Ah Politics,
I've heard from many of you about an email that a resident (one of the few who posts on Dr Jonas's blog, along with Chuck Ross, the Candidate Ross's husband) sent out about me, and while I don't feel I need to defend any email or Commission statement I ever made from being filled with "vitriol", I would like to clarify a couple of things.
The first is that Commissioner Cooper might possibly owe "an apology to Ana Garcia, our Village staff and residents", over his asking for public documents to prove or disprove allegations of a Finance Clerk who resigned due to the fact that each Commissioner was emailed a statement from her to the Manager that she has,"...irreconcilable differences with your Management style and feel that your decisions and actions will ultimately jeopardize the ethics and integrity of the Finance Department."
While this resident claimed that this was about "the alleged firing of a temp worker", she was neither fired nor a temp worker, so the premise for why she left is already busted. As far as Cooper doing anything wrong by repeatedly requesting the documents that might shed light on allegations of time sheet revisions, improper budget transfers, etc... he wouldn't be doing his job as an elected official if he gave up his requests just because the Administration refused to comply. The majority of the Commission, including then Mayor and now Candidate Roxanne Ross, chose not to publicly investigate the allegations, so what else was he to do? The apology should come from those who refused to do anything about actions that could jeopardize Biscayne Park's ethics and integrity.
As to what "kind of Government you want to foster", I will let Candidate Dr. Fred Jonas answer that with the post he made in response to my email asking Residents to consider running for office. He not only used ridicule to discount my words (not sure who calls my emails "steviegrams" or "nastigrams"), but he also got a few other things wrong:
1. I have never discouraged" anyone from attending meetings. If you've been getting and reading my emails, all I have ever done is begged you to attend and participate.
2. I never "protested too much", or "even protested a lot" about his baseless accusations of violations of Sunshine Law. In fact, all I did was quote him, and let you read his blog about it. I chose that one post to quote to show how easily he accuses with no facts... something I hope no Appointed Official (he's on the BP Foundation) or Commissioner will ever do.
3. Dr Jonas also claimed that I seemed "to suggest that he is a miserable, ill-tempered, undermining
4. Most bizzare is that I have a "flock" that does as I say, and that if you 'ever want to know what you want, you are welcome to ask me". In every email I have sent you, I have done my best to convey the facts as I understand them, proven them with links, given my opinion, and asked you to participate. The insult of anyone doing anything simply because I told them to is a favorite subject of his, posted time and again in his blog. I will leave it to you to determine if you have your own minds... but I have always trusted you do.
I am including his response, because for some reason he states that I somehow fail to cite by quoting (even though that's exactly what I did), and believe me when I tell you that I want you not just to listen to what he is saying now, as a Candidate, but what he has posted for years... which is exactly why I gave you the link to his words.
So when he asks for your support, or your vote, or for his sign in your yard, think about how he is the one who has fostered "vitriol", as shown in the second comment to his blog (quoted below) from some anonymous person who has never met me, has not read my emails, has not heard me speak, and does not live in our Village - that is the definition of "vitriol", and to include it in his blog instead of keeping it to himself says all you really need to know about him.
The insults, the name calling, the meanness, the incivility... needs to stop, and while he can't take back the vicious and inaccurate things he has already said, I hope he and his agents will stop attacking citizens and Candidates, knowing how it divides us as a Village. The facts should be enough to make decisions.
Sincerely,
Steve Bernard
The minor issues are things like the following:
1) Really? Cooper "might possibly owe 'an apology to [all of us]?'" Most interesting. Let's see if we get one.
2) Was the clerical worker who walked off the job to take lunch and never returned, at some point "fired?" No doubt. We had to have some formal way to remove her from the books. Or perhaps it was simply registered that she apparently "quit."
3) We have all seen Steve fill the Commission room with people who approached the audience podium and repeated after each other whatever complaint happened to be on Steve's mind. We met Noah Jacobs when Steve trotted him out for the same mission. After Steve became a Commissioner, and the room began to empty, and Bryan Cooper joined him, and the room got even emptier, and then Steve engineered a majority, and the room was practically devoid, except for Chuck Ross, Janey Anderson, Barbara, and sometimes Gary, Kuhl, Linda Dillon, Rosemary Wais, and me, you better believe Steve was letting the flock know there was no reason to waste time sitting through endless Commission meetings. "Never mind that man behind the curtain." When he wants them there, they're there.
4) As for Steve's convenient assumption that a comment was entered by someone who "has never met [him], has not read [his] emails," I'm afraid not. The comment was sent in only after the person who wrote it asked to see the Steviegram. It was in fact reading Steve's e-mail that provoked the comment. Reading my blog post did not stimulate this response.
