Showing posts with label Miami-Dade County. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miami-Dade County. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

When it's a question of "Use it or lose it" for South Florida governments and federal funds, you can pretty well guess that all logic and reason goes out the window QUICK to spend, spend, spend... But now, state/local governments have an additional year to account for CARES Act funds, so will better decisions be made?

When it's a question of "Use it or lose it" for South Florida governments and federal funds, you can pretty well guess that all logic and reason goes out the window QUICK to spend, spend, spend... But now, state/local governments have an additional year to account for CARES Act funds, so will better decisions be made?

If you are a longtime reader of the Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog -let alone a relative newcomer like so many of you are in our stay home New Normal era of coronavirus- I know that you're as shocked as me to learn that in Miami-Dade County, federal CARES Act money is paying for many, many things that are NOT directly related to what most reasonable people would consider any aspect of the COVID19 pandemic. 

Or, as a very knowledgeable civic activist friend here in Hollywood told me when this article appeared in the Herald last Thursday, "The thing is, you can only imagine how much worse the flim-flammery  must be in Broward!"

Miami Herald
Cities scrambling to meet CARES deadline. Here's why that means more money for police
By Aaron Leibowitz and Joey Flechas, Miami Herald
December 24, 2020

With the deadline to allocate COVID-19 relief funds less than a week away, local governments across Miami-Dade County are scrambling to make sure they don't leave money on the table.

They're giving out more grocery gift cards. They're distributing rent and mortgage assistance. They're even getting reimbursed for costs with no direct connection to the pandemic — namely, salaries for police and firefighters dating back to March.

It's all part of a mad dash to the Dec. 30 deadline for Miami-Dade to distribute $474 million in CARES Act funds. As of Dec. 7, only about half of that money had been spent with more in the pipeline. Among the outstanding amount was $50 million from a $75 million pot intended to reimburse municipalities for COVID-related costs.

"It doesn't look like it's working out very well," said Joseph Corradino, the mayor of Pinecrest and a member of the Miami-Dade League of Cities executive board. "It looks like the deadline is getting short for everybody to get their act together."

Read the rest of the story at: https://t.co/PyLdk40ngg?amp=1

It's even crazier than it sounds when you know that cities 

"no longer needed to present documents to justify the use of CARES Act dollars for public safety workers. Instead, police and fire salaries "are deemed significantly COVID-19 related, thereby alleviating the need for extra paperwork such as duty rosters [and] daily activity reports," Miami-Dade's chief financial officer Edward Marquez said in a Dec. 7 memo."

https://twitter.com/aaron_leib/status/1342133685701775360

This in an area of the U.S. renown and some would even say infamous for trying to gouge the federal government, especially when it comes to weather-related cleanups, with many local municipalities specializing in hurricane hocus pocus. 

Legitimate expenses related to preparation, response and clean up are one thing, of course, but South Florida is also known for submitting requests to FEMA for cleanup payments when storms did NOT... actually hit our area.

You can only imagine how this all looks to the rest of the country. 

I guess it's a good thing the news media, especially national TV, never deigns to mention it, huh?


Miami Herald 

FEMA denies Irma money for three cities. One desperately needs it to pay off a loan

By Aaron Leibowitz, Miami Herald
December 2, 2020

The federal government has rejected millions of dollars in requests by three Miami-Dade County municipalities to pay for debris cleanup after Hurricane Irma, saying substantial parts of their submissions failed to properly document the work and prove it was eligible for reimbursement.

El Portal, Miami Shores and Florida City each used the same consultant, Disaster Program & Operations, to help with the complex reimbursement process after the September 2017 storm. After a lengthy review, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the cities submitted flawed paperwork — and not just minor errors.

Read the whole article at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article247519230.html#:~:text=The%20federal%20government%20has%20rejected,it%20was%20eligible%20for%20reimbursement


https://twitter.com/aaron_leib/status/1334132540463046656


Just since I decided to write about this subject on the blog there's been a bit of a pivot in spending and accountability and reimbursement policy because of the language that Congress inserted into the bill that President Trump signed on Sunday.

Miami Herald
Last-minute law change could mean more COVID relief, grocery cards in Miami-Dade
By Douglas Hanks, Joey Flechas and Samantha Gross, Miami Herald
December 29, 2020


Read the whole article at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article248148830.html

Speaking of the serial mis-communicators in chief over the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and its Editorial Board, as of today, they've yet to mention in print that the bill that President Trump signed on Sunday means that CARES Act money given to state and local governments many months ago does NOT have to be used by Dec. 31. 

It's no longer "Use it or lose it."

