Author: commtims

     Next year’s Air and Sea Show plans are inching along, but a hiccup yesterday almost sent the progress in reverse… ever heard of a” waiver of a conflict of interest?” …. I’ll get to that goofy concept in a minute ….. read on

        Here’s the weird story

         

     In case you lost track of the Air Show’s unusual history, here is a brief version…

     The yearly extravaganza, that brought millions of people to the beach each May to see acts like The Thunderbirds and The Blue Angels, was side-lined, due to fiscal matters, complaints from some citizens, and the added fact that the promoter of the event, Mickey Markoff, was caught on numerous occasions peeping into woman’s bedrooms in the middle of the night !

                                              
                                             peeping Mickey                                                

     The event left town for the last few years, but this year, the City Commission, under the leadership of my friend Mayor Jack “who doesn’t love a parade ?” Seiler, the event looks to be coming back.

     In addition to Seiler, much of the success in bringing back the event is due to one beach family.

                                       
                                           the Motwanis                                         

     Romala Motwani is the matriarch of the beach hotel family. Her husband Bob (deceased) and Romola are throw backs to the old days of Fort Lauderdale Beach. 

     The Matwanis were there in the 1980’s, when college kids were busy throwing hotel washing machines in the swimming pools, and they are there still, trying to complete a multi million dollar Trump International Hotel !

     Ramola is one of a kind. You can find her serving on State Boards with the high munkity munks, and you can find her at a Citizen Volunteer Corp. effort, kneeling in the mud pulling weeds at a City Park.

     So on to the conflict.

     Today, the City Commission is entertaining contributing $100,000 to next year’s Air Sea event by paying for a portion of the City Police and Fire that will be required to staff the event.

     Ramola, and her son Dev, who have agreed to rescue the event, serve on two city boards. Ramola serves on the Beach Redevelopment Advisory Board
, or BRAB, and Dev is the Chair of the City’s Economic Development Advisory Board ( not called the EDAB for some reason?).

     Ramola has excused herself from any discussion on the BRAB, citing a conflict of interest. But City officials say her and son Dev still have a conflict of interest according to State Statutes. 

     But, the City was prepared to grant the Motwanis a waiver of conflict of interest!
     Two former beach area presidents were aghast. Steve Glassman called the waiver an “oxymoron”, and Fred Carlson e-mailed that maybe the beach should consider taking back their support for the event.

     The Motwanis had a smarter idea. I received an e-mail last night that the Motwanis would be resigning from their respective City Boards….. 

          no conflicts  … no waiver’s needed ! … gotta love those Motwanis!   
     

    

     
     I think you will enjoy this story …..

      ….  County Commissioner John Rodstrom  …..

         

     Rodstrom’s the only County Commissioner who opposes term limits, and is the only Commissioner that says if his friend Bill Scherer can get them overturned at the Florida Supreme Court, he might ignore the will of the people, and go ahead and run for another term anyhow.

     I’ve been talking to Rodstrom, trying to convince him to change his mind, but not really getting anywhere   … so …. 

     this crazy thing happened this morning !

     I decided to take John a book by well known conservative George F. Will, called “Restoration“. The book is George Will’s convincing case for Term Limits.  

     Rodstrom used to be head of the Young Republicans, so I figured he might give Will’s book a look.

     I drove down to the County building, put a quarter in the meter, and checked in with the guard.

                  

      I showed him the book, and he said, that’s good, that’s good, and handed me my entry badge.

     I walked up to the County Commission hallway, usually jammed with lobbyists, but empty this morning. I figured that meant no Commissioners were home.

     I took this picture in case Rodstrom wasn’t in to take the book.

                 

     I was right, John wasn’t in. I left the book with the desk, and asked that they get it to Rodstrom.

     I went to work.

     When I stopped home for lunch, a package was in front of my door, delivered by Comet Delivery Services, hand delivered ! 

     Yep, it was the book. And a letter from the County Attorney!

                  

     ….. the letter is signed by Joni Armstrong Coffey, County Attorney.

