Traffic Cameras - Call it Big Brother's New Tax

Do you still think that Hallandale Beach the "City of Choice" ?

Not anymore for many drivers who, as you will read below, will try to avoid Hallandale's cameras trap.

One Million Dollars in six months! This is the take of the city and they have recently increased the fine from $125 to $158, so that they can share part of this revenue with the State of Florida.

And that's just the beginning.

$158 for not slowing down enough at a red light right turn, seems so excessive and such an hypocritical money grab!

Just more money-generating, privacy-invading, shameful scheme.

Every little chip hammered out of our Constitution brings us one step closer to George Orwell's and Aldous Huxley's perfect universes.

I'll take freedom over the so called "safety" any day of the week.

Big Brother has many Eyes!

Here is what I read today in the Sun Sentinel:

Rolling right turn could cost you $158

Red-light cameras are helping Hallandale Beach raise $1 million

In theory, red-light cameras are supposed to be about safety, curbing reckless drivers from blowing through intersections at high speeds.

But the reality at one South Florida intersection seems more like a game of "Gotcha," with an astounding 93 percent of violations going to unwitting drivers making rolling right turns on red. "This feels like a money grab," said Phil Kodroff, one of almost 11,000 drivers to get snagged by Hallandale Beach's red-light camera since it started snapping away in January.

The city's take by mid-June: almost $1 million.

"Let's be honest about it, we're here to gouge you," said Hallandale Beach Commissioner Keith London, an opponent of red-light cameras. "To say it's about public safety is pretty disingenuous. It's all about the revenue." Love them or hate them, the cameras soon will become fixtures of South Florida life. Now that the devices have gotten the green light from the Legislature and Gov. Charlie Crist, more cash-strapped cities will be turning to them for easy money.

In the past week, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Boynton Beach have moved forward with plans to install cameras. They will join Hallandale Beach, Pembroke Pines and West Palm Beach, which already have cameras running. Royal Palm Beach installed cameras in November but has been issuing only warnings; fines likely will start by September. Under the law that took effect July 1, fines for the first offense increased to $158 from $125, with the money now divided between the state and cities.

"The mentality of the South Florida driver is going to have to change," said Mark Antonio, interim city manager of Hallandale Beach. Said Hallandale Beach Police Maj. Dwayne Flournoy: "It's the 'Halo effect.' If you get compliant at one intersection, your behavior will change at all the others."

Kodroff, of Hollywood, said his behavior has changed: He is avoiding Hallandale Beach's camera intersection at Federal Highway and Hallandale Beach Boulevard, along with the businesses on that corridor.

After a steak dinner at the Gulfstream Park casino complex May 22, Kodroff thought he had an uneventful drive home to his beachfront condo. A month later, he opened his mail to find a $125 ticket. His speed when he made the right on red onto Hallandale Beach Boulevard, according to the violation notice: "0." "It's not sensible," Kodroff said. "I hit my brakes, I thought I came to a full stop."

A Miami-Dade judge put the brakes on the cameras in February, when he ruled that Aventura's program was improper. But legislators rewrote state law to allow them. Fines are sent to the registered owners of vehicles. The owners can appeal or get the fine transferred if they weren't driving. Under the new law, the vendor no longer gets a percentage of revenue, but a fixed monthly rate. American Traffic Solutions of Scottsdale, Ariz., dominates the market, managing the programs for all the South Florida cities.

Camera advocates say they make red-light runners think twice before blowing through intersections, reducing devastating T-bone crashes. But critics say the cameras could spur an increase in rear-end collisions, as people slam on their brakes at the last second. "If it's used in the right context, catching people who blow through a light, I don't have a problem with it," said Kodroff, who paid his fine without disputing it. "But getting people making a right on red, if they stop after the crosswalk or are going two miles per hour, seems a little shady."

Hallandale Beach is alone in enforcing right-turn violations

The Sun Sentinel - July 10, 2010 – By Michael Mayo.


Henry B. Nathan is a Florida Realtor at United Realty Group Inc.

Visit my websites: GoldenIsles-homes.com

and Golden-Beach-Homes.com

and The Beach Club Condos

Hallandale Beach Blues - 2010

The City of Hallandale is having a nasty dispute, that can be seen on several blogs, between some of its commissioners, residents, and some condo association societies.

The fact is that, after years of paying the City Manager incredibly high salaries and benefits, it appears that this Manager wasn't even going to work most of the time.

They have finally decided to fire him.

The dispute is apparently about paying him now 11 months of severance package, plus health insurance for life, I think, and some additional benefits. And that the total bill could be almost a million dollar.

Some time ago, and looking at the high property taxes in Florida which we had to endure during the last few years, due to the accelerated increase of assessed values, I wrote that our cities cannot understand that, since we are in a period of recession, they have to learn how to spend our money more wisely.

I wrote a few times, on how they found the turnaround way of avoiding what our legislators had mandated: reduction of taxes.

This is an example.

The City manager, recently fired, made apparently between $250,000 and $450,000 a year (depending on whose information you read).

If in fact he made these last figures, I bet that not even the City manager of Los Angeles, Tokyo, or Paris would match it. That's really something to brag about!

Hallandale Beach is a city of about 40,000 residents. Schools are some of the worst in the state.
Services are very expensive and considered inferior.

But the City Hall is impressive...

You just draw your conclusions.

Henry B. Nathan is a Florida Realtor at United Realty Group Inc.
Visit my website: http://www.condo-southflorida.com
where you can search for Aventura Condos, Florida Condos, Sunny Isles Condos,

I like this book

FAME and OBSCURITY - By Gay Talese.

