"Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way." Lee Iacocca

We're on the path to getting our new administrative annex building completed, and our Village Hall renovated.  The former is taking shape, and the latter is about to be under way.  The plans are firm and satisfactory.  The financing appears to be a bit of a moving target.  No one is pleased about that.  But we know where we're going, and it's clear we're going to find our way there.

Could there be anyone who isn't on board at this point?  Evidently there could.  And there is.  Not only are some Village residents sniping at the plans and the planners, but even some former Commission members are launching spitballs.   The importance of this is that we have relied for about 82 years on our log cabin as the seat of Village government.  Most Village employees work there, and our records are there.  If this structure was adequate when the Village had less than 100 homes, and just a few residents, it's unimaginable that it could be adequate now.  But not one Commission before the current one lifted a finger to make, or propose, changes.  It's not even clear anyone ever asked any questions.  Repairs were piecemeal and slipshod, the result in recent years including active leaking when it rained, rats running free in the building, and one toilet that sat on rotten flooring which constantly threatened to give way.

It might be understandable that non-Commission Village residents are skittish about repairs, renovations, and new construction which will strain Village finances for some years to come.  It's not understandable that past and present Commissioners are criticizing, scolding, and catastrophizing.  They had their chances to do something before now.  They chose not to.  They didn't lead when they could have.  They don't want to follow the lead of other more constructive Commissioners now.  Lee Iacocca leaves them one other strategy.

"The Residents Don't Want It."

I have a problem, and a dilemma.  At the Special Commission meeting this past Tuesday, Steve Bernard arose to scold and blame the Commission for pursuing annexation.  And incurring a charge for this pursuit.  He told us that regarding annexation, "the residents don't want it."  Steve's comment should not simply be written off as typical whining and griping and sarcastic sniveling.  Yes, of course it was all of that, but there was something else in what he had to say.  There was that provocative affront: the Commission has acted on an initiative that the residents don't favor.

Let's assume Steve was talking about someone other than himself and a small handful of other BP residents.  Let's assume he was properly referring to a notable number of people.  He likened the complained-of Commission action over the objection of some BP residents regarding annexation to the Commission's action over the objection of residents regarding outsourcing sanitation.  We still have no idea how many people didn't want to outsource sanitation, because those who said they didn't want it were misinformed about what it was they were asked to repudiate.  But let's assume, for purpose of discussion, that a few hundred BP residents don't want to annex anything.

The question is, then, what do these residents want?  Do they want, as some of them say, the Village to operate more efficiently, to free up money that they portray as wasted somewhere in Village finances?  Do they imagine they're talking about enough money to make a meaningful difference?  Over the tenures of the last Village Manager and the present one, the Village has undergone very major trimming and tightening up.  If anyone could find a few more dollars in the budget (and I'm quite sure each of us could), they wouldn't be enough to fix what's broken around here.  They certainly wouldn't improve the medians, or the streets, or the drainage problems, or erect a wall along the track, or rehab the recreation area.  They certainly wouldn't have gotten an administration building built, or the log cabin renovated.

The Village has nothing meaningful to sell (it's mostly building permits and site rentals), so there's no real opportunity to increase revenue there.

We can increase taxes as properties sell, but if the Village is kept in it's sadly modest state, we're not talking about major increase in value.  And the same people who don't want to annex, or didn't want to outsource sanitation, also don't want the Village intruding on homeowners' prerogatives, like by making demands for Code-based property improvement.  Staying as we are depresses us.

Is it possible, then, that those who don't want annexation don't really want anything?  We're run down, in need of repair, and we should stay that way?

Barbara Kuhl talked about the Village she wants to see.  She wants to see, and live in, the "Mercedes Benz" of Villages.  Neither Steve Bernard nor anyone else expressed disagreement with her.  And Barbara added that she would like to see more community commitment, through actual money donation.  She said, mistaking slightly, that it seems to have been easy to raise money for public art.   She and Gary made it easier than it would have been without their contributions, but I wouldn't say it was exactly easy.  It was long, hard, frustrating, door-to-door work that barely got us where we needed to go in terms of raising money.  And some donors gave much more than others, to make up for shortfalls each time.  I don't disagree entirely with Barbara if her point was that we could support ourselves, but I don't think it's likely as successful, and certainly not as easy, as she seems to think,

I do wish Steve, or anyone else who doesn't want to annex, had had more to say about what they do want, and how they want to accomplish it.  I've said before, and I'll say again, I would vote to stop the annexation project in a heartbeat, if someone would only come up with a better and reliable plan.  All I want is to know of a scheme that gets us considerably more income than we have, so we can do what we as an independent municipality should do.  I've heard from more than one person that if we can't do that, we should surrender, pack it in, and give ourselves back to the County, so they can manage us their way.  If we're not self-respecting, and if we're incompetent, we have no business pretending we can exist on our own.