But not one word of it in print from the sleepwalking Sun-Sentinel!


It's for many of the reasons stated so well in the preceding articles about local government's performance, namely underwhelming incompetency on the one hand and what can only be called benign neglect of public oversight by local Miami TV stations, that an idea is now percolating just below the surface among many people I am in regular contact with as so much of the South Florida news media increasingly looks to be taking a knee or biting its tongue when it comes to being objective, unbiased, or critical -by name- of the often inexplicable #COVID19 #pandemic responses we've all seen among County/City governments -and some nonprofits- in Broward and Miami-Dade.

The idea, such as it is, is that some prominent #SoFL bloggers -including me- are considering forming a Working Group in 2021 to critically and publicly examine the many mis-steps of the #Broward and #MiamiDade County Commissions, its cities and certain nonprofits.

That is especially true when it comes to South Florida elected officials' not-so-subtle hypocrisy on curfews and the wearing of face masks, where they prefer the school of Do As I Say, Not As I Do.

Along with some others, I'm planning on bringing some much-needed Sunshine to bear on the issues that in my opinion they have not been getting. 

One of the questions to be raised: What happens when unelected Broward County Administrator Bertha Henry makes a decision that is not supported by a majority of the elected nine-member Broward County Commission?

Like, for instance, the recent curfew that went into affect in Broward  that will be in effect December 25th through Monday January 4th from midnight to 5:00 a.m. each day, but which will be 1:00 a.m to 5:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve, Thursday night.

Broward Comm. Steve Geller was trotted out for a press conference right before Christmas and reporters, predictably, talked about it without actually saying out loud what the real process involved was, or for that matter, even mentioning that the emergency documents were signed by Henry, not by Geller or any other elected Commissioner.

So, on the one hand, the Broward League of Cities doesn't like the idea that Gov. Ron DeSantis has legally used his powers to prevent Florida cities from collecting fines on any curfew citations issued, but on the other hand, the mayors of Broward cities have made clear that they do NOT want to be seen or described as being a money-hungry politician trying to nickel-and-dime people to death during a pandemic.

That's known as trying to have it both ways, and up until now, the South Florida news media, and especially the four English language TV stations do not seem at all inclined on calling them out on this self-evident hypocrisy.

Bloggers, though, especially ones like myself who are well-informed and fact-based, have no such compunction about publicly calling out the hypocrisy.

As will be made increasingly clear in the coming weeks and months of 2021.







Thursday, January 16, 2020

Looking ahead at Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog to everything in 2020 that we'll be analyzing, discovering, examining and writing about with our customary nuanced and fact-filled way, including news via new platforms to better inform the public in South Florida and beyond in ways they can better use, appreciate, and share with others so that more people are in-the-know.

Looking ahead at Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog to everything in 2020 that we'll be analyzing, discovering, examining and writing about with our customary nuanced and fact-filled way, including news via new platforms to better inform the public in South Florida and beyond in ways they can better use, appreciate, and share with others so that more people are in-the-know.


My 2019 photo of the Andrew Antonaccio mural at 1900 Hollywood Blvd. in Downtown Hollywood, featuring da Vinci's Mona Lisa masterpiece. I've been using this photo at the top of my blog since the summer of 2019 to replace the by now familiar photo of the iconic rainbow-colored Hallandale Beach Water Tower on State Road A1A that I've been using on the blog since starting it in 2007.


My photo of July 6, 2019 of the Fabio Onrack mural a few blocks farther west in Downtown Hollywood at 2050 Hollywood Blvd., on S. 21st Avenue, just south of Hollywood Blvd. 
It features iconic 20th Century artists Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo and Jean-Michel Basquiat.




Today I'm looking ahead and talking out loud about some of the things in 2020 we'll be analyzing, covering, discovering, examining and writing about with our customary nuanced and fact-filled way.

It'll also feature news about some new-and-improved platforms to better inform the public in South Florida and beyond about some important matters of public concern in ways they can better appreciate, use and share with others.



Fortunately, many people in our area have perches that allow us to take a long (term) view and not the all-so-familiar, myopic takes on the news and events that far too much of South Florida's news media seems to prefer for reasons of their own involving either laziness, lack of due diligence, or confusion on whether they are journalists or publicists.
That's a REAL pernicious problem in South Florida, especially with reporters under the age of forty.
Too many seem to prefer shallow takes completely lacking historical context or intellectual heft that are instantly forgettable.

