Received this Broward County email the other day about an upcoming meeting in three weeks regarding a proposed People Mover System between Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Int'l Airport and Port Everglades.
Yes, something which, much as I hate repeating myself, like so many things in South Florida, would already be up and running -and working successfully!- if this were a very different kind of area.
Well, assuming I'm entirely out of my college football Bowl game-induced coma by then, I'll likely be at this Broward meeting on the 10th, ready, willing and able to pepper somebody with questions. http://www.broward.org/airport/pdfs/corridor_report_7307.pdf
For instance, to start with the most obvious question, will this interface with a future train station on the FEC tracks, per the SFECC meetings I've attended in Hollywood and Aventura, meetings which were full of people wanting this to become a reality as soon as possible?
You know, for residents who'd prefer to simply hop a train near their home near US-1, in both Broward and Miami-Dade counties, to take advantage of easier access and cheaper fares than what MIA-based airlines offer, esp on Southwest Airlines?
Smart people who don't want to pay $ just so their car can take a mini-vacation, in an airport-affiliated parking lot where it's liable to be nicked by somebody wrestling their suitcase out of their car in the next parking space, just inches away from yours?
Background info on the county's plan was found at the Broward County Annual Report Fiscal Year 2006's transportation section http://www.broward.org/publicinfo/transportation.pdf
which states:
Port Everglades and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport officials are in the third year of a study to find ways to effectively move cruise passengers between the two facilities. To date, $4 million has been committed to look at long-range alternatives to link the airport and port. Among the many alternatives being considered are a people mover, which could utilize a raised dedicated guideway betweenthe port and airport.
Other odds and ends:
If I didn't know any better, judging by this story, I'd almost think that L.A. mayor Antonio Villaigrosa thought he lived in South Florida, with his policy of corporate cronyism along the lines of the Vladimir Putin/Mara Giulianti crony capitalism model.
L.A. mayor lines up donors for favorite causes
Villaraigosa has plenty of pet projects, and entities with business before the city have been giving generously to them.
by David Zahniser of the Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-funds18dec18,0,3566265.story?coll=la-tot-topstories&track=ntothtml
Yesterday's Boston Globe had an interesting update on news about Google's Street View project, which I've been following for a bit now:
http://www.boston.com/
For more info, see http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/index.html
Video Google's "Street View" makes its Boston debut
They already have it set up for South Beach, and if some different people were running things up in Hollywood, perhaps in the not-too distant future, they'd have it there, too.
That is, AFTER they get some bus shelters at Young Circle, which I remind you, is only the busiest transit point in all of SE Broward.
http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2007/10/thoughts-on-broward-county-transit.html
Nearly a year after The Arts Park at Young Circle road construction has concluded, the area still lacks a single bus shelter, much less, an info kiosk with schedule and route information for all the many riders of mass transit there, day and night, rain or shine, heat and humidity.
Not residents who need to be persuaded to use mass transit by Broward Transit's full-page ads in the Sun-Sentinel, but rather people who already use it.
This, in a city like Hollywood that, typically, already thinks it's transit-oriented according to Hollywood Commissioner Dick Blattner. It's ridiculous.
Last Friday afternoon I spoke to someone I know at the Broward County Govt. HQ bldg. on Andrews Avenue, someone very much tuned in to the latest news about all things political and policy in the county.
More importantly here, someone who was also quite familiar with my own particular concerns and take on the way things are done around here -when they're done at all.
When I brought up the old sore subject of bus shelters, which I had mentioned at the Broward County Transit Forum at the Broward Convention Center, which rattleded Commissioner Lois Wexler, specifically, as it relates to both Hallandale Beach and Hollywood's rather disastrous management of them, my friend chimed in that based on everything they knew and had heard, essentially, Mayor Giulianti has next-to-no interest in getting shelters there, despite how self-evident the need is.
Apparently, so I was told, it's really too downscale for her tastes.
A few weeks ago, I spoke to somebody at the Hollywood city manager's office about this subject, and while they were very civil on the phone, they couldn't actually offer up even a guess as to when the necessary shelters would actually be up there. If they go up.
That speaks volumes about the way things are in Hollywood right now, and why yours truly would like to see big changes in leadership up there come the January 29th election.
Getting back to Street View for a sec, the Top 15 Street View sightings, as of May, are at: http://mashable.com/2007/05/31/top-15-google-street-view-sightings/
Speaking of infrastructure...
