Now What?

The results are in.  Our new Commissioners are Barbara Watts and Noah Jacobs.  Bob Anderson was re-elected.

Watts and Jacobs ran on a platform that was indistinguishable from the ongoing complaints of Steve Bernard, supported by Bryan Cooper.  Watts has adequate familiarity with the Village and its government, though she has said repeatedly she didn't want to be a Commissioner, and she told one person she ran only because she couldn't find anyone else to run.  Jacobs has no relevant experience in the Village whatsoever, and he has no identifiable connection to or knowledge of how the Village and its government operate.  Both Watts and Jacobs ran on a platform that centered on complaints about FPL (the Franchise Agreement and the grid hardening project), and there is nothing that can be done about any of this.  A side issue for Watts and Jacobs was to clean house, to eliminate incumbents.  Since both Watts and Jacobs were elected, they have displaced as many incumbents as the two of them could.  The only thing they could have done more was to get Dorvil elected, to try to displace Anderson, but apparently this was not their agenda.  For one thing, there were 219 undervotes, which are people who voted for less than three candidates.  So assuming there was a movement to get Watts and Jacobs elected, and that movement encouraged interested participants to vote only for the two of them, any mastermind of such a movement shot himself in the foot by preventing Dorvil from getting elected.  For another thing, though, Jacobs came in third.  So if Dorvil had been elected, he would have knocked out Jacobs, and left Anderson in place.

But the issue is, what do the apparent spawn of Steve Bernard plan to do now?  The have railed mercilessly and incessantly about the FPL Franchise Agreement, but it is untouchable for the next 28 1/2 years.  So apart from punishing one Commissioner who voted for it, Childress, they cannot accomplish anything.  It's an empty issue.  They have also whined lately about the hardening project, and the concrete poles, but there is nothing they can do about that, either.  Nor would they want to if they could.  FPL are not going to change the concrete poles for wood ones.  And if they agreed to, they would point out that every concrete pole would have to replaced by 3-4 wood poles (they call it "hardening" for a reason; it's not just a simple replacement of one wood pole with another), and no one, not even the complainers, would want that.

So what will this new majority do?  Most assuredly, they will want the verbatim minutes they have been pleading for.  They will learn that those minutes will cost $1500-$2000 per meeting, a fact they have carefully avoided acknowledging, and since they also want revenues low, it is not clear how they will pay for those minutes.  Presumably, next year, they will want to vacate the utility user fees against which they also rail, and this move will knock hell out of the Village revenues, making it even more impossible to pay for the minutes they claim they want.  And to get funding for those minutes, they will have to ignore the fact that almost no one except Bernard and Cooper want them.  This will be tricky, since Bernard and Cooper, and now Watts and Jacobs, claim the will of the people is important to them.  They will somehow have to convince people that they should pay money they don't want to pay to get something they don't want to have.  Or perhaps they will just insist on paying the money and getting the minutes no matter what anyone wants.

Also presumably, they will want the lines painted on the streets, a favored refrain for two years now.  They will ignore the fact that the streets are too narrow, and no one has advised the Village to paint these lines, and they will paint them anyway.  So we drive on streets that are barely wide enough for a car, and now they have a phony bike/pedestrian path suggested on them.  Then what?

Bernard and Cooper have been fussing and fuming about the Manager, whom they would very much like to kick out.  The new majority might make such a move.  They will be met with massive resistance.  Let's suppose they power past the resistance, and get rid of the Manager anyway.  So we get a new Manager.  Our Charter  requires us to have one.  And let's suppose we underpay the new Manager, and make his or her life miserable as the old minority worked extremely hard to make our current Manager's life miserable.  So as often as it can happen in two years, we go through a succession of short-term Managers.  And let's imagine that the new majority forget their interest in hearing and obeying the voice of the people, and they lose us Managers and equanimity.  Then what?

The old minority, now the new majority, actively complain about failures of "transparency."  They have never made clear what they meant, and most or all of the assaults on transparency came from the old minority anyway, so it's not clear how they convert this into policy.  And if Bernard was instrumental in getting Cooper to run and getting him elected, and if he was also instrumental in getting Watts and Jacobs to run, and getting them elected, and if he and Cooper were active in campaigning for Watts and Jacobs, what is the chance that Cooper, Watts, Jacobs, and Bernard are not extremely active in colluding outside the "Sunshine?"  My best guess is that it's unimaginable.  So much for "transparency."

So it will be interesting to see what Cooper, Watts, and Jacobs will do with the opportunity they have just succeeded in arranging for themselves.  And I hope more residents will come to Commission meetings.  If the new majority are both wrong and blind, and they begin a series of acts that are destructive to the Village, someone will need to be there to confront them.  And besides, you would think people would be pleased to come to meetings.  After all, they elected these people.  Don't they want to come to bask in the experience they have created for themselves and the rest of us?  Maybe the rest of us would like them there, so we can thank them for providing the new, open, honest, careful, fiscally responsible Commission they gave us.  That was the deal, right?  Open, honest, careful, and fiscally responsible.  I can hardly wait.