You Call It.

In the Residents' Bill of Rights in our Charter, the following statement occurs:

(7) No Unreasonable Postponements. No matter, once having been placed on a formal agenda by the Village, shall be postponed to another date except for good cause shown.

If the fence Ordinance has been worked on by the Code Review Committee for over two years, has come before the Commission several times during the past 1-2 years, has been sent back for reworking after reworking, keeps coming back to the Commission, has been the topic of a workshop, and a lame duck Commissioner with the last Commission considered himself not authorized, by virtue of his self-imposed lame duck status, to rule on it, would a further delay of two months now be considered an "unreasonable postponement?"  Does the buck ever stop anywhere?  And would it matter if the reason for the postponement was that one Commissioner wanted more information, having failed to come to any meetings of the Code Review Committee, or the workshop?  How much more, and what more, does he want?  In fact, it seems he didn't know there had been a workshop.  Workshops, by the way, are not free. We pay staff and our attorney to attend them.

Or suppose another Commissioner wanted a postponement, because he was newly elected, hadn't bothered to research the matter before the meeting (or during his campaign, or at any other prior time), and felt that the over 2 years of Code Review attention, 1-2 years of Commission attention, and workshop, was too much of a rush job.  He wanted us to take it slow.  I tried to tell him before he got elected that he wasn't ready for this job, and that in BP, slow usually means never, but he disagreed with me.  So why is he now proving me right?  Is "don't know the first thing about it, and couldn't be bothered to find out" a pretty "good cause" for postponement?  This, by the way, is the same person who was evidently so oblivious to what was going on in the Village, that he just found out about the FPL hardening project the day the concrete pole was erected in his yard.  People talking about it for months?  Nope, unaware.  Three wood stakes in his yard for two months?  No, some guy said something about buried lines.  Two announcements mailed in advance by FPL?  Nope, didn't notice.  And this is the Commissioner (our Mayor?) who now says the fence issue has been sprung on him too suddenly.

And suppose a third Commissioner simply went along with the other two, because she didn't have the wherewithal to take an independent stand?  And presumably also hadn't done enough homework to have formed an opinion before the meeting.  Do these sound like compelling enough reasons for further pussy-footing?  There is of course the possibility that a "higher power" directed all three to delay, because he himself didn't want the fence Ordinance, but we won't even go there.

And add to that that many residents came to the Commission meeting to plead with the new Commission to vote for, or at least on, the fence Ordinance already, as a number of residents were being hung up waiting for a ruling.

"Unreasonable postponement?"  Or maybe careful and due diligence?  You make the call.  And after you've made a call, contact all of our Commissioners, and let them know what you think.  Either scold them or thank them for the delay.  And if you think they did the wrong thing, let them know they committed a Charter violation, and violated your rights as a resident.