To Be Clear about Annexation

The gathering at the Commission meeting was unexpectedly small, considering the rumblings regarding discussion of annexation and referendum.  Only a few people addressed these issues in public comments.  About half suggested that the Commission should proceed on its own.  The other half either advocated or threatened referendum.

There are two issues regarding annexation.  One is whether the Village needs money it doesn't have, and the other is whether annexation is the way to get it.  In truth, those who didn't want annexation failed to address either issue.  Their one posture was that they didn't want annexation.  No reason was given, no statement was made about Village finances (even that they think, in theory, that Village finances are plenty robust already, and there is no need to try to improve them), and no alternative to annexation was proposed.

This posture was untenable.  It was empty.  Those who adopted it made no attempt to connect their argument to reality, or even, really, to the Village.  There was nothing but a slogan: "if the Commission tries to pursue annexation, the voters will rise up to take the decision away from you."  (I'm paraphrasing.)  And replace it with......nothing.  In the interest of......nothing.  The imagined victory is not the life and health of the Village.  It is the refusal to annex, or apparently to improve Village finances in any way at all. 

The implication, and the result, are a refusal to improve the Village.  Money is nothing, except what it can buy.  The reason the Village needs more money is that it needs better medians, and streets, and other fixtures, and equipment, and ability to do post-hurricane clean-up, and improved lighting, and any of a hundred other things.  The argument against annexation, and the failure to propose anything else, is an argument against keeping the Village healthy, vibrant, well-conditioned, and able to survive.

That was the argument we heard from those who wanted to farm out the annexation decision to the residents at large.  Because the truth is, those people were counting on the public at large to do what the current Commission majority will not do: repudiate annexation.  It was never true that the sponsors and supporters of the referendum idea fundamentally care what Village residents think and want, about annexation or about anything else.  They have shown that to us repeatedly.  They have failed to solicit, or accede to, the voice of the people about a range of issues, including annexation.  Their proposal last night was disingenuous at best, and dishonest at worst.

Was it Lee Iacocca who said it?:  "Lead, follow, or get out of the way."  The path to the health and life of the Village is a path toward annexation.  It is the recognition that conventional municipalities cannot maintain finances without a diverse revenue source.  Village residents are welcome to follow the lead of those who are pursuing annexation as the best way to provide that diversity, and stability.  Or, they can present something just as good and reliable.  Or something better.  They can lead, and the rest of us will happily follow them.  They haven't done this before, and they didn't do it last night.  No, they refused to follow, and they had no direction in which to lead us.  Their graceful remaining alternative was to step back, out of the way.  They didn't do that, either.

Being an elected official is a difficult job.  It's a huge responsibility, and it involves sitting at the desk where the buck finally stops.  Most people, most good, able, and talented people, will not choose this job.  I don't blame them.  But the people who don't want this responsibility have to leave the difficult decisions to the people who are willing to accept it.  You don't get to have "authority without responsibility."

We were reminded last night of the infamous "petitions" to which Commissioners were suppose to have acceded some months ago, when the matter was sanitation.  We were suppose to have heard the voices of our neighbors, our constituents.  If they--some alleged number of them-- didn't want to outsource sanitation, we were not to do it.  But the "petitions" were frauds.  They were scams.  The one I studied had forgeries, the weight of people who didn't exist or who didn't live in BP, and the petition statement was only partially and loosely connected to reality.  The issues had not been explained to proposed signatories, and almost none of them understood them.  The document was meaningless and irrelevant.  Now, we are asked to rely again on the voice of the people, regarding annexation.  This suggestion comes from exactly the same people who were behind the anti-outsourcing sanitation effort, and the "petition."  Are they confident that Village residents are easy to manipulate and bamboozle (they've already proven that to themselves once), and they should rely on their own ability to demagogue their neighbors into rejecting annexation, too?

Not on my watch.  I have a job to do.  I asked for it, and I accepted it.  One of my friends reminded me yesterday of my campaign slogan: "For the Best We Can Be."  I had a sign made of this slogan, and I placed it in front of me, next to my name plaque, at the meeting last night.  That mantra is every bit as important as who I am.  Maybe it's more important.  The Village should be the best it can be with or without me.

In medical ethics, an important area of concern is "informed consent."  At bottom, there is an understood right to refuse treatment.  Sometimes, this decision includes a "right to die."  People can exercise a right to refuse treatment, and they can act on their right to die.  But they have to do it with their eyes wide open.  They have to understand very clearly what decision they're making, and what its consequences are.  They have to understand the alternatives, and the treatments they are choosing to forego.  They can make that choice, if they are "competent."   They can decide that what is proposed to help them is so unbearable, and offering so little chance for meaningful survival, that they would rather die of their disease than undergo attempts to treat it.  But if a patient is simply resistant, and can demonstrate no ability to think through the life-and-death matter of treatment for a probably fatal disease, the decision is not left with the patient.  Treatment will be imposed, to save the life the patient does not have the wherewithal to preserve in himself.

So it is with the Village.  Anyone who clearly recognizes and understands the problem, and who equally understands the proposed solutions, and the alternatives to accepting them, can participate in decision-making.  But anyone who does not understand the problem, who makes no attempt to understand it, whose grasp of the proposed solution is no more than rudimentary and symbolic, who offers no alternative, and who has chosen others to make the difficult decisions must allow those chosen decision-makers to decide.  Last night, two non-Commissioner Village residents argued for referendum.  Last month, when the same matter was on the Commission Agenda, it was one non-Commissioner resident.  How many people would vote against annexation, or that the matter should always be left to the residents-at-large?  Hundreds, like the "petition?"  Where are they?  What do they know?  What questions have they asked?  What have they learned?  What alternatives are they proposing?  No, this is what an elected Commission is for.  The sponsor of the referendum effort knew last year that it was a Commission decision, when she made her own Commission vote on it.  She needs to remember that now.