One Way Ticket Outta Town .... Free !
The City of Fort Lauderdale might just buy you a one-way bus ticket out of town!
Of course, that's if you are one of our many homeless that get stuck here with little hope and even less resources.
Many find themselves hanging around Stranahan Park looking for a meal, aggressively panhandling, unnerving the tourists, heading downhill fast!
The program is called the Homeward Bound Reunification program ( named after the Paul Simon song, I'm guessing).
The Fort Lauderdale City Commission adopted the program a few months ago, and it started this month. So far, 10 people have taken the City up on the tickets.
Greyhound bound for destinations north!
The free rides cost the City as little as $40 each, and as much as $200 each. Greyhound took the people to St. Pete, Northport, and Leesburg in Florida. And the rest went to Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Massachusetts, and North Carolina.
The youngest person was 35, and the oldest 58. The notes on the chart say we sent them home with "2 sandwiches and gatorade", or "food from Mount Olive", and one guy just got "water!"
The reasons for them needing the busing services included "out of prison - no work", "extradited back for warrant", and "son putting mom in trailer!" ...huh?.
I called most of the people listed as being the responsible parties on the receiving side of the bus trip ( the parents/brother etc.) . They all said their people made it home, and they were all very appreciative to Fort Lauderdale.
Now, if we can just get some tickets ready for this group below -
Occupy Fort Lauderdalers still living at City Hall !
Of course, that's if you are one of our many homeless that get stuck here with little hope and even less resources.
Many find themselves hanging around Stranahan Park looking for a meal, aggressively panhandling, unnerving the tourists, heading downhill fast!
The program is called the Homeward Bound Reunification program ( named after the Paul Simon song, I'm guessing).
The Fort Lauderdale City Commission adopted the program a few months ago, and it started this month. So far, 10 people have taken the City up on the tickets.
Greyhound bound for destinations north!
The free rides cost the City as little as $40 each, and as much as $200 each. Greyhound took the people to St. Pete, Northport, and Leesburg in Florida. And the rest went to Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Massachusetts, and North Carolina.
The youngest person was 35, and the oldest 58. The notes on the chart say we sent them home with "2 sandwiches and gatorade", or "food from Mount Olive", and one guy just got "water!"
The reasons for them needing the busing services included "out of prison - no work", "extradited back for warrant", and "son putting mom in trailer!" ...huh?.
I called most of the people listed as being the responsible parties on the receiving side of the bus trip ( the parents/brother etc.) . They all said their people made it home, and they were all very appreciative to Fort Lauderdale.
Now, if we can just get some tickets ready for this group below -
Occupy Fort Lauderdalers still living at City Hall !
Great idea, Tim. Bus tickets for Occupy Fort Lauderdale to "Occupy" another city.
We could have a big wheel with cities around the country, you spin, and the prize - a one way bus ticket to "Occupy" that city.
I support the Homeward Bound Reunification Program. I hope that more will take advantage of it and return home to their families.
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Great idea giving the Occupy protesters a ticket! How about to Washington D.C.? That's where the OWS Movement is Now.
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I can't see how anyone except Food Not Bombs and the Occupy crowd could be against this program. The cost of bus tickets and happy meals pale in comparison to the economic and societal damage done to the city by each one of those individuals who while here were slowly committing suicide on the streets in front of us and our children. If there is someone out there against this program, I'd love to hear your alternative. This is a gift that gives back to the giver a hundred fold.
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I have $20 to put towards busing Earl "the (kinda/sorta/depends who asks gay) conservative choice" back to San Fran.
On a side note, though immitation is considered a form a flattery, do you think the homeless are insulted by the antics of the Occupy people?
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current commission has sidestepped and kicked the can down the road on street people, homeless, vagrants and the feeding of these people they want to disappear. bus tickets? 2 months before election?
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Is there any way better to make a problem disappear than actually making it disappaer with a cheap bus ticket. Other things need to be done but one way bus tickets are a no brainer.
