First, a confession: I was not at Tuesday's Commission meeting. I know, right? How could I have been anywhere else? Well, I forgot to calculate that meeting when I booked a trip to Boston. And I haven't slogged through the recording, either. The ice doesn't get much thinner than that. But I heard about the meeting. And I had an inspiration. I'm not worried about the possibility of getting anything wrong, because Gaspar was there. He'd be all over me like flies and maggots on road kill if I made a mistake. He's a self-proclaimed stickler for accuracy. So here's what I'm thinking.
We have an untapped resource here in the Village, and it's worth a bundle to us. Here was the deal: there was a move to ban gun sales in Biscayne Park. (I don't know. I have no idea. No, of course there are no gun sales, or sales of anything else, in Biscayne Park, but that was the proposal. And I think Noah Jacobs wants to ban gun sales in other parts of the County, too. We have jurisdiction over the whole County, don't we? We did when we told Coral Gables how to handle Matheson Hammock.) So Linda Dillon, long, long time BP resident, who is a gun expert, decided she'd had enough of this ban-the-guns-in-BP nonsense, since she thinks her rights are being trampled, and she brought an attorney friend with her to the meeting. My guess is he's one of her gun club friends, but she reportedly introduced him as her legal representative. Linda, and he, insisted that we back off, or the attorney might have to take us to court. And this is where Bryan Cooper, PhD, Esq, etc, gets into it with Linda's friend/attorney. And Bryan's junior partner, His Majesty the Emperor or whatever, joined him. Bryan starts reading the law to Linda's friend. I did mention that Linda's friend is an attorney, right? And Bryan, um, isn't? Pish-tosh. When Bryan gets inspired, he can be any f-ing thing he wants. And this is the goldmine for the Village.
I thought back over the last 3+ years of Bryan's reign. I thought about the fights Bryan has picked, with the range of people (for convenience, let's call them professionals) he has challenged. As it turns out, Bryan knows more about the law than attorneys do (four, at this point), he knows more about police procedure than a police officer or chief, he knows more about trees than an arborist, he knows more about record-keeping than a clerk, he knows more about budgeting than an accountant, and he knows more about how to manage a municipality than a municipal manager.
What do we pay Ana Garcia, Maria Camara, John Hearn and his stand-ins, whoever is our Finance Director, and Ray Atesiano combined? What do we pay Bryan? OK, so we give him a massive raise. We dump all the dead wood, and replace them all with Bryan. And he can keep Jacobs as a sidekick. Jacobs has shown his own little shimmerings of omniscience. Hell of a team we can have. And if there's ever any question in either of their minds, about anything, they can consult the godfather, who only lives across the street from Bryan anyway. We're getting rid of Candido Sosa, too. He goes with Ana. This would have to be the hugest windfall the Village has ever seen. And if Bryan ever wants to re-landscape the tangle of weeds he uses as a front yard, we can pay for that for him. It will be worth it. I think even with Bryan's occasional $5000 anti-Village adventures we'll come out ahead. And not only will we get higher than top notch professional service from Bryan and Noah, we'll have the benefit of service from people who have shown remarkable devotion to the Village.
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