Broward Palm Beach News Blog

​As of last Friday, the Broward County School District had 587 new Haitian students -- an increase of 85 since the Sun-Sentinel published its last article a few days earlier. That's far more students than Miami-Dade or Palm Beach County, but then the Broward schools have plenty of room, thanks to the corrupt over-building of classrooms that Bob Norman has described on Daily Pulp.

But it's not enough to put the Haitian refugees in classrooms. It's another to pay for their education and a host of other necessary services. Especially when they arrive at the same time as Broward County is learning that its home values, which are the basis for the taxes integral to school funding, plummeted in 2009.

​It's nice to see a Broward-born politician like Sen. George LeMieux keeping a vigilant eye for conflicts of interest, even though we're not technically sure he's right -- nor that he's remotely qualified to be an arbiter of such things. A few months ago, LeMieux boldly challenged the chairman of a Senate regulatory committee to account for his past ties to the man who leads an agency regulated by that committee.

LeMieux wonders whether Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia can be objective in appraising the performance by David L. Strickland, current head of the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration. Prior to taking that position, Strickland had worked as an attorney and senior staffer for a committee on which Rockefeller was the chair. Now Rockefeller's committee must take Strickland to task for how thoroughly Strickland's agency evaluated Toyota cars, currently in the midst of a massive recall.

Here's an excerpt from an article from ABC News in which LeMieux questions Strickland:

​The local news for this Tuesday morning:

• Home values in Broward County fell approximately 16 percent this past year, a figure that means that county officials may have to trim up to $150 million from an already skeletal budget. [Miami Herald]
• A very thin silver lining? South Florida made some major bank on the Super Bowl. [CBS4]
• Bankruptcy attorneys slapped attorney Russ Adler with a $1.2 million lawsuit, alleging that he and his wife received at least that much in overpayments thanks to Scott Rothstein's Ponzi scheme. [Miami Herald]
  
• West Palm Beach commissioners banned the opening of new pain clinics in the city for the next year, fearing that the shady businesses will continue to spread out from their base in Broward. [Palm Beach Post]
  

Flickr: Barron Roth

A high-flying highlight from this weekend's clash between Winter Park and Pine Crest, nationally televised on ESPN2.

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browardhealth.org

Maloney

​Patrick Maloney resigned Friday as the chief executive officer of Coral Springs Medical Center, inviting speculation that he found himself the wrong side of a political faultline at the public hospital district.

There were signs of Maloney's departure as recently as last week's board meeting. That's when Dr. Carrie Greenspan, chief of staff at the Coral Springs hospital, gave the four newly appointed commissioners a long list of Maloney's virtues as an executive. She described his "open-door" policies and the climate of high-morale fostered by his leadership. Her remarks were much more expansive than those given by other chiefs of staff, and now it seems she either hoped to save Maloney's job or at least place her support of him on the permanent record. There was also a "farewell" tone to Maloney's remarks later in the meeting.

Lake Worth Commissioner Jennings and Sunflower: Thriving

​City Commissioners are not often noted for their vibrant good health; up there on the dais under those fluorescent lights, most of them look little gray around the gills. But judging from her consumption of green leafy vegetables, Lake Worth City Commissioner Cara Jennings, 33, now in her second term, may well outlive her most hostile opponents. Jennings, who has been  associated with the anarchist movement for more than a decade, keeps an open house:  What you see with Jennings is  what you get.

We stopped by Jennings' Pepto-Bismol pink bungalow on Lake Worth's C St. -- it's nicknamed "The Canew," -- last Friday night. A sign taped by the heavily-flyered front door reads: "We Are a Community-Oriented Anarchist Collective Home," followed by a list of reasonable requests: 

While most of South Florida was obsessed with that little "Super Bowl" business this weekend, Wellington resident Vanilla Ice (Robert Van Winkle) was at a basketball game. In Canada.

For the chilled Toronto crowd, Ice played his cover of "Play That Funky Music," then asked, "How 'bout a little old-school for Canada?"

Having had our own favorite teams eliminated from the NFL Playoffs, my friends and I were dispassionate observers of yesterday's Super Bowl. We had a slight preference for a Saints victory, if only because it's easy to empathize with New Orleans' hurricane misfortunes and for the franchise's four decades of football futility. But we hoped to summon a more passionate stake in the game by watching it at the newly opened New Orleans themed restaurant in Pompano Beach, the French Quarter.

Flickr: laoruuh609

​Even the irony of it has become a cliche: Reality television is the best place to deceive the world. Ross Mandell's looking to convince the public that he's not the boiler-room-based white collar crook he appears to be in the U.S. government's criminal complaint; rather, that he's a honest, funny, family-lovin' guy who can't help that he's such an ingenious businessman.

Mandell told the Los Angeles Times. "I would love to allow the world to see me as a I really am."

Careful what you wish for. Here's an article that suggests he's really a guy who cheated investors out of $140 million.

If Mandell's pitch gets a green light, the camera crews will be setting up shop in his $1.8 million home in Boca Raton.

image by Octavio Diaz http://octaviodiaz.blogspot.com/

​A couple of days ago we asked Vice Mayor George Brummer about the City of Pompano Beach's official opposition to the controversial Amendment 4. The "Hometown Democracy" movement is sweeping across Florida, revving up its engines for a vote this November 2010 that would put growth back in the hands of ordinary citizens rather than, say, politicians who might be likely to fall headfirst into the pockets of developers. If Amendment 4 passes, it shall be written into the consitution that major land use changes will be subject to popular vote.

The Pompano Beach City Commission, we learned last week, is hardly the first city in Broward County to want to make a grand symbolic gesture about Amendment 4. We asked Rhonda Calhoun over at the Broward League of Cities about this, and she forwarded us a list of cities who have already passed official resolutions decrying the Amendment.