Showing posts with label Doug Hewett. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doug Hewett. Show all posts

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Update on the Hallandale Beach City Manager search -tentative schedule sees selection process ending in three weeks

This helpful email below from Hallandale Beach City Commissioner Keith London made its way to my email inbox on March 1st, and it gives a good overview of the "process" and what's at stake in the future for this city's citizen taxpayers and business owners as the city prepares for current City Manager Mark A. Antonio's departure in June.

Based on my own conversations around town with other residents, politically-oriented and otherwise, my own intuition, plus, hearing some of the most well-informed and articulate voters in this town speak a few weeks ago at one of Comm. London's monthly Resident Forum, where the city's consultant, Colin Baezinger, appeared for the last of the two-hours at the HB Cultural Center to speak to us and answer questions for just under an hour, we do NOT want a City Manager who will not roll-over, fetch or play "dead" in order to keep his or her job.

(I'd have posted the video I shot of Baezinger interacting with the public that day, but because I got caught up into listening and didn't stop and start the video-cam every so often on individual subjects, it's far long for me to post directly here via Blogger, or, even cut into segments and place on my YouTube Channel. I definitely need to learn from that mistake!)

We want someone who will proactively take advantage of the geographical, social and people resources here to get this city to the point it should've been at many years ago. 

Instead, the same practical everyday issues of a lack of core competencies and effectiveness in dealing with problems and the citizens who want solutions, a very stubborn unwillingness to change or adapt clearly failing public policies that have no public support, and a very, very strong distrust of the motives, ethics and and work-ethic of Hallandale Beach City Hall administrators and employees themselves, hangs over this city like a dark ominous cloud that simply won't blow away.

Far too much time and energy at HB City Hall is spent on little more than outright deception of taxpayers and business owners to prevent them from knowing what's REALLY going on, all in furtherance of Mayor Cooper's effort to keep up the facade that she is in control and that everything is okay.
It's NOT.

And then residents like me and many of the well-informed people I know who have lived here far longer than I, feel compelled to push-back on those deceptive efforts from City Hall, wasting precious time and energy we;d all rather see channeled productively elsewhere, rather than constantly having to point to the many pink elephants in the room, none of which those in charge and earning nice salaries and benefits claim to be able to see.
Yes, intentional myopia.

Below Comm. London's email, consultant Colin Baezinger also details what the tentative schedule for the next few weeks looks like so that HB residents can interact with some of the candidates, something that we were NOT able to do in the summer of 2010, when Mayor Joy Cooper and City  Commissioners William "Bill" Julian and Dotty Ross hijacked the transparent process that HB residents had been promised, and then completely short-circuited it by literally changing the rules in the middle of the search, just as we were all about to find out who some of the candidates were.
All because the mayor decided that Antonio should be considered for the job after all, flip-flopping on her earlier contention that he NOT even be considered.

Given the subject of my last blog post here, Hallandale Beach Commissioners spending taxpayer $$$ in a hurry -and NOT in the Sunshine! As usual, Comm. Sanders just sits there and waits to be told what to say and how to vote
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/hallandale-beach-commissioners-spending.html
I thought you might benefit from knowing what the current plan is.

As my next blog post will clearly show -and then some- having a written plan to select a new City Manager may work in next-door Hollywood, where I participated in the public process in January and wrote about my observations here that led to Douglas Hewett earning his selection there, after a very impressive presentation to the Hollywood city Commission, which I filmed.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/doug-hewett-named-new-hollywood-city.html

But here in Hallandale Beach, a plan is just a couple of words on a piece of paper, and can be thrown-out whenever three people on the HB City Commission with a track record in office of consistently voting against the long-term best interests of its citizens find the public "process" either too taxing for their brains -or want to go home.

-------

Everyone,

The City of Hallandale Beach Commission will be making one of the most important decisions affecting our City with the hiring of a new City Manager.  The new City Manager will be chosen in the next six weeks.  Please take a moment to mark your calendars with these important dates (please see email below for the schedule).