But seriously, I've been meaning to post something about privatization for a bit, and especially since I first read an excellent overview of the subject in Business Week in May titled, "Roads To Riches, Why investors are clamoring to take over America's highways, bridges, and airports—and why the public should be nervous" by Emily Thornton.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_19/b4033001.htm
Per this subject, there's a lot of controversy back in Indiana over the moves that Gov. Mitch Daniels has made in that regard in his first term.
Most specifically, regarding the Indiana Tollway, which may even affect the gubernatorial election there next year, since it gets to basic notions of what the role of the state should be, policy-wise, in the 21st century.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/06/30/the_road_to_privatization/
Speaking not of the Tollway specifically, but the broader topic, is it a hopelessly old-fashioned notion for the state to do something for residents that could be done for them cheaper, more efficiently and faster by private enterprise, just because they always have in the past?
(If you're a regular reader, there's no point in me mentioning again having spoken to Democrat Jill Long Thompson quite a few times over the past 20 years. Jill's currently got a big lead for the Dem gubernatorial nomination in the Hoosier state.)
Oddly enough, though I don't think I look like either one of them, when I lived in the D.C, area, people used to walk up to me -esp in Georgetown for some odd reason- and mistake me for either Mitch Daniels or Vice President Dan Quayle's resident genius on hand, David Frum. http://www.davidfrum.com/
They always seemed SO disappointed when I told them they were mistaken!
I'll have a post in another day or so about the Orange Bowl's Beach Bash not being convenient and fun, since for the second year in a row, it will be held in that bastion of daytime fun, downtown Miami, instead of its four-year home, Hollywood Beach.
http://www.orangebowl.org/
As a consequence, it's no longer a Beach Bash but a Fan Fest.
http://www.orangebowl.org/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=11800&KEY=&ATCLID=694673
See my July post for more info on the Beach Bash, formerly one of the true highlights of the year.
http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2007/07/happy-27th-birthday-jessica-simpson.html
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http://bcegov2.broward.org/newsrelease/viewscreen.asp?MessageID=1640
Public Workshop on Project Development and Environment Study Scheduled January 10, 2008
12/14/2007 2:33:21 PM
DATE: December 14, 2007
CONTACT: Ellen Kennedy, Manager of Corporate & Community Relations
PHONE: 954-468-3508
WHO: Broward County Port Everglades and Aviation Departments
WHAT: Project Development and Environment (PD&E) Study Public Workshop Public input is requested for the PD&E Study of a Broward County Intermodal
Center and People Mover System between Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Int'l
Airport and Port Everglades.
WHEN: Thursday, January 10, 2008
WHERE: Broward County African-American Research Library & Cultural Center,
Auditorium, 2650 NW 6th Street (Sistrunk Blvd.), Fort Lauderdale, Florida
TIME: 6:00 p.m. Information and exhibits 7:00 p.m. Presentation and Q&A
WHY: The Intermodal Center will provide a regional transportation hub to connect
transit users to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) and the Port Everglades (Seaport). The People Mover will offer a high capacity system to provide efficient access to FLL, to the Seaport and between FLL and the Seaport for regional users, employees and air/sea patrons. The goal is to alleviate road congestion on the limited access roads between the two facilities and facilitate the need for efficient freight, cargo and petroleum movement out of the regionally significant port.
Members of the project consulting team and Broward County Port Everglades and Aviation Department staff will share project information and answer questions regarding the project.
CONTACT: Carmen Ayala, MTM Partners 954-620-7044 or via email
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Upcoming workshop on FLL People Mover; Google's Street Views; OB Beach Bash
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In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation
The South Florida I Grew Up In
Excerpts from Joan Didion's Miami, 1987, Simon & Schuster:
In the continuing opera still called, even by Cubans who have now lived the largest part of their lives in this country, el exilo, the exile, meetings at private homes in Miami Beach are seen to have consequences. The actions of individuals are seen to affect events directly. Revolutions and counter-revolutions are framed in the private sector, and the state security apparatus exists exclusively to be enlisted by one or another private player. That this particular political style, indigenous to the Caribbean and to Central America, has now been naturalized in the United States is one reason why, on the flat coastal swamps of South Florida, where the palmettos once blew over the detritus of a dozen failed booms and the hotels were boarded up six months a year, there has evolved since the early New Year's morning in 1959 when Fulgencio Batista flew for the last time out of Havana a settlement of considerable interest, not exactly an American city as American cities have until recently been understood but a tropical capital: long on rumor, short on memory, overbuilt on the chimera of runaway money and referring not to New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Atlanta but to Caracas and Mexico, to Havana and to Bogota and to Paris and Madrid. Of American cities Miami has since 1959 connected only to Washington, which is the peculiarity of both places, and increasingly the warp...