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Homelessness in not a crime. The homeless have constitutional rights, and the city has been sued before over some actions to try to alleviate the problem. Anything done takes a lot of review by the legal department. I believe the city is currently working on an ordinance to address panhandling. The issue of homelessness is not going away anytime soon. It's a problem in every area of the country and has gotten worse by the current economic conditions.
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Dennis, The act of misusing public spaces for private use is illegal. It's called vagrancy and is practiced by people who due to addiction chose to ignore our laws regarding, panhandling traffic safety, indecent exposure laws, littering as well as just basically ruining everyone else's quality of life by basically stating by their presence that anything goes in this city so be careful. I have heard this philosophy of your about homelessness not being a crime from the mouth of Ron Centamore and I can tell you that I do not believe in it. Vagrants on our streets along with our terrible schools are the number 1 and 2 reason cops give me as to why they won't live in the city.
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will this issue ever be resolved or at least reduced? the various locations in the city with attempts to 'handle this' in the past was across from bus station (remember tent city?) and holiday park. the county built the shelter on blount road a few years back. why is the county not taking the lead? look at your tax bill and all the line charges to the county and school board? why don't city officials demand the county deal with it? not just fort lauderdale, but pompano and any other cities with this. this is an expensive diversion of resources to deal with problems and issues that never change, just keep syphoning money. look at all the non-profits asking the city (and county) for grant money year in and out as budget is readied. nothing changes. there is a whole "System" of companies, corporations, consultants and professionals that make money 'dealing' with this. they would be out of business and grant money would go missing if the problem was actually solved. cities that want their 'urban center downtowns' have the problem. you don't see this in weston or parkland. no city including this one will have the vibrant urban core/lifestyle constantly talked about if the homeless/vagrants/mentally disenfranchised are not dealt with.
guess we'll have to wait for the vision study report to solve it.
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As far as Broward County goes, they are perfectly happy with the way the system works. Every vagrant that gets picked up anywhere in Broward County get brought to the jail in downtown Fort Lauderdale, the next day they are released into the wild in Stranahan Park. To the County, which is French for Western Broward, the system is working great removing dangerous transients and drifters from their communities and depositing them in downtown Fort Lauderdale to beg in our intersection and live in our parks. And as for the bureaucrat earning a fortune solving the problem, "in my opinion" you can only be talking about Angelo Castillo, a man who aside making a huge nonprofit salary for solving Broward's homeless problem is also a Pembroke Pine City Commissioner, a city that thrives on a diet of Fort Lauderdale's failures. As our school system in Fort Lauderdale was run into the ground by the Broward School District, Pembroke Pines welcomed our middle class by instituting citywide Charter Schools. In 2010 98.6% of the students of Pembroke Pines Charter High School went to college. Imagine the rates at the daytime detention facilities that pass for high schools in Fort Lauderdale. Recently the County closed the only other detention facility that would have taken criminals and vagrants, it was in Hollywood. So I would forget about the County solving the problem. We are most definitely on our own. The money for these bus tickets is a pittance and it comes from money the police department confiscates from criminals. If you are mad as hell about this I would tell the Mayor and Fort Lauderdale City Commission, I don't think anyone else cares.
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Well said. so re-electing the current commission will make a solution to both problems immediate (homeless/vagrants/street people and fll public school failure? aside from lip service and cursory efforts as elections approached, nada. three more years? what will change? where is the will or impetus?
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Well I can tell you that I have been hounding the Mayor and Commission about 3 main things 1.The need for greater pedestrian safety (crosswalks, sidewalks, land medians and traffic calming devices) since Fort Lauderdale is #1 in the nation in vehicle related deaths, 25% of which are pedestrians. 2. I have been hounding them to deal with the onslaught of vagrants that have taken over our intersections and parks with dangerous illegal activities. 3. I have proved to them that our public schools are shameful disgraces that if not corrected will take this city down quicker than the debt in the long term.
As for topic 1 I have heard a lot of lip service, but I believe there to be safety measures for pedestrians coming if for no other reason than the alarming number of people dying. I myself through the NCIP grant program raised closed to $6,000, two thousand of my own to put a crosswalk on my street, North Victoria Park Road, so my kids don't get killed.
