County Commission on 2026-03-26 10:00 AM - Mar 26, 2026

meeting

Broward County Commission 3h 37m 4 speakers 6 agenda items transcribed 2 months ago official recording ↗

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Who is being honored and why is airport director Mark Gale receiving the AAAE Distinguished Service Award?

Mark Bogen 0:00

The meeting will begin shortly.

Mark Bogen 5:23

He became chair of the Parks and Advisory Board. And where I got to see him a lot was I was teaching, I was not teaching, I was coaching softball. And he was, as chair, he was in charge of opening day, which is why I did opening day for the music today. He was in charge of that. And it was something he loved doing. In Hollywood, you have all the teams parade out on opening day, everybody from T-ball all the way to high school. He'd do all the announcing of it. And then he asked if I wanted to throw the first pitch, which was something I always wanted to do. I obviously wanted to burn one in and show I still had it. Unfortunately, I threw it right over the catcher's head. The catcher was only about that big.

Mark Bogen 6:11

But he gave me another chance. But it was one of my highlights of being able to do it. And he just did a lot of work there. He was your classic Boston politician. He'd worked in Boston government a lot. And when I decided to run for county commissioner, he asked if I needed a driver to help that, because he had helped Tim Ryan. do all that. He had helped Tim drive around. He went through a couple of the transmissions of Tim's driving. Yeah, horrible driver. Horrible driver. But he drove us, you know, drove around in a knock. And he would always tell me, like Tim would hand out emery boards every one. Beam, you've got to be handing out emery boards. You're not going to win. And all the different things that Tim had done, he kept saying, you've got to be doing this.

Mark Bogen 7:03

But for the last 11 years, he's been...

Mark Bogen 7:14

He has helped a lot of people. And knowing government, knowing that he worked in the property appraiser for a while as well, but he knew government inside and out, up and down. And so when anybody called our office, He knew exactly where to go. And he was a pitman. He would not take no for an answer. And I know, and I was always apologizing to some staff somewhere, because he would push and push and push until he got the answer, until he could help somebody. He would always tell people when he would get ready to hang up, the difficult we can do today, the impossible may take us a little bit longer. And that's the way he approached it. And he just did a tremendous amount of good. How many years did he work for you?

Mark Bogen 8:04

He worked since I've been here, from the first day. He's been so 11 years, 11 and 1 half years. And he would be a... when he was apologizing to people, he would write a letter. Old school, he'd do letters, then he'd invite them to lunch. And he would have lunch with everybody. He'd tell me, and that's the one time he would take off during the day, and he'd be having lunch with city managers and mayors. I'm going, I haven't even had lunch with those guys yet. But I'm going, well, OK, that's what Frank did. For all our newsletters, and you guys know our newsletters, he always got the last read because he was a printer at one time. And so he was the last one who would proofread. And he wondered if he might have to go back to school after November so that he could get retrained to stay working for the county at 97 years.

Mark Bogen 8:56

He's thinking, what am I going to do? What job am I going to do afterwards? Unfortunately, he didn't make it there. So prayers go out to his family. I know Dean is here today. He talked to you about you guys all the time. So it's opening day. Yeah. If we could put his... Jersey. If we could put his jersey up in the rafters, it would be great. It would be good. So he's going to be missed.

Mark Bogen 9:46

Thank you.

Lamar Fisher 9:54

A childhood friend of mine, Dietrich Sands, passed away. Her funeral services will be this weekend. She's done a lot in this community. She's been president of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated and many, many other organizations.

Mark Bogen 10:10

The reason why I bring her to our tent today, because one of our own, her daughter-in-law is the reading clerk for us. That's her mother-in-law.

Which employees are recognized for long-term service across county departments?

Mark Bogen 10:18

And our prayers are with you

Mark Bogen 10:25

Let us also all honor the brave men and women who have served and continue to serve in our armed forces, both here and abroad, and thank them for their service.