"The general wildness, the eternal labyrinths of waters and marshes, interlocked and apparently neverending; the whole surrounded by interminable swamps... Here I am then in the Floridas, thought I," John James Audobon wrote to the editor of The Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science during the course of an 1831 foray in the territory then still called the Floridas. The place came first, and to touch down there is to begin to understand why at least six administations now have found South Florida so fecund a colony. I never passed through security for a flight to Miami without experiencing a certain weightlessness, the heightened wariness of having left the developed world for a more fluid atmosphere, one in which the native distrust of extreme possibilities that tended to ground the temperate United States in an obeisance to democratic institutions seemed rooted, if at all, only shallowly.
At the gate for such flights the preferred language was already Spanish. Delays were explained by weather in Panama. The very names of the scheduled destinations suggested a world in which many evangelical inclinations had historically been accomodated, many yearnings toward empire indulged...
In this mood Miami seemed not a city at all but a tale, a romance of the tropics, a kind of waking dream in which any possibility could and would be accomodated...
Hallandale Beach Blog
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Hallandale Beach Blog is where I try to inject or otherwise superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and much-needed insight onto local Broward County government and public policy issues, which I feel is sorely lacking in local media now, despite all the technological advances that have taken place since I grew-up in South Florida in the 1970's. On this blog, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, anger, disdain and laser-like attention primarily on the coastal cities of Aventura, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.
IF you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be in stultifying traffic, be paying higher-than-necessary taxes, and be continually musing about the chronic lack of any real accountability or transparency among not only elected govt. officials, but also of City, County and State employees as well. Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, they couldn't be farther from the sort of strong results-oriented, work-ethic mentality that citizens here deserve and are paying for.
This is particularly true in the town I live in, the City of Hallandale Beach, just north of Aventura and south of Hollywood. There, the Perfect Storm of years of apathy, incompetency and cronyism are all too readily apparent.
It's a city with tremendous potential because of its terrific location and weather, yet its citizens have become numb to its outrages and screw-ups after years of the worst kind of chronic mismanagement and lack of foresight. On a daily basis, they wake up and see the same old problems again that have never being adequately resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion. Instead the city government either closes their eyes and hopes you'll forget the problem, or kicks them -once again- further down the road.
I used to ask myself, and not at all rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters who want to show through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?"
Hearing no response, I decided to start a blog that could do some of these things, taking the p.o.v. of a reasonable-but-skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time.
Someone who wanted questions answered in a honest and forthright fashion that citizens have the right to expect.
Hallandale Beach Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change. http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Hallandale Beach Blog is where I try to inject or otherwise superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and much-needed insight onto local Broward County government and public policy issues, which I feel is sorely lacking in local media now, despite all the technological advances that have taken place since I grew-up in South Florida in the 1970's. On this blog, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, anger, disdain and laser-like attention primarily on the coastal cities of Aventura, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.
IF you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be in stultifying traffic, be paying higher-than-necessary taxes, and be continually musing about the chronic lack of any real accountability or transparency among not only elected govt. officials, but also of City, County and State employees as well. Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, they couldn't be farther from the sort of strong results-oriented, work-ethic mentality that citizens here deserve and are paying for.
This is particularly true in the town I live in, the City of Hallandale Beach, just north of Aventura and south of Hollywood. There, the Perfect Storm of years of apathy, incompetency and cronyism are all too readily apparent.
Sadly for its residents, Hallandale Beach is where even the easily-solved or entirely predictable quality-of-life problems are left to fester for YEARS on end, because of myopia, lack of common sense and the unsatisfactory management and coordination of resources and personnel.
It's a city with tremendous potential because of its terrific location and weather, yet its citizens have become numb to its outrages and screw-ups after years of the worst kind of chronic mismanagement and lack of foresight. On a daily basis, they wake up and see the same old problems again that have never being adequately resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion. Instead the city government either closes their eyes and hopes you'll forget the problem, or kicks them -once again- further down the road.
I used to ask myself, and not at all rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters who want to show through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?"
Hearing no response, I decided to start a blog that could do some of these things, taking the p.o.v. of a reasonable-but-skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time.