     It says “Vice Mayor Rodstrom has made the decision not to accept such gifts“!

     It goes on to say that “leaving an item at the front desk… would not constitute acceptance of an offered gift”.

     I’m almost speechless   ….. almost!





   

     It came as quite a surprise to me, probably most.

    

     Scott Wyman, long time, solid political reporter for the Sun-Sentinel, has done a total change-up, and instead of reporting on the doings of Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Charlotte Rodstrom, he’ll soon be working as her personal aide!

 

     Rodstrom is by most accounts a tough boss. She might also be the hardest working Commissioner. Leaders in her District aren’t surprised to get calls and e-mails late into the evenings and on weekends, and she seems to have burned through assistants like cord wood!

      And now Wyman will be signing on as her fourth assistant in 6 years.

     Her first assistant was Amber Van Buren, who now works as a manager at Art Serve. When Van Buren left, rumors circulated that Van Buren would talk about bad feelings with Rodstrom, but that never came about.

     Then there was Paul Falcone.



     Falcone was a former teacher of Rodstrom’s son John at St. Thomas Aquinas. Falcone only lasted months, and the rumors of a stormy employment relationship surfaced again. I called Falcone then, who told me to call him in a “a few weeks” after things cooled down, but he wouldn’t ever take my call after that.

     Then came Neesa Warlen. 
 
     The Warlen appointment drew some criticism due to the high salary she was paid by Rodstrom. Warlen made over $70,000 per year, while Mayor Seiler and the other Commissioners pay their aides in the $60,000 range.

     Warlen lasted a few years, and I’ve only heard that she is leaving to “spend more time with her family”.

     Wyman is a true professional, and a good catch by Rodstrom. I had a short conversation with him today, and he sounds really excited – ready for a new adventure! …

    I bet it will be one!
    

     Let’s start off with a Granny update.

She’s apparently in hiding.

If you’ve been following this story, Granny refused to be a victim last week, and pulled her own pistol on some robbers trying to rob her at this Liquor Fountain liquor store, Dixie Highway and NE 13th Street.

The Cops want to find Granny and see if she can help them find all the robbers, but the Cops can’t seem to find Granny! ….

I got a call last week saying Granny “might” be afraid of coming forward, “might” be afraid she’d be charged with something if she came forward. Says I should check on that and he’d call me back.

Well, the FLPD says she’s a victim, no way would she be charged with anything, but as one blog commenter said ” remember Bernard Goetz, and the subway shooting in New York?”

     Point well taken.

Anyhow, it turns out that this isn’t the first robbery at the glow in the dark orange Liquor Fountain on Dixie, or at all the other Liquor Fountains around the City, for that matter!….

On June 12th, 2011, this robber, pictured below, ran inside the Dixie Fountain with a gun demanding money, but exited quick when the owner of this store pulled up his bigger gun and ran the robber down the street! The owner later said that he was lucky to have had bought the big gun from thegunsource.com just days before the incident.

29 year old Hutch Benjamin – busted

Turns out Hutch had robbed another Liquor Fountain on West Sunrise on June 14th, 2011, and another Liquor Fountain on NW 19th Street on May 12, 2011 !

Here’s at least part of Hutch’s rap sheet.

Charges
812.13-2A COC TO ROBBERY (ATT) W/F/ARM/D/W AWTG CAPIAS ROBBERY/FIREARM
784.045-1A-2 COC TO AGG BATTERY GRT/BOD/HRM AWTG CAP AGGRAVATED BATTERY W/DEADLY WEAPON
784.03-1A1 TOUCH OR STRIKE/BATTERY
784.021-1A(C) FLPD***11-66933 AGG ASSAULT W/FIRE ARM
775.0845(2 #1152907 WEAR MASK WHILE COMMITTING 2 DEG FEL

    Seems as though Hutch has a penchant for robbing Liquor Fountains!

Wonder if Granny cured him of that last week ?