Like nearly everything that appears in the troubled and bias-laden Miami New Times, once actually voluminous and fun to read, to which can't seem to see straight out of its inability to treat people fairly, and not write pieces based strictly on personal/political spite or animus.
Almost everything written there reeks of indignation, much of it of the know-it-all kind that sells in places where everyone calls for diversity yet always agrees.
That's called consensus, not diversity. 






Just so you know, there will be a LOT of interesting news, commentary and insight about Hollywood, Hallandale Beach and Broward govt./political/public policy doings coming the next few weeks, so don't think I've taken the holidays off. No. I've been busy writing away and putting my little nuggets of information into storage until the holidays were over and people were of a mind to start reading things that are not frivolous.

Usually, but not always, at the Panera Bread on Sheridan Road in Hollywood, not far from where I live these days, as opposed to the days I lived in Hollywood Lakes on Wiley Street and just north of Young Circle on Filmore Street, west of U.S.-1











That necessarily includes returning to the antics of Wednesday Hallandale Beach City Commission meetings at 5:30 pm due to the return and reboot of Joy Cooper to the local political scene. I anticipate some antics and melodrama, since all that time away from the passing scene has got to have built up quite a lot of need in her to show everyone what's what.
Certainly that's what the South Florida news media is expecting, so I expect they'll be more likely to actually show up when something important is going on instead of the sillier issues that drew them like flies the past 2-3 years. Which is all to the good. 

I'll be there more often, too, to observe and report back here with what's what, including some news about an expensive financial fiasco the HB CRA is involved in that will likely explode in February unless cooler heads prevail.
Slim odds of that if you've seen who's at Hallandale Beach City Hall these days.

I hope to be able to be finished writing some positive stories I've started regarding some dynamic new entrepreneurs who have come to the area and who are making a very positive difference in the general attitude of things hereabouts as it concerns satisfying customers. 

Like my marketing-savvy friend, John Wiltsey, who worked so successfully for so many years for the fashion house Chanel, which included LOTS of traveling to fascinating luxurious places I've only read about and seen photos of but where lots of hard work goes on, too, according to him.
John's dream turned reality in Downtown Hollywood late this past summer with the opening of
Camp Cocktail Bar + Grill, on the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and N. 21st Avenue, at 2051-B Hollywood Blvd.
That's the same block on the north side of Hollywood Blvd. where popular GoBistro! and it's newer brother, GoGai! is located, as well as Tasta Gelato & Cafeteria. 



2051-B Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, Florida 33020
+1 (754) 263-1175
campcocktailbar@gmail.com

I first profiled Tasta Gelato and its five owners, longtime childhood friends from Italy and Sicily, back in October of 2016, over three years ago, even before they officially opened, when I was able to get a behind-the-scenes view, with lots of photos, and was able to tell how and why they chose to locate in Downtown Hollywood over many other possible sites throughout the U.S., including, naturally, South Beach.





https://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-why-italys-tastagelatos-first.html

Other people who've made a VERY positive impression on me since I returned to Hollywood last April include Craig Avera and Rose White, the owners of Cali Coffee just north of Sheridan Road on N. 29th Avenue, west of 1-95, in front of the Holiday Inn Ft. Lauderdale-Airport. 



2650 N. 29th Aveue, Hollywood, Florida 33020
+1 (954) 251-3274
https://calicoffee.net/
https://www.instagram.com/calicoffeeofficial/

+1 (954) 251-3274
Open 5 AM – 10 PM

In the near-future you'll be reading here about how Craig and Rose's business has succeeded in ways they could not have imagined, and how that very success will lead them in 2019 to open two other Cali Coffee locations in Broward County, and what's behind that expansion. 
I know the locations, but you'll get no reveals from me right now.

Over the last few months, once fall finally got here, there has been Antonio Cao, owner of Cao Bakery & Cafe, who I had the opportunity to speak with both before he opened his new location, and during a little community sneak peak when the neighborhood and many area civic activists could get together and check it out.
The new location has their official Grand Opening next Thursday, the 23rd, at 5 pm!


Above, Hollywood Park East Civic Association President Tom Lander and Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy, with microphone, on the night of December 17th, when Cao opened for a few hours to give some members of the Hollywood community a sneak peak of things to come and food to be savored.
I made sure to sample everything that could be sampled. 
A few times!








A huge thanks to our friends and supporters, especially the people have stuck thru since the heat and humidity of last summer: Mark at Mickey Byrnes Irish Pub, and Jimmy at The Greek Joint.
I'm so appreciative for them being supportive of our efforts at Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog ever since we returned to Hollywood in late April, with the idea of continuing to get more useful and original news, information, context and informed commentary out to you, however you choose to receive it online.

