Let Me Ask You This, Milt. And Brian. And Brad. And You, Too, Anti-Outsourcers.

Milt,

On a few occasions and in a few ways, we have assessed what our neighbors want.  At our first "listening sessions," our neighbors approached a podium, one after another, and pleaded to keep sanitation in house.  It looked to me like 100% of them wanted that.  At the ends of those sessions, we took a secret poll of those who wanted to be polled, and we found that 50% of respondents wanted sanitation in-house, and 50% wanted to outsource it.  We don't know if minds were changed by the content of the sessions, or if different people voted than the people who spoke.

Some of our neighbors wrote to all of the Commissioners.  Obviously, I don't know about the ones who didn't write to all of us.  Of the ones who wrote to all Commissioners, I would say that about 75-80% very much did not want to outsource.

At the last Commission meeting, many of our neighbors spoke openly.  I kept a tab, and about 25 speakers didn't want to outsource, while about 5 did want to outsource.  So about 84% of speakers did not want to outsource.

It seems clear to me that our neighbors have heard what the issues are.  They get it.  They understand that keeping sanitation in house will cost more.  They're willing to pay it.  You might complain that they're generous with your money, but they say they're also generous with their own money.  The only thing they have not offered to do is compensate the Village for the Franchise Fee that outsourcing would have brought us.  But they haven't refused, either.

If what seems like a majority of our neighbors want something, and are willing to pay for it, on what basis do you or we deprive them of it?  Because you or we didn't want what they wanted, or we thought they were wrong, but we got outvoted?  What we don't know is what the real majority of our neighbors want.  We have never heard from the real majority.  As I have said before, I could guess what they might be likely, based on their behavior, to want, but I'm only guessing.  We have to assume that a "majority" has spoken.  That's how elections work.  The majority of voters decide who wins.  Those who don't vote have nothing to say about it.  (And for purpose of discussion, if we polled everyone in the Village, and 84% of all residents wanted to keep the sanitation program in-house, and were willing to pay for it, would you still want to outsource it?  Would you still propose to take it away from the very sizable majority of your neighbors who say they want it and say they're willing to pay for it?)

Fred



Anti-Outsourcers,

As best I can tell, we all agree about one thing.  Well, most of us agree.  We agree that we are trying to save the Village, not only to keep it from failing as an independent municipality, but to build it into a functioning place that meets its proper responsibilities and is a credit and a pleasure to its inhabitants.  It's true that there are some of us who either don't care if the Village fails, or who actively hope it does.  Some seem to be sowing seeds of sabotage.  Their fantasy is that we would fall, but only gently, into the waiting and loving arms of Miami Shores.  We would become the Shores' "Historic Biscayne Park" district.  So the fantasy goes.  But that appears only to be a minority of us, and we can set them aside for a while.

There's another seeming minority I would propose we set aside.  I met some of them when I was campaigning last fall, and the inflammatory issue was whether we should pursue annexation.  When I confessed to those who asked that I not only wouldn't rule out annexation, but I actually thought it was a good idea, some people ended the conversation immediately.  They didn't exactly slam the door in my face, but it was close.  A couple of anti-annexers did have a conversation with me, and they let me know that as far as they were concerned, annexation was out of the question.  Whether it was some concept of its changing the Village, or something simply not articulated, they just wouldn't hear of it.  If I said the future of the Village was at stake, their only suggestion was that we think of some other solution.  They themselves didn't have one, except to economize better.

You like our traditional in-house sanitation service, and you want to keep it.  If someone tells you we have also traditionally budgeted poorly for this service, and that the cost will go up, considerably, you agree to pay more.  Although you also say what the anti-annexation people said: maybe if we economized better, we wouldn't have to charge more, or at least not much more, than we would with outsourcing.  But you've made clear that even if did have to charge a good deal more, you would agree to pay it.

If the sanitation program was entirely self-contained, it might be hard to disagree with you.  You did say you were willing to pay whatever it costs.  But there are two important leaks in the plumbing of this system.  One is the administrative component of the sanitation fee.  This is the part of the sanitation budget that is essentially transferred to the general fund, to cover the estimated proportion of "staff" time that is used to manage the sanitation component of the PW department.  This transfer has gotten some notoriety, in part because your effort to suggest economizing has focused on this fee, about which a number of you complain.  You suggest the administrative fee is padded, and you would like it to be lowered.  But what if you're wrong?  Or what if this transfer is part of what allows the Village to work fiscally?  We still have to pay our administrative employees.  If we don't use the administrative part of the sanitation budget to do it, and we can't raise our ad valorem tax rate much more, don't you jeopardize the whole Village budget?

The other leak is the new influx of unrestricted cash that comes into Village coffers if we outsource.  You have offered to pay what the sanitation program costs, but I don't think you have offered to compensate the Village for the "loss" of this new revenue.  We can't try to preserve this benefit by adding it to the in-house sanitation budget, because everything in that fund has to stay within sanitation.  That part of the advantage of outsourcing would have gone to the general fund, to help us pay for things other than sanitation.  What do you propose to do about that "loss?"

One last question: you have often argued that with an in-house program, the Village has more "control."  In fact, the Village has considerably less control when the program is in-house.  When we own and run the program, we are vulnerable.  If employees don't come to work, or equipment breaks down, we're stuck.  We can't get the work done, or at least not on time, and we incur expenses, either for overtime or for repairs.  If we don't outsource, how do you propose we confront these problems, and the lack of control they present to us?

Fred