been on a median near the Publix on HBB almost un-interrupted for years.
Huh, I wonder why?

Over-and-over in Hallandale Beach under Mayor Cooper, it's a case of special rules for special people.

Next time you're driving south to Hallandale Beach from Hollywood on U.S.-1, one of the city's three main streets, pay attention to how many city blocks on your right -the west side- between Atlantic Shores Blvd. and NE 3rd Street actually have an open business.

There's one (small) block.
That's it.

Though you and I have never officially met or spoken, you're probably smart enough to realize in advance that you are never going to get anything even remotely resembling the unvarnished truth from the city's not-so-talented and not-so-observant new taxpayer-financed spin-meister, Mr. Dobens, given that this city under this administration, for all its lip service, prefers to keep its residents in the dark for as long as possible, rather than trust them to make up their own minds with freely-shared information.
Like adults.

I strongly suggest you take a look at these contemporaneous comments and photos of mine so that when the city loses its case, as I'm sure they likely will, you'll at least have some knowledge for better understanding that they never really took anyone' else's opinion into consideration.

That's how they do it here under the present Joy Cooper Rubber Stamp Crew.

Or, you can just do a Google Images search for "alexander lewy" "campaign signs" and get much the same.

The first dozen or so photos that appear in the search results are all ones that I snapped at the time -there's your proof of both his obliviousness and his hypocrisy, both of which have been on almost continuous display since he was elected, and which shows no sign of abating.

For instance..


  1. You're surprised? 13 days before HB election, Alexander Lewy was ...

    hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/.../youre-surprised-13-days-befor...
    Oct 28, 2010 – 13 days before HB election, Alexander Lewy was ALREADY running afoul of rules -no campaign signs on City Hall land, capisce? Uncouth ...


    Once again, thru his words & misdeeds, Alexander Lewy is proving ...


    hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/.../once-again-thru-his-words-mis...
    Mar 22, 2011 – Above, Alexander Lewy and his campaign sign at the entrance of the... IF it was legal to put campaign signs there on city property, within the ...
  2. hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/.../weather-forecast-100-chance-o...
    Oct 22, 2010 – Above, October 10, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier of Alexander Lewy and Bill Julian campaign signs on Atlantic Shores Blvd., Hallandale ...

As for your Friday night post, VIDEO: No love lost between Hallandale Mayor Joy Cooper, Commissioner Keith London
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2012/03/video_no_love_lost_between_hal.html

you DON'T mention that the predicate for this was City Manager Mark A. Antonio and his staff failing to make copies of Marcum LLP's supposed last-minute four-page addition to the public record, actually available to the public, who'd been waiting for the agenda item to come up for quite some time.

Marcum's reps publicly stated that they had turned over the documents to the city at 4 p.m., but though Antonio and his highly-paid staff of assistants had well over five hours to make copies by the time it finally came up -since it was NOT on the city's own website, and yet would be voted upon- Antonio & Co. failed to do the logical and responsible thing, which in case you forgot, even Mayor Cooper was not very happy about either.

So, Antonio having failed to do something simple and obvious, while they yakked and yakked and actually debated whether or not to direct the staff to make copies, someone showed some initiative and got positive results.
Which is why they took the 15-minute break after Comm. London returned with copies for everyone in the room to actually read for the first time, including the taxpayers in the room, whom they all supposedly work for, though you wouldn't know it from their attitudes and work ethic.

While I like most concerned residents of Hallandale Beach am glad to see someone from the South Florida news media actually showing-up here for a change -and actually staying for the whole meeting- while I'm mindful of the fact that you have limited space, if you can't actually make more of an effort to incorporate any of the actual context or nuance that's actually going on here, frankly, in my opinion, it's actually almost worse than nothing, because it perpetuates the popular idea among the extant news media that the residents of this particular community are entitled to LESS actual democracy, transparency and competency in government than other communities, or news coverage, simply because of where we live in South Florida.
We aren't.