I also hope to soon be announcing some new dynamic advertisers to the blog very soon, including some new businesses in Hollywood, Hallandale Beach and throughout South Florida that have people are talking about in positive tones! Some restaurants and real estate projects and even maybe something for those of you who own pets...

2020 is going to be an amazing year in many respects, including two areas that occupy so muc of my time, sports and politics, starting off with a Super Bowl at Hard Rock Stadium in less than three weeks that will bring lots of excited and curious visitors to our area -though not as many non-game fun activities as I hoped we'd see in Hollywood- plus, a great Summer Olympics in Tokyo to look forward to, plus national, state, county and city elections.

In case you didn't know, the Orange Bowl Committee will be hosting a Bowl Championship Series (BCS) National Championship game next January at Hard Rock Stadium, and just like last night's game in New Orleans between Clemson and LSU, that game in 12 months in South Florida will bring tens of thousands more excited people from all over the U.S. to our perch in the world, most of whom won;t even have tickets to the game but who just want to enjoy the spectacle and the partying going on beforehand. That's what college loyalty does!

I've got a number of interesting out-of-town and even overseas trips to look forward to over the next 12 months, details of which you will be reading plenty about here in the weeks beforehand. That includes one up to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, a place that I have never visited before, despite having read about it in books and magazines and seen it in TV shows and films for many decades.

I'll be there not to see the sights so much as to see my brilliant and very talented niece Jenny play for the Yale Bulldogs Women's Lacrosse team, where she is a freshman this year after starting the past  four years for one of the top high school lacrosse programs in the U.S., where she and her Glenelg Gladiators won three Maryland state championships in their division. 
That trip to New Haven is going to be both a fun and surreal experience after everything I have ever known, read and seen in tru and fictitious films centered on Yale, 

Plus, at North Miami Beach Senior High, I had a friend and classmate in most of my many AP classes who became our valedictorian my senior year, and he chose to get out of Dodge and away from the heat and humidity of South Florida, while I chose the Midwest and Indiana University.

And in February we'll be firing up our YouTube Channel and Instagram again in the new year after a lot of inactivity, and start sharing some very useful non-text information and news with you in some interesting ways that you'll value and want to share with your friends in the area and elsewhere.  



I should also mention that I have recently downloaded WhatsApp again, so those of you who communicate with me fairly often via my cell phoen number will now have a way of knowing what, if anything, is on my mind from any one hour to another, via checking out my WhatsApp status page.
I decided I needed to be more affirmative about what I was doing or thinking since so many people tell me after-thefact, "I wish you'd told me about THAT at the time."
Well, you now have your wish!




Thursday, December 5, 2019

In Miami, An Unspeakable Tragedy in a Time of Thanksgiving - South Florida suffers a grievous loss. The news about the death of young and idealistic Alejandra Agreda literally broke my heart Saturday night. @VirginTrainsMIA

In Miami, An Unspeakable Tragedy in a Time of Thanksgiving - South Florida suffers a grievous loss. The news about the death of young and idealistic Alejandra Agreda literally broke my heart Saturday night. @VirginTrainsMIA

So now South Florida leans forward towards a 2020 that will begin with one less concerned, committed civic activist here that's ready, eager and able to make a positive difference on behalf of others in a part of America that's known for its shallowness and selfishness.






I heard from Alejandra/Bryan regularly via Twitter and received dozens and dozens of followups and DMs several times a month. Sometimes, when she was particularly vexed or exorcised about something in particular, I'd receive several of them in one day.

It's fair to say that nobody in South Florida Liked & Retweeted my tweets and blog posts more than Alejandra did, even my non-transit and non-public policy related ones.
But I think at the heart of all of her her questions, to me and to others she tweeted to and emailed,  was a curiosity on her part to understand something fundamental about South Florida.
Something that reminded me of myself when I was that age, namely, her asking me very good and pointed questions abt why SO many things in South Florida -especially regarding public transit- seem SO... perpetually counter-intuitive.

Why was it that even relatively simple things seem to take 3-4 times longer to do here in South Florida than usually seemed to be the case in most other cities in the U.S. and overseas?
Right, besides the usual issues involving corruption, incompetency, and a serious lack of necessary public/govt. oversight!

Once I finally figured out that Ale really was still just a high school student, I told her that I myself had wondered why such a high percentage of South Florida elected officials over the years weren't so much problem-solvers but rather buck-passers and problem-creators.
That I'd wondered that same thing ever since I worked so hard for so long on the Jimmy Carter and Lawton Chiles campaigns in Miami-Dade and South Florida in 1976.

