That's two days in a row I waited three hours to accomplish something that should have taken very little time.
Yesterday, it was voting. After three attempts to get in and vote, I finally had the right materials and enough time. Filling out the ballot took maybe three minutes. Waiting on line to deposit it in the counting machine took three hours. And it would have taken longer had someone not delivered a second machine after the first 2 1/2 hours I was there. The bottom line is that I voted, which is all I wanted to do. It's just too bad it took so much longer than was necessary.
Tonight was the Commission meeting. The original agenda was pretty large, with two topics which could each have taken up a good deal of time in themselves. One was a presentation about annexation, but the reality was that County Commissioner Sally Heyman gave a brief, focused, and informative presentation, then she left, and no one asked any questions or made any comments. She just told the Commission to think it over, don't take too long, and get back to her.
The other loaded topic was the school/church. Ms Busta, the school Mar'm, was there, and so was Fr Cutie. Jeane Bergeron and the guy she's married to were there, and so were some new faces, including tikes. When the matter was pulled from the agenda, because of technical problems with the matter's having been placed on the agenda tonight, the crowd left. Our planners were there, too, and they bugged out with the rest of the school-related crew.
Now, we could cruise. The Consent Agenda underwent minor scrutiny, and it would have passed without worthwhile comment, except for a telling dynamic about some of the minutes. Roxy Ross said she spent 10 hours over the weekend reviewing meeting recordings, and she wanted a few words placed in the minutes to reflect something Bryan Cooper said. Bryan protested. He said that whatever Roxy wanted added was not what he "intended."
Now this is rich. We used to do action minutes, which simply stated what actions and votes were taken (what the matter was, who made the motion, who seconded, that there was discussion, and what the vote was). But because Bryan, and his junior partners Jacobs and Watts, all under the tutelage of Steve Bernard, wanted more demonstrative minutes, the Village Clerk was charged with producing expanded minutes. The expansion was to be the inclusion of the Clerk's guess as to which comments made by Commissioners the Commissioners in question considered "salient points." It eats her time the way reviewing minutes eats Roxy's time. But now, Bryan has a new standard. He doesn't want what he said to be included. Rather, he wants the Clerk to describe what he intended, what he meant, what he really had in mind, what he might have said if he hadn't said what he did say. Chuck Ross tried to explain to Bryan that this isn't really possible, but Bryan didn't get it.
Then, there was the matter of the erst named Code Enforcement Board. The name seemed too harsh for some, so the name was changed to Code Compliance Board. It appears the some liked that better. The main issues, though, were who can be a member of this Board, and what infractions they can cite. The latter matter was actually related to a different Ordinance, which was about the Village Public Works staff curing ills, and how and when the Village could get reimbursed for the treatment.
The Code Compliance Board is one of the two "quasi-judicial" Boards, in that it has the power to limit or control what residents do, and it has the power to exact fees and penalties. So Barbara Kuhl suggested that, in line with what other municipalities do, and what is apparently current standard practice, members of this Board should be "qualified electors." What this basically means is that Code Compliance Board members should be US citizens, and they should be registered to vote. The idea was that we may not want to have marginal people and criminals as part of a Board that concerns itself with money, even though the Board doesn't touch money. Yeah, OK, fine, let them be qualified electors, right? Did I mention that Bryan Cooper is a member of the Commission? So not so fast. Bryan could accept the idea that criminals should not be on civic Boards, but it wasn't clear to him why non-citizens, or people who didn't register to vote, shouldn't be in positions of such authority over their neighbors. (For myself, I would want someone with that level of authority over me and my residency in BP to have a very high degree of devotion and commitment to the place. I would absolutely want to know they were interested enough in this country to bother to be a citizen, and interested and committed enough to the municipality, County, State, and country at least to register to vote. So "yes" on qualified elector for me.) Bryan smells abuse of power everywhere, and he got a good whiff of it here. Noah Jacobs tried a compromise, which was the possibility of limiting membership to people who "could qualify as electors," which would have suited Bryan, but no one could figure out what Noah meant. It appears Noah didn't know what he meant, either, because he couldn't really explain it.
A compromise was reached. The Commission didn't require Code Compliance Board members to be qualified electors, but it did require them to be residents of Biscayne Park and property owners here. Noah was kind of dazed tonight, and it didn't seem to dawn on him that this excluded him. But at this point, anything that brings this protracted and meaningless discussion to an end is a good thing.
As for our collections, Bob Anderson has pointed out repeatedly that the Village is exerting a notable amount of time and trouble attending to the lapses in people's properties, and thus far, it can do no more than to place a lien against the property, so we might get paid back when the property eventually sells. But the work is now, and it would be good if the reimbursement was now, or at least this calendar year. Bryan was grudgingly OK with this, but he found a major sticking point. Matters representing "imminent danger" could include an overgrowth of grass, weeds, and brush. Bryan didn't like this one bit. First of all, what makes this kind of overgrowth representative of "immenent danger?" And to whom? Rosemary Wais tried to illustrate it for him, but he wasn't buying it. And here's the underlying reason. Remember, this is Bryan Cooper we're talking about. Couldn't a Village Manager, or Code Officer, with a mean streak or a grudge simply declare an emergency overgrowth of grass or brush, have the Village mow it, and stick the homeowner with the bill? This all rests on Bryan's favorite paranoid fantasy: that powerful government agents, often rogue Village Managers, will act out on residents, to harass and torment them. It's essentially impossible to talk Bryan out of this. No one succeeded tonight, either.
Between one nonsensical and protracted discussion and another, this meeting consumed another three hours. Last night, I finally got to vote. Tonight was more of a pure waste of time. I guess this is not a good time for me to remind you to come to Commission meetings.
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