Someone who wanted questions answered in a honest and forthright fashion that citizens have the right to expect.
Hallandale Beach Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change. http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker
Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker
Hollywood in cartoons, 10-21-06 Non-Sequitur by Wiley, www-NON-SEQUITUR.COM
Miami Dolphins
Sebastian the Ibis, the Spirited Mascot of the University of Miami Hurricanes
Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders, April 28, 2007
Of cheerleaders past and present
Given South Florida's unique version of the melting pot -con salsa- demographics and mindset, these women in the photo above are surely what most South Floridians would consider attractive women. But for this observer, who's spent hours & hours at IU cheerleader tryouts and who has known dozens of cheerleaders -and wannabes- in North Miami Beach, Bloomington, Evanston and Washington, D.C., the whole time I was watching these members of the Dolphins' squad perform, I couldn't help but compare them and their routines to those of some IU friends of mine who ALWAYS showed true Hoosier spirit & enthusiasm.
Sitting at my table right near the stage and still later, while watching the long lines of Dolphin fans of all ages waiting to snap photos of themselves with the cheerleaders, I couldn't help but think about those friends who always left me and other Hoosier fans feeling positive & optimistic.
Was there anyone I saw in Davie who possessed these valuable intangibles: the dancing precision of IU Red Stepper -and Captain- Gail Amster, my talented and spirited Phi Beta Kappa pal from Deerfield (IL), who always sat next to me in our Telecom. classes as we took turns entertaining the other; the ebullient spirit & energy of two Hoosier cheerleaders -and captains- from Bloomington, Wendy (Mulholland) Moyle & Sara Cox; the hypnotic, Midwestern, girl-next-door sexiness of Hoosier cheerleader Julie Bymaster, from Brownsburg; or, the adorable Southern girl-next-door appeal of former Hoosier Pom squader Jennifer Grimes, of Louisville, always such a clear distraction while sitting underneath the basket?
Nope, not that I could see. But then they were VERY tough acts to follow!!!
And that's not to mention my talented & spirited friends like Denise Andrews of Portage, Jody Kosanovich of Hammond & Linda Ahlbrand of Chesterton, all of whom were dynamic cheerleaders -and captains- at very large Hoosier high schools that were always in the championship mix, with Denise's team winning the Ind. football championship her senior year when she was captain -just like in a movie. That Denise, Jody & Linda all lived on the same dorm floor, just three stories above me at Briscoe Quad our freshman year, was one of the greatest coincidences -and strokes of luck for me!- that I could've ever hoped for.
You could hardly ask for better ambassadors of IU than THESE very smart, sweet and talented women. In a future SBH post, I'll tell the story of one of the greatest Hoosiers I ever met, the aforementioned Wendy Mulholland, the Bloomington-born captain and emotional heart of the great early '80's IU cheerleading squads, and the daughter of Jack Mulholland, IU's former longtime Treasurer. The acorn doesn't fall far from a tree built on a foundation of integrity & community service!
(After he retired, Mr. Mulholland was the first executive director of the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County. I used to joke with Wendy that her dad's name was the one that was permanently affixed to the bottom of my work-study checks for years, while I worked at the Dept. of Political Science's Library, first, at the Student Building in the old part of campus, and then later, after it was refurbished, in magnificent Woodburn Hall, my favorite building on campus.)
In that future post, I'll share some reflections on Wendy's great strength of character and personality; my intentions of returning to Bloomington a few weeks before Fall '82 classes started, so I could help Wendy train and work-out to rehab her knee, so she'd feel confident in trying-out for the squad again, following a bad knee injury that'd left her physically-unable to try-out for the squad the previous spring, a big disappointment to those of us who cared about both Wendy and the team; my incredulity at, quite literally, running into Wendy while walking down a sidewalk one afternoon a few years later in Evanston, IL, when we were astonished to discover we were both living there, with me trying to hook on with a Windy City advertising agency, and Wendy then-attending Kellogg (KGSM) at Northwestern, right when the WSJ had named Kellogg the #1 Business School in the country.
I'll also share a story about Wendy performing a true act of kindness towards me in 1982, when I was having a real emergency, and she went above-and-beyond what I had any logical reason to expect. Yet, Wendy, along with her very helpful dad, Jack, came through for me when I was in a very bad time crunch. I've never forgotten Wendy's kindness towards me, and her true Hoosier spirit.
There's NOTHING I wouldn't do for Wendy Mulholland.
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