The choosing of a new city manager will affect every resident and business in “our” community.

This decision will most likely live longer than many of the elected officials’ current terms and should not be taken lightly.  The decision will be made through a detailed vetting process with the assistance of an outside consultant; yet no process is perfect.  The commission will have a relatively short amount of time to review the applications and interview the short list of candidates.  Personally, the accomplishments of an individual are very important, but how this person fits into “our” community with the existing unique set of issues and all the potential to be a first class city waiting to be unlocked, will weigh heavily for me.

Please participate and attend these meetings to meet and great all the candidates. I look forward to the next phase of improvement and the positive future in “Our” city.

Sincerely,
Keith

Keith S. London
City Commissioner
Hallandale Beach

954-457-1320 Office
954-494-3182 Cellular
www.KeithLondon.com
http://www.facebook.com/KeithSLondon

----- 
From: Colin Baenziger [mailto:Colin@cb-asso.com] 
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 05:11 PM
To: Cooper, Joy; Lewy, Alexander; Sanders, Anthony; Ross, Dotty; London, Keith 
Cc: Amiraian, George; Rafols, Nydia M 
Subject: City Manager Search Update - Be Sure Your Calendars Are Marked... 

I wanted to give you a quick update on the City Manager Search Process.  Right now, we are in the midst of checking out the most promising candidates.  We do have it down to less than a dozen although I do not want to release any names at this point.  If we find something in a candidate’s background that we do not like, we will drop the candidate.  If the names have already been released, the media may want to know why a candidate has been dropped and I would prefer not to be in that situation.  

I can tell you that I am very pleased with the field.  All the candidates are highly qualified and the field is diverse in terms of experience, race and gender.  While the candidates are primarily from Florida, we do have some diversity there as well. 

The important upcoming dates for you to remember and be available for are: 

March 14th:  Background materials for the candidates arrive and are distributed to the commissioners.

March 14th to 21st:  I will be available to answer any questions you may have.

March 21st:  I will be at city hall to meet with any of the commissioners who wish to discuss the candidates.

March 21st:  Also, on March 21st, the Commission will select the candidates who will be finalists and be interviewed for the position.

March 30th:  Candidate arrive, meet the staff, tour the city and an evening reception is held so they can meet the public.  The Commission only needs to be available for the evening reception and not the other events.

March 31st:     The Commission interviews the finalists one-on-one and as a full commission.  Typically these events go from 8:30 a.m. to about 3:30 p.m.

April 2nd:      The Commission selects the next City Manager. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me. 

Best wishes and be well!

Colin at 

Colin Baenziger & Associates
… Experts in Local Government Recruiting 

(561) 707-3537
Visit our website at:  www.cb-asso.com

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Doug Hewett named new Hollywood City Manager; Hardly Breaking News: New year of 2012 already showing that the old bad habits of Miami's local TV news operations won't die -apathy!

Looking west at Hollywood City Hall following the Hollywood City Commission meeting that led to the selection of Doug Hewett as the new City Manager. 
January 6, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier.


Continuing their policy of the new economic realism, wherein stories about celebrities, diets and/or plastic surgery for women, toys for affluent people and their over-indulged kids, and crime stories involving women in danger or peril -especially mothers!- are deemed more important than what happens in local government that actually affects everyone -in part because they have lots of South Florida advertisers who want the not-so-educated female demographic for whom that is 'must-see TV'- Miami's local TV news operations threw a collective wet blanket on the big news coming out of Hollywood City Hall late last Friday afternoon.

Hollywood, Florida's 12th-largest city, selected 40-year old Fayetteville, N.C. Assistant City Manager Doug Hewett to be their new City Manager on a 5-2 vote, following hours of presentations by the six final candidates on what their strategy/ideas might be in their first few weeks in the position if they were selected to get the city moving forward.