4) As for Steve's convenient assumption that a comment was entered by someone who "has never met [him], has not read [his] emails," I'm afraid not. The comment was sent in only after the person who wrote it asked to see the Steviegram. It was in fact reading Steve's e-mail that provoked the comment. Reading my blog post did not stimulate this response.
The major issue is, how in the world did Steve's response to Milton Hunter's letter settle on me? Steve never mentions Milton. He only talks about me, Chuck Ross, and Roxy Ross. This has nothing in the world to do with me, Chuck, Roxy, or this blog. Did I say, and did Steve bristle at my suggestion that, he "protests too much," or at least that he "protests a lot?" Hmm. And "insults," "name-calling," "meanness," "incivility," and "vitriol?" Steve wrote a long letter to the Biscayne Times for no other reason than to report to the entire readership of the paper that Steve considers me a liar. He stood in front of a line of BP residents waiting to vote, to trumpet the same thing. His reason at the time was that I was handing out printed information suggesting the advisability of moving the BP election to the general election. He advised Noah Jacobs in writing not to reply to e-mails from me, and to block me from e-mail, as Steve proudly announced to Noah that he did, because, as Steve put it to Noah, I'm a "whackjob." "Insults," "name-calling," "meanness," "incivility," "vitriol?" He's a real gentleman, that boy. But still, what's this got to do with Milton Hunter's letter?
Fred
Fred
About That Flock:
ReplyDeleteOne reader wrote to me privately to complain about Steve's new post. She experienced him as "dirty" and "divisive." She does not live here (she's the same person who sent the other comment Steve didn't like), and she relies only on what Steve writes. In her comment, she referred to Steve's "flock," and she joked "what 'flock?'" Steve defines a "flock" for us. His letter that I published for him was not submitted as a blog post. Steve did not send it to me. He sent it to his group of recipients, his "flock," two of whom sent it to me. So Steve creates the concept of a flock by seeming to have something factual and generally applicable to say, but being unwilling to say it generally, to everyone. He sends it only to trained eyes. He further cemented his concept of a "flock" in his advice to Noah Jacobs. I already quoted part of that advice, where Steve tells Noah I am a "whackjob" who is unworthy of a reply to substantive comments. But Steve's other piece of advice to Noah regarded my complaint to Noah that he sends out his supposed community insights, but he doesn't send them to everyone whose address he has, like me. I requested he include me in the circulation. Steve told Noah he himself had blocked me long ago, advised Noah to do the same, and reassured Noah that there is no statutory requirement that Noah communicate his thoughts openly. Steve encouraged Noah to confine his communications to a selected group of residents, even though his communications are supposedly about Village affairs. Steve feels that Noah, too, should cultivate a "flock." And it appears Noah is a good pupil. He appropriately checks in to ask Steve what he should do, and he does what he's told.
The whole meaning of a flock is that it is distinct, separate from the general world of sheep, or whatever the herder is husbanding. Keeping a flock is Steve's stock in trade. It's his specialty.
As for Steve's plaintive and disingenuous assertion that he has "begged [his flock] to attend [Commission meetings]," no one has seen one his e-mails where he generally urges recipients to attend meetings, or complains that they don't. Only on very specific occasion does he whip them into a frenzy of concern about one threat or tragedy or another, tell them they must come to the meeting to state their (his) case, and we see them en masse. We see the heralding Steviegram, too. They rely on him to let them know when they're needed, and wanted, and when they can just stay home. Which is what they typically do.
Fred
Fred - please feel free to post my comments.
ReplyDeleteSteve claims to deal only in facts. True to a point unless you count the facts he omits. As for the "temp worker" - true this person was a contract employee, not a temp worker - however in my opinion the fact that this person did not give proper notice but instead picked up her purse, went to lunch and never returned greatly diminishes her credibility and her ability to stand in judgment over anyone else's ethics and integrity. Here are some things missing from Steve's post:
1. The majority on the commission at that time, Bob Anderson, Al Childress and Roxanna Ross did in fact discuss PUBLICLY AT COMMISSION MEETINGS (on more than one occasion) that they had investigated all of this person's accusations and found them all to be baseless.
2. One of her complaints was about a budget transfer.....here's a piece of irony for you - that budget transfer had been approved - PUBLICLY AT A COMMISSION MEETING by that very commission!
3. Another complaint was that Ana took 1/2 day off the day before a holiday and did not code herself. I have no clue where this contract employee had worked before but I can tell you in the real world upper level managers who put in the kind of hours Ana put in do not code every single hour they take off .
As for this contract worker's work.....several months after she left there was a check found in her drawer that she had never bothered to deposit - and the check itself was several months old.