I discovered this writer recently.

An Italian (born Gaetano Talese) who wrote in the New York Times, years ago, his portraits of famous people are delightful. In this book: Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Louis, Peter O'Toole.

If you are a fan of good writing, you will enjoy Talese, a writer and a non-fiction painter of vivid portraits.

The book also includes The Bridge, a chronicle on how the Verrazano-Narrows bridge was built in New York and a history of the "boomers", builders of bridges and skyscrapers.

And there is some more in the book that I will leave you to explore.

Sorry, it's supposed to be a Real Estate Blog, but it's a lazy summer day.

Henry B. Nathan is a Florida Realtor at United Realty Group Inc.
Visit my website: GoldenIsles-homes.com
where you can search for Golden Isles Real Estate

Curious twists in traditional law issues.

I read this in the Florida Business Review - February 13, 2009

Today's economy may produce a house divided

No one knows the disruptive force of a bad economy better than a divorcing couple facing foreclosure.

Take the case of Joaquin A and Indra B, who have been married for almost nine years. They bought their Biscayne Park home near the height of the housing boom for $231,000 in 2005. It fell into foreclosure with them owing $222,000 last year, and the house went on the market.

B hadn't worked in a year, and the couple fell about $8,000 in arrears on the mortgage with Wells Fargo Bank. Her lawyer, Miami attorney Peter Abraham, filed an emergency motion for contempt for nonpayment of the mortgage and child support shortly after the foreclosure filing, stating, "Petitioner and the parties' minor child resides in the marital home and will be rendered homeless upon foreclosure."

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Bernard Shapiro held A in contempt in July but held off on jailing him so he could square the mortgage. A divorce settlement agreement is awaiting B's signature. B and A' attorney declined to comment. Calls to A and B's attorney were not returned.

The predicament of what to do about family homes in divorce during a recession is rippling through the field of family law. What traditionally was a couple's biggest asset to be divided in a divorce has quickly transformed into the biggest debt and a major headache. "Initially, we were fighting over the equity in the house," said Linda Jaffe, a Fort Lauderdale solo practitioner who specializes in family law. Now "we're being faced with questions that I don't know that we're necessarily equipped as divorce lawyers to answer."

Should clients try renegotiating the mortgage? Go along with foreclosure? Abandon the property? Try a short sale? In the past year, Jaffe said she has been saddled with this new set of questions repeatedly. "It's an absolute catastrophe we're dealing with right now," she said. Stephen Butter, who has practiced divorce law for 44 years in Miami, said his role has changed with the financial tides. He has helped clients fend off foreclosure just long enough to salt away a deposit and first month's rent. A client who was a married homeowner a year earlier ends up being a divorced tenant with the bank taking the house.

"Now, it's rampant. Now when somebody comes in for divorce, their house is either in foreclosure, or they're already three or four months behind," he said.

For homeowners who owe more than the value of their home, the new question is how to equitably divide the value of a house — when it's negative. "Is that a marital liability?" he asked.

Butter worked on a case that ended with something of a biblical solution that left ownership of the home untouched. One of Butter's clients — a mother of five — was afraid to unload the family home in an ice-cold real estate market. He brokered a deal allowing her to alternate weeks in the family home and weeks away with her family or friends. The children remain in the home while the parents alternate. He would not identify the clients.

For better or worse, more couples are staying together. Divorce filings dropped to 14,250 from 16,508 in Miami-Dade Circuit Court; to 8,729 from 9,651 in the Broward Circuit Court; and to 5,554 from 5,927 in Palm Beach Circuit Court in the year ended last June compared with the year before.

Davie appraiser Don Sarley of Advanced Research and Appraisals, said plummeting home values have affected divorces in other unforeseen ways — like not being able to tap a home's value to pay attorney fees. "People can't pay lawyers," he said. "You can't even look at the house to lien anymore."

In the past year, the median sale price of a single-family home dropped 27 percent in Miami-Dade County, 23 percent in Broward County and 18 percent in Palm Beach County, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. And while the median sales price of Miami-Dade condos fell 12 percent during the same period, it shot down 29 percent in Fort Lauderdale and 27 percent in Palm Beach County, according to association figures. With home values in broad decline, the strategy for dealing with homes in divorce has been turned on its head. "Two years ago, they'd be fighting tooth and nail to get the house," Sarley said. "Now they don't want it."

But not everyone has noticed the pinch. Collaborative divorce lawyer Rosemary Roth in Miami, for instance, hasn't seen her practice affected much, but she readily admits the parties are generally conciliatory in her area of the law. Pinched finances may be working to keep families unwillingly together. "People are holding onto an otherwise bad situation because of economics," said Alison Taylor, executive director of the Oregon Family Institute, a think tank that examines the relationships between households and the courts.

"Since we usually see divorces happen when the money situation is no longer advantageous, we're probably going to see fewer and fewer families file for divorce," she said. "Kids are going to be subjected to a lot of conflict."

Nothing new in the domain of Money and Love and their eternal and intricate relationship.

Not your usual romantic story? Why not? Sometimes hardship and adversity in times of need can bond, improve understanding and perhaps the sense of family and mutual responsibility.

I am an eternal optimist.

Henry B. Nathan is a Florida Realtor at United Realty Group Inc.Visit my website: http://www.condo-southflorida.com/where you can search for Aventura Condos, Florida Condos,