In regards to topic 2 they are conducting a study right now that will allow them to legally ban panhandling from the downtown as they did years ago at the beach. There is a lot of talk about expanding the Homeless Assistance Center, that gets homeless people off the street, away from downtown and into a strict no drugs and alcohol programs. Pretty much everyone thinks the HAC is doing a great job. Also pretty soon you should anti-panhandling signs going up soon at our busiest intersections. Also even 2 of the homeless voice people were arrested for panhandling in traffic about a month ago if you can believe that. Also a year and a half ago the city in an effort appease the churches and get the mass of vagrants out of the park was going to create an outdoor citywide homeless feeding site for the churches to feed vagrants with basically no rules that would have destroyed a huge portion of the city. They wanted to put it a half block off Federal Highway across the street from the entrance to Holiday Park if you can believe it. That plan is dead now.
As for topic 3 I have gotten them from the comfortable denial that the schools are great, to ok they aren't, to but it’s the school boards job, to an acceptance that as the elected leaders of the city it falls to them to care if Fort Lauderdale's taxpayer money is going to waste in a system designed to fail, along with the acknowledgement that other cities like Pembroke Pines do run their own school system with great success.
As for who you should vote, I can tell you that it really doesn't matter because none of the challengers have a chance, because pretty much all of them are running for reasons other than trying to win. The Mayor and Commission read this website, hopefully one of them will chime in and make some statements that we can hold them to. But I can tell you I have a Seiler sign in my front yard.
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now that you make predictions, stop whining about take home police cars, crime and public schools that you criticize. police contract allows the cars. crime is every where but could be worse here
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Dear Mr. Anonymous, could you clear up your thoughts for me a point. I guess you are calling my statement of fact that none of the challengers has a chance as a prediction. I don't think you could find someone who would give you any odds on them wining. And as far as the take home car issue. They I think it is a bad idea to have 500 cops on the force and then give each and every one of them a free take home car to park overnight in other cities as well as free gas when 80% are living outside Fort Lauderdale all over Broward and beyond. I heard from someone today that cops only work a 4 day work week, so that means our cars are sitting in these other cities nearly half the weak off duty. Imagine how many fewer cop cars and maybe cops we would need if cops worked 5 days a week like the rest of us and only the 20% of cops that live in the city got free take home cars and free gas. I have heard that of the 500 cops on the force only about 30 are on duty patrolling the city at any given time. Hopefully this is not true, please someone write in if you know for sure. And yes I would say home burglaries are really bad now, way up in fact.
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Do you honestly think the mayor, when reelected, is going to halt take home cars? he's no dummy and knows how many live out of the city and county. the mayor sees the big picture, which MAY include a higher elected office taking him to Tallahassee. maybe as gov, maybe something else. so he wisely will not alienate so many loyal law enforcement because of a few malcontent tax payers in an affluent city like Fort Lauderdale. And even if the mayor sided with tax payers who humbly request only Fort Lauderdale resident officers keep takehome cars do you seriously think the others 4 commissioners would side with him. no because when they get elected to this next term they will already be thinking about the term after that, so they will follow the first rule of elected officials and do not alienate your loyal base. and if the officers can aggregate their workweek and load them up into a few days with 3 or 4 days off why should you care. think of it this way - marked cars are passive law enforcement. the city is the largest in the county,the county seat and we want the government buildings downtown and new courthouse so the homeless crowd needs to be tolerated while they continue to 'make every effort' to deal with the problem. the taxes are the lowest of any city of this size int he state as the mayors commercial says and he always likes to recite so you can't have it both ways. you want him as mayor then put up with all that comes with because he knows whats best for the city.
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With your view of politics anonymous all I can say is thank God for term limits. And 3 or 4 days off out of a 7 day work week for cops, yeah I think I care. Anonynous are you a police officer?
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No. not a city employee either
just a tax payer who can read the writing on the wall
you may want to do the same
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so its 3 more years of the same for fort lauderdale. and probably 4 more years of the same in the white house.
great.
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