The real problem is that Ana was a tougher task master than the prior manager and that simply didn't sit well with this contract employee.
The fact that Steve did not want to hire Ana and showed that publicly for his entire time in office - quick to blame and find fault, not so quick at team work - makes me think he lacks any sort of objectivity. As for Bryan - he never got over his "chop up the medians and swales to make a walking path" grant not working out. Fact is it came up multiple times before 2 different commissions, there was an ad-hoc committee formed to study it, input came from the Village's traffic engineers and most important - the majority of the residents who live on the route didn't want it. So - Ana did not champion it.
Janey Anderson
PS - I will agree with Steve. He VERBALLY and in WRITING encourages people to attend commission meetings. But - he can't seem to grasp that his and Bryan's MO of "Paralysis by Analysis" and pre-pubescent snarky attitude toward any one (commissioners, residents, staff) who don't agree with them is what drove people away. So - the result is actually less transparency, not more.
Thank you, Janey. I hope you don't mind, but there was a recurring spelling error, and I fixed it for you.
DeleteMy apologies to Steve for not having known or seen that he apparently does tell people to come to meetings. I myself have never seen one of his e-mails where he encourages attendance on a routine basis, but I gather you have. We're left to wonder why those exhortations occasionally work, like when Steve tells people their boats/RVs will be outlawed, or we're on the verge of annexation, or FPL is getting ready to trash the neighborhood, but mostly, they appear not to work at all.
Fred
I thought to chime in on the rebuttal from Steve Bernard.
ReplyDeleteDebate is a healthy form of government in my opinion.
As for Steve’s attempt to “politically link me” based on a few comments posted on the blog to Fred, Chuck or by extension Rox Ross let me state that I appreciate that a neighbor attends all Village meeting/functions and offers a review. I’ll also note that I’ve picked up some tips on good restaurants and music venues from Fred’s blog so there is value in his efforts.
For the record I have also written articles posted in the Miami Herald, Biscayne Times, made comments during Commission meetings, etc. so who should I be linked with there?
I also think that Steve’s “flock” (your word not mine) would benefit in reading the blog for the other side of the story that is presented.
But do understand this Steve … Milton is on Milton’s side only. I can think for myself thank you very much.
Now, back to you rebuttal. Sorry to inform you Steve but the semantics of her position doesn’t “bust” the facts. As to your query of “what should Bryan have done”… that would be the same as the rest of the Commission decided once examined. Move on and focus on more relevant and constructive Village matters.
I guess the obvious seemed to have escaped Steve in that AFTER review from the other Commissioners (as also stated by Janey Anderson) and staff that the “complaint” lodged was in fact a non-issue. These were also the finding from the $5,000.00 outside investigation that Cooper championed.
Steve’s continued support of Cooper also didn’t mention the findings from what the outside and nonpartisan Attorney uncovered in that “Vice-Mayor Cooper has been consistently accusatory and threatening in word and in tone to the Manager, as well as to the Clerk and the Village Attorney. The Vice-Mayor both hides and attacks behind emails, rather than trying to work with the village staff.
“Whenever the Vice-Mayor Cooper has not obtained the response he has wanted, he has attacked, challenged, and threatened. I find that Vice-Mayor Cooper’s conduct has had a harmful effect on the Village operations as he has escalated all issues and disputes into heightened conflict, exacerbated by his threats of going to the State Attorney, or his innuendos of some ethical violation by sending emails to the Miami-Dade Ethics Commission. Such threats and implied threats have no proper use by an elected official. This hostility, direct threats, and indirect personal attacks did impede the Manager, the Clerk, and Village staff from performing their work, and unnecessarily created a negative atmosphere.”
So yea, I’ll stand by my statement that not only does Bryan Cooper own an apology to Ana Garcia, our Village staff and residents but should also be held responsible for his egregious behavior. Hiding behind emails as both Steve and Cooper did during their terms does not promote a healthy or prudent working atmosphere with either the Village Manager or Staff.
In the 20+ years I’ve lived in the Village and in my location beside Village Hall, I have seen Commissioners come and go with many personal meetings with the Village staff and managers save two. Guess who?
Milton,
DeleteI'm not sure what all this diversion is about. This started out with your two letters, and a third to follow. As I said, it had nothing to do with this blog or me. Except that Steve is using your uncommon comment in this blog as an excuse to castigate me for something. Go for it, I guess. I can't wait to see the election eve drive-by anonymous letter. I hope I get a copy. If I don't, please save me yours.
For the record, your letters were excellent syntheses. They were based on facts as you could research them or as you could observe them. I myself could find nothing inaccurate about them.
