South Beach Hoosier/Hallandale Beach Blog will probably be attending the Broward County Charter Review Commission (CRC) meeting on Wednesday afternoon unless something unexpected comes up.
You also might want to consider bringing a shoe box along, so you can show all the attendees that you are one of those rare folks who can, in fact, "think outside of the box," and are not at all interested in maintaining the status quo that's clearly not working very well for anyone, most of the county's residents.
If you're thinking of attending, or, submitting questions via email, you might want to consider reading the Minutes of some recent meetings beforehand, so that you are up to speed and don't ask something that's already been "asked and answered."
Minutes of Broward County Charter Review Commission,
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
http://www.broward.org/charter/pdf/121207_crc_final.pdf
CRC homepage is at: http://www.broward.org/charter/
By the way, in case you were wondering what the hell "The Broward Workshop" was -unskilled actors pretending to be leaders- join the club.
Unflattering Sun-Sentinel editorial on them is at the bottom of page.
http://www.browardworkshop.com/
105 E. Davie Blvd. Suite 200, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316 Phone: (954) 462-9112
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-flbmayor0228sbfeb28,0,2209022.story?track=rss
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Charter board delays decision on Broward mayor proposal
By Scott Wyman
February 28, 2008
Business executives have begun exploring a petition drive to force a vote this fall on whether to elect a mayor countywide, frustrated by waffling and inaction from a board assigned to update the Browad County charter.
The Charter Review Commission on Wednesday delayed any decision on a proposal to change the mayor's job until early April, following a pair of public hearings. The charter board has vacillated over the past two months on a countywide mayor and Wednesday's nondecision went against its own rules to craft all proposed charter changes before the hearings on March 12 and April 9.
The leaders of the business round table called the Broward Workshop expect to decide within the next week whether to begin collecting more than 65,000 signatures needed for a referendum. They worry the charter board decision will come too late for them to have time to meet the extremely difficult election rules to add the countywide mayor to the November ballot.
"I'm having a hard time understanding what is wrong with letting the electorate decide," said
George Mason, chairman of the Broward Workshop.
The proposal under debate would replace the largely ceremonial post of mayor that now rotates annually among county commissioners. The commission would be enlarged from nine to 11 members with the mayor and one other person being elected countywide.
The mayor question was the last remaining item for the charter board, which is assigned to propose changes to voters in how the county is governed.
The board has been heavily lobbied by both business leaders and county commissioners over what to do, and Wednesday's meeting was chaotic as a result.
One charter board member called in from work in a hospital emergency room. Another tried and failed to call in from a sailboat in the Caribbean. The board voted to ask the public to comment about the mayor question during the hearings, but agreed to distribute preprinted pamphlets that don't mention it.
The proposal charts a middle course between the current system and a strong mayor who would control day-to-day operations of the county. The post would have no more authority than it does today, and a professional administrator would remain in charge of county agencies. Advocates say the mayor could use the post as a bully pulpit to bring a countywide perspective to issues.
County Mayor Lois Wexler and Commissioner Ilene Lieberman accused elected mayor supporters of ignoring the county's economic realities. The county must cut spending in light of the January constitutional amendment requiring tax relief while adding two more commissioners will mean more bureaucracy.
"I'm looking for what's best for the governance of Broward County, and that's not choosing two more elected officials and all their support staff over the adequate funding of human services,"
Reader comments are at:
http://www.topix.com/forum/county/broward-fl/T5B9R7EMN32OJUQ3R
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From http://www.broward.org/charter/pdf/publichearings03and0408.pdf
Your Opportunity to Express Your Views on Potential Changes to the Broward County Charter
Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 1 p.m.
115 S. Andrews Avenue, Room 422
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
• Creation of a Metropolitan Transit Authority
• Non-Interference in County Administration
• County Commission Meeting Rules & Voting
• Broward County Housing Council
• Broward County Regionalism Policy Statement
• Broward County Park Preservation
• Broward County Environmental Policy Statement
• Broward County Ethics Commission
• Redistricting Process
• Children’s Services Recommendation
• County Commission to provide Responsive Report to Management and Efficiency Study Committee
• One year hiatus between end of Management and Efficiency Study Committee and beginning of Charter Review Commission
• Still under consideration: Composition of Broward County Commission
Please visit www.broward.org/charter to review the proposed Charter Amendments or call
954-357-8890 to request copies of proposed amendments.
Both public hearings will be televised on participating cable stations and webcast on www.broward.org.
The Commission will accept questions via email at charterreview@broward.org.
Public input on additional topics is welcome.
The Broward County Charter provides a blueprint for the operation of a countywide government that serves all residents in Broward County.
The Charter Review Commission is created for the purpose of conducting a comprehensive study of any or all phases of County government in conformance with Article VI of the Charter of Broward County, Florida.
Broward County Charter Review Commission
115 S. Andrews Avenue-Annex B
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
Phone: 954-357-8890 • FAX: 954-357-8889
charterreview@broward.org
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http://www.theledger.com/article/20080324/NEWS/803240330/1023
The Lakeland Ledger
March 24, 2008
Hiding Homeless Won't Work
An editorial from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale:
Downtown Fort Lauderdale would be more pristine without homeless people sleeping on benches, picking through garbage and urinating on sidewalks. No doubt about it.
But sweeping disheveled people out of the vicinity just so restaurant customers, condo dwellers and business owners won't have to tolerate seeing them is dehumanizing. And it would only transfer destitute people from one location to another.
Don't think so? Count the number of Broward cities that have passed ordinances banning people from sleeping in cars, largely in hope of pointing homeless people somewhere else.
The issue is nothing new in Broward County, where last year there were 3,154 homeless people, 701 living on the streets, according to a survey.
While the county is far removed from its Tent City days, when the homeless lived in a makeshift shelter in front of the Broward Boulevard bus terminal, it obviously still has a long way to go.
But the solution does not lie in sweeping the homeless under the rug or locking them up for sleeping on the streets. It requires public policy to effectively deal with issues that lead to homelessness - poverty and mental illness for example - and adding more beds to shelters.
Unfortunately, business power brokers who met recently to brainstorm about how to get rid of the nomads missed an opportunity to show real leadership. Sponsored by the Urban Core Committee of the Broward Workshop, the event focused on "safety, security and quality of life," not for the homeless, but for the downtown crowd who don't want them nearby when "spending $100 for lunch," as one developer so bluntly put it.
Instead of fretting about homelessness, Broward's business leaders should use their resources and influence to help address the socioeconomic issues that lead to the problem. Homelessness is best addressed as a condition, not a crime.
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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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