The hiring of a young, personable, savvy and very well-regarded public administrator, who over a few shorts days seemed to pick-up on the small nuances of what makes Hollywood and its neighborhoods and its civic activist community unique and very hands-on, after touring the city and talking with many of the city's most well-known involved residents and civic activists, is a move that represents the final piece of a puzzle that many Hollywood taxpayers and observers firmly hope will stabilize what had become a very rocky ship of state of late in 2011 after the dismissal of former City Manager Cameron Benson, with bitter cleavages emerging all over the city between political/neighborhood activists and Fire/Police union members and their enthusiastic/exasperating supporters.

As I've stated in this space previously, many of the latter are still visibly outraged over the results of the September public referendum that forced much-tougher financial terms on their members -roughly a 12% pay cut to prevent actual dismissals of Fire/ Rescue and Police- and as of this writing, there are at least two city commission candidates backed by the unions who've already filed their paperwork to put that lingering animus to work for them as they challenge incumbent commissioners  Heidi O'Sheehan from District 3 and Richard Blattner of District 4.

Owing to election changes necessitated by the successful passage of a charter issue by Hollywood voters, rather than having staggered elections this year, ALL six city commissioners and Mayor Peter Bober are up for re-election this November, with only Comm. Fran Russo publicly announcing that she will be not be seeking re-election in District 5, which consists of most of Hollywood west of the Florida Turnpike.


For a few observers in the Hollywood Commission chambers who were really paying attention to the larger public policy picture last Friday -like your humble blogger, for instancethe real news of the day lay more in who was completely missing from the Commission chambers rather than the selection of the certain someone who might soon be calling it home.

That is to say, noticeable by their collective absence.
Indeed, as Sherlock Holmes is forever reminding us, the absence of evidence is, in fact, evidence of a sort.

Showing that the old bad habits of last year that we have remarked upon so many times here on the blog -and in animated conversations and emails with so many of you readers- that have left so many tens of thousands of concerned South Florida residents quite literally appalled at what passes for news coverage at Miami's English and Spanish-speaking TV stations, were, in fact, NOT left behind in the dust-bin of history after all, even while more traditional subjects are shunted aside, Miami's CBS4, NBC6, WSVN-TV 7 & Local 10 News were all no-shows at Hollywood City Hall.
As were their Spanish-speaking colleagues at local TV news outlets at Channels 23, 41 and 51, despite the fact that there are lots of Spanish-speaking residents in Hollywood.

But yours truly videotaped the entire proceedings, as well as Thursday night's public get-together of the six final candidates at Hollywood's Arts & Culture Center on Harrison Street.

I plan on posting the comments that I videotaped last Thursday night by CM-designate Doug Hewett and his presentation of Friday afternoon on my blog and YouTube Channel within the next few days.
I'll need to do some editing first and break up his presentation into 3 or 4 segments, since his presentation was the longest, albeit, also the most interesting one to listen to.

Former McKinney, TX City Manager Frank Ragan received the second-most votes last Friday afternoon and was a very compelling candidate, with lots of tangible qualities and talents that surely would've helped Hollywood, based on his impressive resume and facility for talking about his accomplishments without any un-necessary boasting.
He particularly grabbed the full attention of Hollywood Commissioners Linda Sherwood and Richard Blattnerwho voted for him on the first ballot.


Yes, I wish he were already the City Manager in Hallandale Beach, where Mark Antonio will be leaving in June.



Above and below, Frank Ragan addresses the Hollywood City Commission and makes his formal presentation. On the dais, left-to-right, Commissioners Patricia Asseff, Beam Furr, Heidi O'Sheehan, Mayor Peter Bober, Commissioners Richard Blattner, Fran Russo and Linda SherwoodJanuary 6, 2012 photos by South Beach Hoosier.


Personally, I wish that Ragan was already in a responsible upper-management position in either Broward County or up in Tallahassee so he could positively effectuate economic development, trade and investment policies, since the record is clear that he has the ability to see opportunities that other smart people in those positions DON'T.

I can't recall the last time I heard someone who worked for Broward or in Tallahassee say something about those subjects that really impressed me in quite the ways that Ragan, a one-time Hoosier, did in his presentation Friday, a fact that seemed to be shared by Comm. O'Sheehan