But since we're now apparently back to your letters, and your discussion of the departure of the one-time finance clerk, it is possible to examine or debate the content of her complaint or the circumstances of her leaving. This led, as you summarize, to a complaint of Cooper's against the Manager. What is missing, although Steve has no evident problem with it, is why and how Cooper was involved in the first place. If the finance clerk had a personnel-related complaint, there is no doubt a County ombudsman office to which she could have reported it. Instead, presumably, apparently, maybe, she chose to make that complaint to one of the Commissioners. How she chose that one is mysterious, unless she made it to all of them, but only one picked it up. If that's the case, and only Cooper picked it up, Steve should tell us why it didn't seem action-worthy to him. If it did seem action-worthy, but he and Cooper colluded to decide that it would be Cooper who carried the ball, we have a Sunshine problem. In any case, Cooper had no business championing the complaint, and even less business personally investigating it himself. He has subsequently made clear that he thinks he has more knowledge in every field than trained and qualified professionals in those fields, but that is his personal fantasy. It is nothing on which he should have acted. He should have encouraged the employee to make her complaint through appropriate channels, and Cooper was not it. The whole matter snowballed until Cooper exploded the whole Commission, insisted on outside investigation, wanted to vacate or disqualify the outside investigation when it backfired on him, and everything else you summarize. It was a disaster. He was a disaster. And he has never relented, much less apologized. The saving phenomenon is that he isn't running again. He should have resigned long ago, but it's water under the bridge now. Sadly, Bernard has not given up this whole travesty, and he still wants to crusade with it. Don Quixote?
Anyway, Milton, thanks for the letters. They were enlightening, if, as you say, people can read them and think clearly about what they say and what they imply. I look forward to the third installment.
Fred
It is so hard to know whom to believe - Fred, Steve, Chuck, Milton, Noah. There are often so many different versions of the same occurrence.
ReplyDeleteI will tell you my experience. I had followed this blog for a time before actually having the opportunity to attend a Commission Meeting. Frankly, I was shocked to experience everything that Fred had described in his blog. The meeting was 4 hours long and provided a clear picture of the thinking (in some cases the non-thinking) and position of each of the current commissioners.
Really, the only way to know whom to believe is to attend the last Commission Meeting prior to the election. This meeting will be held on Wednesday, November 6. My guess is that it will not take you 4 hours to determine the type of person you want representing you and your village. For most sports fans, it is much more satisfying to see the game first hand rather than depend on someone else telling you what happened and, just maybe, getting it wrong.
Mimi D'Angelo
Wellesley, Massachusetts
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with Mimi and everyone else who encourages you to attend Commission meetings. You'll get to see Cooper and Jacobs in action along with Rox and Fred. Although Fred doesn't sit on the Commission it's a rare occasion that he doesn't speak. Why should this matter? For one thing, I know where Fred stands on issues. When he doesn't agree with Commissioners he lets them know and tells them why. He's been doing this for a long time. Now he's running for Commissioner and I really think I know how Fred feels about things. How do the other candidates feel about issues that Biscayne Park has to deal with? Your guess is as good as mine. Most of them are never there and sometimes comes only when it affects them.
ReplyDeleteI think this should matter to voters. If you want the responsibility of being Commissioner then you should be part of the process, part of the solution, long before you declare your candidacy. If you want to criticize and complain don't do it from the shadows. Anyone who does go to Commission meetings sees first hand the negative agenda Cooper and Jacobs display. Is Steve standing in the shadows stoking the fire? You have to be pretty stupid not to see Steve's agenda coming through loud and clear. I've written to Steve directly when I read his slanted emails. I know it's useless but I can't keep my mouth shut. I don't want to speak for Milton Hunter but there comes a time when you've had enough. Unfortunately, I haven't heard enough people at Commission meetings tell Cooper, Noah, Watts and Bernard that they've had enough of their crap. They're tactics are divisive to our community and do nothing to work with people who really want to help.
So ask yourself if this is the kind of Commissioner you want running our village? If Steve is so unhappy with what's been going on then why isn't he part of the solution. Come to meetings and discuss things in a public forum. There really are no reasons just excuses and I'm sick of hearing them.
If we see something happening that we don't think is right then we're just as guilty when we say nothing. So many people I speak to are unhappy with the situation we have right now. It's time to speak up and stop complaining.
Barbara Kuhl
It is funny, since you mention it, that Steve claims to "beg" his e-mail recipients, whom he does not describe as a flock, to attend Commission meetings, but he himself never attends them, except when he wants big drama over the bogeyman du jour. I guess his people have decided that (Steve's) actions speak louder than words. If he can't waste his time with this pathetic nonsense, why should they waste theirs? On the other hand, if I were responsible for the current majority of the Commission, I wouldn't show my face, either.
ReplyDeleteFred