Here's What I Want to Know About Annexation

In theory, there are three proposed reasons we should not seek to annex any other territory:

1) We don't really need the extra money.
2) We have other less neighborhood-changing ways to get it.
3) Annexing is bad for the Village, whether we need the money or not.

I don't usually hear much about argument #1, and when I do, it immediately segues into argument #2: the reason we don't need the extra money is that we have other local ways to get it, and those other ways do not, by the way, involve raising our taxes.  Essentially all of the proposed alternative methods for getting money to pay for what we need center on getting grants and economizing further.  It's not my aim at the moment to get back into this discussion, but let me reiterate a few points.  Regarding grants, there are fewer of them out there, they're hard to get, they don't always apply to the specific need we have, they do not renew (they're unstable), and they usually require us to "match" them.  By and large, if we can't afford to do the project, we probably can't afford half the price of the project, either.  And grants are not awarded to help poor municipalities survive their day-to-day expenses.

As for further/continued economizing, there is little left to us to do, and it's a short term, "bandaid" remedy anyway.  Even if we could find more savings, like outsourcing garbage pick-up and/or police (I've heard both), these savings can only happen once.  We can't reduce these expenses, then reduce them again, as if the initial reduction had never happened, then reduce them all over again, etc.  So if our problem is expenses that gradually and continually increase over time, or if it's repairs and improvements that have to be done on a recurring basis over the years or decades (yes, those are our problems), these one-time reductions don't help us.  They appear to, when the reduction is made, but the help gradually dissipates, as the underlying costs continue to rise.  Costs will always rise faster than homestead-protected revenues, and if we play the game of trying to stay a step ahead of cost increases by cutting back expenses, we will eventually lose the game.  It's one of those "borrowing from Peter to pay Paul" arrangements.  It's not far removed from a Ponzi scheme.

But that's not my question right now.  What I want to know is what, independently and on its own, is wrong with annexation.  Annexing is bad for the Village, because_______.

The near-rational, if subjective, answer I most commonly hear is something about changing the "ambiance" of Biscayne Park.  I do understand this, although it doesn't fully make sense.  The idea seems to be that bringing a non-residential area into Biscayne Park, by legally annexing it, so it is actually and technically part of this municipality and called "Biscayne Park," changes the neighborhood.  Well, yes and no.  It does "change" us, in the sense that we are no longer, for example, "100% residential."  (Not that we are anyway.)  But we don't physically "bring" anything anywhere.  If we annexed the territory from the train track to Biscayne Boulevard, from 121st Street to 118th Street, it would stay where it is now.  And it's there, for better or for worse, whether we annex it or we don't.  If that area became part of the municipality of Biscayne Park, commerce, industry, and apartment living would be no closer to the triangle than they are now.  We might as well say we wouldn't want to annex the train track, because we don't want a train running through Biscayne Park.  Well it already runs where it runs, directly and imposingly along our border.  The train wouldn't get louder if we owned the track.

So I get it, but I don't.  Another argument I hear has to do with including residents, and voters, from over there to over here.  And believe me, I definitely do get that.  It was my biggest argument against annexation, too.  But here's the response.  Sad to say, there are very few registered voters in the area we originally had in mind.  Not that there aren't residents.  Just that they aren't registered to vote.  There had to be 250 registered voters, just for them to have a say about annexation.  There weren't even that many, so there certainly aren't enough to make any real impact in voting about BP issues.  And as disinclined, apparently, as they are to register to vote, they would probably be even less inclined to bother to come here to the precinct to make the actual vote.  This is not a good thing in our society, but it's the way it is.

The last argument people make is that "there's a lot of crime over there."  As it turns out, there isn't a lot of crime over there.  Our police Chief has studied this issue and found out that the crime rate is generally low, and most of the crime is shoplifting from the CVS.  But be that as it may, if there's crime there, then there's crime there.  This would be as true if the area was part of BP as if it isn't.  Further, don't we keep saying we have great police in BP?  We pay extra to have exceptional and breathtakingly effective police protection.  If we're right in what we're doing, and if our police are really so good, wouldn't it behoove us, as well as them "over there," for our police to provide over there the service they provide over here?  To me, the fantasy of high crime over there sounds like a good reason that we should annex them.  Look at it the other way around.  Suppose the City of Miami, or the County, said "Ray Atesiano is a genius.  We have to hire him away from BP, so he can do for us what he did for them."  That would make a lot of sense for them, and they'd be right to do it.  They should want Ray's influence and accomplishment in a wider setting than just here.  So why wouldn't we do that ourselves?  Why wouldn't we extend Ray's influence and accomplishment, for the benefit he would confer on a tiny morsel of unincorporated Dade County, as well as the impact of that improvement on our upside down triangle?  (By the way, here's my idea.  We rent Ray out as a special consultant to other police forces.  He gives them a training, to teach them to do what he's done here, and we split the fee with him.  He makes more for himself, and we get extra money, too.  And everybody gets less crime.  Larry Churchman, Nick Wollschlager, and the rest of the guys keep the show running Ray-style in Ray's occasional absences.  You like?)

So I'm still trying to get a grasp on what I might be missing: why annexation is a bad idea.  Never mind whether we need the money, and never mind whether we could get money some other way.  Why in itself is our annexing the area in question not good for Biscayne Park?  I'm asking.  Please either use the comment link to leave your answer, or, if the answer is more complicated than that, tell me you want a whole post, so you can fully explain it.