My central aim is to keep the Village alive and thriving. This is essential. I like where and how I live, we all like our neighborhood, and keeping it the way it is, or improving it, takes our being independent. We must call our own shots.
We need better fiscal support. We could raise taxes as high as is necessary, but few have much enthusiasm for super-taxes. And even if we decided it was the best thing for us to do, we could not plan a future that way, because future Commissions and residents might not agree. It's unstable. It also depends on healthy and endlessly increasing property values, and we've already seen how unstable that is.
Grants are good, and they're valuable. They're also not easy to come by, they're very specific, they're not repeating, and they typically require us to match them. And, given the right, or the wrong, Governor, the plug can get pulled just when we think we have one of these grants, as we have recently seen. We cannot plan a future on the hope of living off grants.
We have economized valiantly. We have no meaningful fat in the budget. In that we are already unable to meet our responsibilities as a municipality, it makes little sense to try to confront our fiscal problems by seeing if we can do even less.
We very simply need more income. We need to stabilize our budget, we need to preserve what's great about Biscayne Park, and we need to improve. All of that takes money the Village does not now have. Our best opportunity to reinvent ourselves is presented by the possibility of annexing. We must explore and pursue this possibility. Every relevant professional and knowledgeable person who has crossed our path has told us that. If, as the ante is raised, we are reassured that annexation is a good and workable idea for us, we have to do it. If we find out it will not do for us what we need it to do, we have to "know when to fold 'em" and walk away. We cannot answer the questions without being part of the process.
There is no sense in trying to create our own tiny commercial component next to the log cabin. First of all, such a plan directly defies the reasons some of us don't want to annex something else. It very materially and considerably changes the Park in exactly the direction annexation opponents do not want to go. Second, those opponents also criticize the primary annexation plan, because of what they describe as inadequate information. There is absolutely no information as to what could possibly be expected from the construction of a small office and storefront building, and no reason at all to think it would produce remotely meaningful income for the Village. Third, such a scheme aggravates the traffic problem of which annexation opponents complain.
The question is, what if we cannot annex. The answer is that we may be sunk, or it may be that we will have to try a very different approach to saving ourselves. If, as some suggest, we had to rely on unusually high property values to produce more substantial revenues, then we would have to do something to raise value. And there's no reason we shouldn't do that anyway.
To improve ourselves this way, we must improve and enhance the condition of the neighborhood. We need to improve, through development and furnishing, our public spaces. Dan Keys and Parks and Parkways have begun some of this, with the landscaping improvements around our entrance sign and at the entrance to the recreation center building. We need more. We need first rate medians. We need all our public spaces to be impressive.
We also need individual private properties to be brought up to appropriate and respectable condition. We need Codes that permit our neighbors to keep properties in a way that fulfills them, while respecting all of us and the style and standard of the neighborhood we share. And we need strict adherence to those Codes. We need our Boards and our Commissions to unite in raising the standard of the neighborhood so that it's a credit to all of us and a place we can all be proud of.
This raises the further problem of gradual alienation of Park residents. Ironically it is those residents and neighbors who have been most active and most devoted who are being most alienated. We need to welcome and enable resident/neighbor participation, not deflect and frustrate it. In my Commission campaign, I have met BP residents who are clamoring to participate and to help out, while Board seats sit empty, and some Commissioners refuse to fill them and instead talk about minimizing or suspending the Boards. This is an inclusive neighborhood. We need to engage the eager, resourceful, and dedicated. We need to help stragglers and marginal neighbors, not create more of them.
Our signature log cabin needs action. In my opinion, the preferred action is to renovate it. It can serve as the seat of Village functioning, including, as in years past, hosting our meetings. It also needs expansion, so that it can house all municipal and administrative functions, including the Biscayne Park Police. All it takes is what we do not now have: money. We can get money by raising taxes, assessing ourselves, or annexing other tracts. But we must find the money. I'm not afraid, and I do not surrender.
With an outdoor sculpture and a mural now owned and proudly displayed by the Village, and another sculpture awaiting delivery, we have every reason to expand a real public art program. I strongly advocate for a program like this. It brings class, self-respect, and broad enrichment to municipalities. And I pledge never to take Village money for such a program without a clear consensus that this is what residents want to do with their taxes.
We should continue to consider whether there may be real and substantial value to erecting a wall along the train track. Construction like that would no doubt be very expensive, but it may be very worthwhile, to increase quality of life for our neighbors who live along the track and for all of us. Improved quality of life increases the commitment, dedication, and investment of property owners, which increases the condition of properties, which increases value as well as comfort. This is what we want.
We have a wonderful Village. We have some great neighbors. For as long as we want to promote and encourage it, we happen to have the best police department in the state. If we thought our police accomplishment was due to Mitch Glansberg, or Ana Garcia, or Ray Atesiano, two of them no longer work here, and the other will eventually retire, or get lured away by someone else. The individuals won't stay forever, but our commitment can.
We just need to take a deep breath, and develop vision and the courage to pursue it. That's my plan.
"For the Best We Can Be."
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