As I Understand It. The Final Budget Hearing, September 24, 2013.

I had a late telephone hearing, which ran even later, and I missed all but the last 10 minutes or so of the final budget hearing.  The bottom line is that the budget of 9.7 mills was passed, with supporters being Ross, Anderson, and Watts.  Jacobs and Cooper were steadfast in opposing anything that high.  For the record, Cooper, like his friend Steve Bernard, has never voted to approve any budget.  The budget with the 8.9 mills tax from a couple of years ago?  Nope.  Apparently, any budget that is not precisely, to the last detail, what these two characters demand is unacceptable to them.  Appreciation of the value of others' views?  Acquiescence to a consensus or majority view?  "Compromise?"  No way, baby.  It's their way or the highway.  "Live Free or Die," Motherf****r.  If you want to understand the value of positions like these, and the people who hold them, to a group like a municipal Commission, there isn't any value.  They are useless dead weight.

According to what I heard, the meeting had actually been proceeding pretty well for about 35 minutes, until Cooper arrived.  Yes, he was 35 minutes late.  The sabotage reportedly then began, and the process got miserably bogged down.  Remember the A-word?  I heard it twice more last night, applied to Cooper, by people unconnected to each other.  There's a pattern going on here.

There were continued references to the possibility of annexation, which has absolutely nothing to do with the '13-'14 budget, and continued droning about a preference for cutting costs instead of keeping a high tax.  You might get the impression, if you didn't know anything about what was going on, that the idea of cutting costs was a new and valuable one, something no one considered, an approach we hadn't thought to try.  Jacobs and Cooper never reveal that we have had four years of excellent management, during which abundant cost-cutting occurred, and we have very few costs left to try to cut.  Certainly not enough to make any material difference to our operating budget.  And not remotely enough to provide us with a meaningful reserve and set-asides for future needs.  But these are people with no real understanding of the budget, no understanding of the Village, and nothing to offer.  Their contribution is just a drone, just a noise, it's the static that makes you want to hang up and redial the person with whom you're trying to have a conversation.

One very minor curiosity, which was not substantive, may have been revealing about an unrelated matter.  Bob Anderson bemoaned again the $2500 that no one wants the Village to spend for something Village residents might not even want to have: Watts' mural.  Watts interjected that it may be possible the $2500 will never get used anyway.  Really?  Is there some mural-related complication Watts hasn't told us about?  Presumably it's none of our business.

The other amusing, if infuriating, interchange was between Janey Anderson and Cooper.  Janey reminded Cooper that he had run on a platform in which he offered to help with grant-writing, but then he refused to do any.  Cooper, in his usual idiotic way, sputtered something about the Village's violation of federal laws, as if he didn't want to associate himself with such criminals.  The problem is that he now claims to have become aware of such criminal mischief beginning nine years ago, a year after he moved to the Park, but he has apparently not turned us in to the feds.  So if he knew we were a criminal operation, why did he run for Commission?  Why did offer to help with grant-writing, if he knew he had no intention of getting that involved with our seedy operation?  And why didn't he turn us in?  Is he then a co-conspirator or accessory, and as guilty as the rest of the Village?  It's all pathetic, obnoxious, sabotaging, and ultimately useless and empty.  As is Cooper himself.

So I'm sorry my day job interfered, and I wasn't available to witness the whole foolish affair.  The fact is, the Commissioners don't understand how to consider a budget for the Village anyway, so their approach was spurious.  If they don't start with a clear appreciation and statement of what the Village needs, what are the important goals, and how much things cost, then they can't possibly assess a budget presented to them.  It's just a bunch of numbers.  And fussing over those numbers, as if it made any difference to anyone whether the ad valorem rate was 9.3, 9.5, 9.7, 9.75, 9.9, or 10, is nonsensical.  Most of the Commissioners, and especially those most devoted to driving the rate down, don't know the money difference to the average Village resident anyway, so their argument is not about anything.

Well, we do have a new budget.  It includes a tax of 9.7 mills.  If you want to know the difference between those 9.7 mills and last year's 9.5 mills, it's about $30 for the year for the average homeowner. If your property tax last year was about $3500, this year it will be about $3530.  The budget addresses basic day-to-day needs, assuming nothing unexpected happens, and it does not provide a meaningful reserve or any provision for our future needs.  Let's have a nice year, and wish ourselves luck.  We'll need it.