Awakened at about 2AM to do a search fro a 12-year-old. Can’t fall back asleep, so I’ll do my morning entry a little extra early.
It’s May Day!
It’s Dave & Cathi’s wedding anniversary today, and one year since my website went to its current look.
Looks like I’ll be helping Big Kahuna this weekend with some last-minute budget things this weekend. Not a problem, happy to help the outfit make some dinero for the coming year. Thank goodness for remote computing… traffic is going to be a beast.
Answers on the Spanish channel’s version of Family Feud‘s last round:
- 15:00 hours
- Judas
- manzanilla
- guanajuato
- la grasa
2nd family member –
- 10:00 hours
- Jesucristo
- Limon
- PASS
- Cajon
Now that the game show is over, it’s some trippy cartoon – “Betty Toons”
Odd that I haven’t heard much about Cinco De Mayo this year. Maybe next week.
Air and Sea Show this weekend. I’ll peek my head out the window and look to the skies over the beach come 9pm or so, just to check out the end of day pyrotechnics.
Want to see why I don’t hit the beach that day? That’s a lot of lookie-loos. Attendance last year was 4.2 million people and nearly 10,000 spectator boats spread over a 1-mile-wide swath of ocean 7 miles long.
Navigating Fort Lauderdale beach this weekend is going to be a pain, thanks to the Air and Sea Show.
There are some closures and lane restrictions along the stretch of A1A from Sunrise Boulevard to Las Olas Boulevardd. Events begin this morning and continue through the weekend.
Lauderdale cuts Air & Sea Show staffing; next year’s show hangs in balance
FORT LAUDERDALE — Thousands will head to Fort Lauderdale beach next weekend to watch the Air & Sea Show, but it could be the last one this city stages.
If so, it will go out in a blaze of traffic.
Staffing for the annual mega-event was sliced this year, particularly in traffic control, to come in line with a new directive from City Hall that no taxpayer money should be spent on it.
In years past, officers were held over from their day shifts to control traffic lights and usher cars out to Interstate 95, State Road 84 and other major roads. This year, the help will only go as far as Federal Highway, police Maj. Mary Negrey said.
“That’s probably the major difference,” Negrey said.
While she did not want to reveal the number of officers staffing the show, a memo Negrey wrote on March 2 indicates the police man-hours will drop from 6,222 last year to 4,956 this year — much of it because of cutbacks in Fleet Week and Friday “Kids’ Day” staffing.
“All levels of staffing for every facet of this operation will be reduced,” Negrey wrote to commissioners last month. ” … The proposed reduced staffing levels will certainly cause increased traffic control issues, neighborhood issues and possibly security issues should a disastrous event occur,” Negrey wrote in the memo.
Fire Chief Otis Latin said he cut a hazardous-material team and an Intracoastal inflatable boat team from his staffing lineup.
Air & Sea Show spokeswoman Elaine Fitzgerald said she’d heard about cutbacks but said the show relies on the city to staff appropriately.
“We’re completely dependent on the city to be the judge and do what’s needed,” Fitzgerald said.
Even with the cuts, officials say the show will cost the city $81,789 even after MDM Group Limited/Pro Series Inc. pays the city $231,089.
That’s too much, city commissioners say, and zero would be better.
If the show’s fate hinged on popularity, it would be here to stay. But city officials said in these tight times, they can’t justify the subsidy. The city gave notice last month that they might cancel next year’s show if negotiations for a more agreeable contract fail.
“The commission is firm that the show’s going to be treated like all the other special events in the city,” said Mayor Jim Naugle, who said he’s “cautiously optimistic” the show can be saved.
The city staffs the air show on overtime pay. For police, Negrey said the overtime will be about $255,000 this year.
Though the department was asked by interim City Manager Alan Silva to stop staffing on overtime, Negrey said that’s impossible.
She said the department doesn’t get enough volunteers to work at straight “detail” pay, and it wouldn’t be fair to have the volunteers earning straight pay and then pay officers who are forced to work the show time-and-a-half.
So the city pays all the employees overtime, or time-and-a-half, she said.
Naugle said he hopes next year the city fills the volunteer gap by opening the jobs up to other Broward County agencies, so no overtime would be paid.
Fitzgerald said she’s not focused on next year yet, she’s working on next weekend.
“We’re on a one-track mode to complete this show and make it the best ever,” Fitzgerald said.
MDM officials have said they want to keep the show in Fort Lauderdale but won’t give the city a blank check for services.
Fitzgerald said MDM Group is in talks elsewhere, outside Florida, to start a new air show. But those talks were not prompted by the financial face-off here, she said, nor do they mean the show is planning to relocate.
Commissioners have until July 1 to cancel next year’s show, according to the contract.
Danny’s Students have put together a website for the sci-fi club. (Including a comic strip that features him as a narcoleptic with TK. (see Doctor Mercury.) I think that if Danny ever goes back to journaling, he’s got a good icon pre-made.
Piccie of Newt Riding on my shoulder, taken yesterday afternoon. I was totally fragged after work, but Newtie-boy brightened my day by playing parrot for me. You can tell I was up late on call the night before.. my poor dark-ringed eyes! (not to mention greybeard and 5 ‘oclock shadow.)