     The Cops found at least one of the robbers that tried to rob Granny Good Shot this weekend in the Fort Lauderdale neighborhood of Middle River Terrace.

 They found the robber in Broward General Hospital with three gunshot wounds!

     Turns out, Granny’s a better shot than we knew!

                                   

     The area wants Granny to come forward. They plan on bestowing an award on her for protecting herself ( and the community), and for sending a message to the dark side that ….

               .… we’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore !

     …. in addition, the neighborhood has a one hundred dollar gift certificate for Granny to Outdoor World, so she can re-up her ammunition supply!

    

       As reported to me by the area’s President

     The Fort Lauderdale Police only have it listed, so far,  as “multiple shots fired”, everyone gone by the time they got there, but here is what the locals say happened last Friday morning, and why they’d like to find Granny and give her an award or something!

             

     Some of Fort Lauderdale is safe and peaceful, some not so much!

     As I took my morning walk this a.m., I found this a few blocks from my house…
.
   


      Stapled to the phone poles down the street in my neighborhood, the Fort Lauderdale Police are searching for the gunman who killed Stanley, aka Toucan.

     It took place in the middle of the street, a night time gunbattle that smells suspiciously like a drug deal gone bad ( though the Cops won’t say, just yet).

     Guess I should be glad I walk in the morning !

     It’s one of those ugly secrets of a city, but it’s true.

     Fort Lauderdale has a black male hooker business district!

     In the day time, it’s just a street that runs behind Searstown, south of Sunrise Boulevard,  NE 5th Avenue.

                              

     But when the sun goes down, it’s Black Hooker Road.

     It’s been going on for a couple of decades now. Cindy and I used to own property close by, but gave up, sold out, and moved. Little has changed. 

     I drove home a few hours ago, after attending Mayor Seiler’s latest “jog with the Mayor” event, and decided to take that route to see if things had changed.

     They hadn’t. Here is a black male hooker working black hooker road tonight.

           

     Crazy as it sounds, I stopped to interview him. ” Excuse me, are you a black male hooker?”, I queried.

     “Yea man, what you looking for?” he replied.

     “Actually, I’d like to interview you for a story for my city-wide blog on Fort Lauderdale, and black hooker road”, I answered.

     “Huh?” he shot back.” It’s true” I said. ” How long has this been black male hooker road”,  I asked.

     “Hell , probably 20 years now” he said. “Wait, I ain’t saying no more unless I’m getting paid for this intraview”, he added. 

     I had stuffed four bucks in my pocket in case of this possibility.” I handed it over.

     “Shit“, he said, none too pleased. I asked if I could take a picture of a real life male hooker. He turned his back toward the camera, and grunted, and a set of headlights in the distance was making him jittery to boot.

     “How long you been hookin”, I asked.

     ” I just  started” he barked as he hurried off down the road.

     Not much of an interview I thought.
 
     I guess you get what you pay for, I chuckled to myself.   

     A friend told me that Ron Gray, aka Popeye, was looking for me.

     See, I had written about Popeye, the homeless, but not drifting 56 year old, last September. He says I helped make him famous.  And  I knew just where to find him….

       

     At his home, in the parking lot of Home Depot.

     I shared Popeye’s sad tale with you about a year ago, about falling from the work truck, losing his house, and then his wife, and when my friend told me he thought Popeye had been in the hospital with pneumonia, I expected the worse.

     But there he was, back at home, scrunched over in his filthy wheelchair, at the entrance to Home Depot..

     “Hey Popeye”, I yelled a bit, as Popeye is hard of hearing, his “house” is quite noisy, and I wanted to see if he was breathing!

     He sat up to chat. “Is that Tim Smith?”

     You see, after I wrote about him last year, quite a few of you stopped by to get him a meal, some clothes, even a new shoe.


             

     Popeye looked awful. His cheeks are caving in, his head and arms are so sun-burned it’s painful to look at, and all his veins seem to be jumping out of his skin.