Yes, back when I was a precocious, well-read sophomore at North Miami Beach Senior High that the professional campaign staff from Washington, D.C. and the Atlanta national campaign HQ always said looked and acted like I was already in college.  Which pleased me to no end., of course.
Combined with the tons of coffee -and a never-ending supply of boxes of peanuts- that positive feedback was more than enough positivity to keep me deal with much of the drudgery in thoise pre-PC, pre-Internet days working over 7 hours a day after schol at Carter-Mondale HQ in North Miami Beach on N.E. 167th Street & NE 6th Avenue, directly behind the iconic Krispy Kreme doughnuts site there that everyone knew and depended upon, including me.

I was honest with Ale and told her I'd met lots of prominent local South Florida pols from working on the campaign and especially doing highly-visible work as part of Walter Mondale's advance team on his hectic South Florida visits from the airport to a million places in 2-3 days.
The truth was that many people whom I'd really expected to like and admire, and had from afar, via Tv or newspaper or magazine articles were, up close, unfortunately, nothing less than... truly appalling people. And dumber than rocks.
Not unlike today in South Florida, unfortunately.

She'd ask me if it'd always been that way, since she knew from what I wrote online that I knew a LOT of insider dope and had a great memory for what things were REALLY like in 1970's and '80's in South Florida, as opposed to how many in the current South South Florida news media recall it publicly. Revisionism.

She was particularly interested in how Metrorail was sold to the Dade public as a ballot issue, compared to its resulting inadequate reality for most of county, esp NE and NW Miami-dade, since she knew I'd written a lot about it and had commented on it at many places online.
Simply put, promises made, promises broken...

Alejandra's Dad Freddy's tweets, which Billy (Corben) linked to at the top, made me cry so very more than I have in quite some time. Really.

Her Dad, Freddy, sent out a very sad and upsetting note out late Saturday night, at bottom, to 
some people in South Florida involved in public policy, politics, govt. and media announcing 
that his only child, Bryan/Alejandra had committed suicide last Tuesday, and had jumped in front 
of one of the Metrorail cars she loved riding in and writing about -and criticizing.
Probably one they'd ridden in dozens and dozens of times.

The news really hit me and I cried much more than I was expecting to, as I read Freddy's note about how Bryan/Alejandra had been bullied and mistreated, which I guess I should've expected, especially
in a place as Hispanic as where we are.

And what really hits you so hard is that the last two tweets she sent right before she jumped - "i could use a hug right now"


and "bon voyage"




Wow! Me being me, a very empathetic ENFP, those tweets hit me like a ton of bricks!

Apparently Ale's father was, eventually, okay with the idea of a "transition," or, at least had reconciled himself to it, but because Ale was 17, well, obviously, there's lots of things involved that could not be done legally right now.

I wound up staying up late Saturday night/Sunday morning writing down some thoughts -some of which I've included here- and shared them with a bunch of the same people her Dad sent his original letter to who'd interacted with Alejandra.

So yeah, I've been feeling very down the last few days, not least because this news has also made me rethink of all the things I knew about someone I loved whose suicide attenpt and the ricky road afterwards, not least, because many of her friends turned their backs on her prior to that because they'd told many times that the person she was getting involved in was trouble. And was.

So, what are we left with? A bright and caring 17-year old kid who wanted Miami/South Florida to be better than it was, and who was utter fascinated by public policy and transit... commits suicide.
By jumping in front of a train she probably had ridden in at least once before.

How the hell do you even begin to make sense of that?
I can only imagine how totally devastated Alejandra's family is right now.

No need to respond to this post, I just needed to get this out of my system.






















----------
Alejandra's Celebration of Life / Memorial service will be held this Saturday (December 7th) at Mapsons Funeral Home, 3500 SW 8th Street, Miami, Florida.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/alejandra-agredo-miami-riders-alliance


If you consider her ideas and value the huge amount of dedication and time she invested in building her non-profit and writing her application please donate to allow her team to keep working on it. Thank you so much for reading. Her family and those who ride trains and buses will really appreciate it. Thank you.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/obituaries/article237935779.html

https://twitter.com/Kounikishi/status/1200699123013435392?s=20

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2536385439750099&id=100001360044353









— RIP My Little Heart 💔 (@Kounikishi) December 5, 2019

@BillyCorben, @Kounikishi, @RidersMIA, @VirginTrainsMIA, Alejandra Agreda, Billy Corben, Brightline, City of Miami, development, Florida, Metromover, Metrorail, Miami-Dade County, Miami-Dade Metrorail, redevelopment, RidersMIA, SMART Growth, South Florida, teen suicide, transit, Tri-Rail, Twitter, transportation, Virgin Trains