     I told Popeye I didn’t think he was going to last another year in the parking garage, and he agreed. I remembered that Popeye had told me last time we spoke that he was think of putting his bad leg on the RR track to get some permanent aid. I was glad he hadn’t.

     I told him I was going to do an update on him, and he was pleased. “Tell them I could use another shoe, right foot, size ten and a half”.
 
    
                      

     Last year he was size eleven.
    

     Now I can report on how ALL the Broward County Commissioners feel about term limits, and what’s next on the Florida Supreme Court case. I reached seven of the nine Commissioners last week, and at that time, the score was 6 ( in favor of keeping term limits), 1 opposed.

                                             

      You’ll remember that I then put out an APB on Commissioner Ilene Lieberman, when I couldn’t find her anywhere, ( after a half dozen requests), to ask her if she favored term limits. 

     Well, I finally found her (actually, she found me). She called and told me that she had been out due to her sister’s death, and then gave me quite a bit of gruff for harassing her.  

     After we got past that, she told me that she “unequivocally supports term limits” and intends on abiding by them regardless of the outcome of the Florida Supreme Court Case.

     And, Commissioner Sharief’s Chief of Staff, Torey Alston,
 
                                       
                                               Chief Alston

 told me that although Sharief is still out on a personal family matter, that she supports term limits completely also.

     So,  that’s 8-1, with all Commissioners supporting the citizen’s term limit law, except for 

                                           
                                     Commissioner John Rodstrom.

     Also, as an update, the advocate group Save Broward Term Limits has been searching for an attorney it can afford so they, as citizens, can join the fight with the County to retain term limits. If you know of a good one that works cheap, go to SaveBrowardTermLimits.com and let them know!

     Lastly, here is a picture of the “client” of Scherers, in his appeal to overturn term limits at the Florida Supreme Court.
      His name is William Telli, lives in Scherer’s neighborhood, and told a reporter he “didn’t know why the lawsuit was in his name”, ….. I’ve tried calling him, but, no surprise, Telli won’t talk to me –  

                                    
                                         no caption necessary!



     Anyhow,  Here is the Florida Supreme Court case docket card, so you can follow the progress of the case along with me – 


Florida Supreme Court Docket

Case Docket
Case Number: SC11-1737 – Active
WILLIAM TELLI vs. BROWARD COUNTY, ET AL.
Lower Tribunal Case(s): 4D10-4687, 10-7095 25




Date Docketed Description Filed By Notes
08/31/2011 NOTICE-DISCRETIONARY JURIS (DIRECT CONFLICT) PT William Telli BY: PT William R. Scherer, Jr. 169454
09/01/2011 JURIS INITIAL BRIEF PT William Telli BY: PT Daneil S. Weinger 172900 (NO SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT; NOT E-FILED)
09/01/2011 APPENDIX PT William Telli BY: PT Daneil S. Weinger 172900
09/08/2011 Filing Fee $300 2011 – 1016099 Amount: $300
09/08/2011 Fee Paid In Full – $300
09/09/2011 ORDER-BRIEF STRICKEN (NON-COMPLIANCE) Petitioner’s jurisdictional brief, which was filed with this Court on September 1, 2011, does not comply with Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.210 and is hereby stricken. Petitioner is hereby directed, on or before September 29, 2011, to serve an amended jurisdictional brief which includes a Summary of Argument and shall not exceed ten pages in length.
09/15/2011 JURIS INITIAL AMD BRIEF PT William Telli BY: PT Daneil S. Weinger 172900 O&5 & E-MAIL (E-MAILED “PDF” FORMAT – REQ’D TO RE-SUBMIT IN WORD)
09/20/2011 JURIS INITIAL AMD BRIEF PT William Telli BY: PT Daneil S. Weinger 172900 FILED AS “CORRECTED AMENDED BRIEF” & E-MAIL – (REQ’D MOTION TO ACCEPT)
09/20/2011 APPENDIX (AMENDED) PT William Telli BY: PT Daneil S. Weinger 172900 TO CORRECTED AMENDED BRIEF