This, here and now, in this blog, is the time to offer something.

(SC)AMAZON

Two people told me about the goings-on with their accounts at Amazon.  Each had been a faithful patron of the site, and neither uses it much (or at all?) any more.  Both stories started with the same troubling observation: prices keep going up, and they change unpredictably.

Here's what appears to be happening, at least as my two informants have put it together.  If you're an avid user of Amazon, and especially if you agree to their special registration deal, they watch you carefully.  They especially like it if you make recurring purchases of something you use regularly.  They are like pigs in, um, mud, if you let them take the liberty to charge you like clockwork every month or two for your recurring purchase.

You discover two things, if you happen to be paying attention.  One is that the price begins to creep up.  You might not notice this, unless you monitor your credit card bill, because the increases are subtle.  But you have been profiled, and you have been taken for granted.  These increases that you might have written off as due to inflation or something are nothing of the kind.  You come to realize this because of the other thing you might discover.  If you happen to go to Amazon from someone else's computer, not the one you normally use, and not from the one which Amazon has come to recognize, you will find that the prices charged to others are lower than the price charged to you.  If you think this represents a flash sale, which is what Amazon would like you to think, it isn't.  Go back to your own computer, and check the price again.  It's higher.  Now go back to your friend's computer, and look again.  Lower.

The fact is, after Amazon gets done having its way with you, and if you haven't gotten so lazy that you don't comparison shop any more (your assumption is, quite naturally, that Amazon has wonderful pricing that doesn't need be checked), you will find that Amazon charges more than other vendors for the things you want to buy from them.  They're counting on your laziness not to figure that out.

Here's another version of this problem.  I know someone else who has gotten himself into the business of selling stuff on Amazon.  He gets new stuff, and he lists it and sells it there, for more, or sometimes much more, than he paid for it retail.  Sometimes, he lists stuff he doesn't even have yet.  He finds things on sale, and he lists them for whatever price he wants.  If someone buys it from him on Amazon, he then goes and buys it from Target, or wherever he found it on sale, and he sends it to his customer.  My first thought was to wonder why anyone would pay him more than they could pay a store for the same item.  Now I know.  They assume Amazon pricing is good, and they don't ask any questions, or bother to comparison shop.  They've been had by Amazon, and the guy I know becomes a beneficiary of this system.  He himself can't explain why his customers overpay him.  But he doesn't know what I now know.

Online shopping is a tricky business.  Registering yourself, and giving credit card information, is only the least subtle risk you take.  Watch out for Amazon.  They didn't become as big and as rich as they are by accident or simple good fortune.

Do You Get What You Pay For?

Lately, there has been an expression of  concern over the idea of paying for a study.  The matter is roads and drainage.  We are to pay about $200K for two work plans.  Some Village residents don't approve, and they don't understand why we should pay for something that has no tangible result.

I have had calls and e-mails expressing concern, or complaint, over this expense, and one of our neighbors, Steve Bernard, has circulated one of his typical e-screeds about it.  The salient complaint is always the same: we should pay for a study, the result of which does not include any work done on the roads?

Funny enough, Steve Bernard happens to be an architect.  As far as I know, that is his one and only profession.  It's the only way, I'm told, he earns a living.  Steve's job is to learn of someone's ambition regarding something they would like to construct, and to apply study and expertise to designing, or imagining, a structure that will fulfill that ambition.  I myself am not an architect, and I have no idea what goes into the production of such a plan.  When I was a member of the Planning and Zoning Board, I saw some architectural plans, and I could see what they're about.  They're just pieces of drafting paper with drawings on them, representing the outlines, or schematic diagrams, of what the imagined building would look like.  And despite the fact that the architect does not do any actual construction, you still have to pay the architect, after which you have to pay the builder who does the "real work."

Since architects make a living, but they don't actually build anything, I'm guessing their clients are asked to pay the architects only for advice and drawings.  I imagine the fee depends on the scope of the intended work.  Maybe it depends on the skill or repute of the architect.  But one way or another, the client of an architect will pay money and walk away with no more construction than there was to begin with.  Whatever was paid will not get one concrete block set.  Is that strange?  Is architecture an odd business?  Should people who are asked to pay an architect for nothing but a scheme be up in arms?

I myself am a doctor.  I'm not a surgeon.  I just listen to someone's complaint, and I advise them what they should do about it.  I charge for that service.  And they don't have to take my advice.  But they do have to pay for it.  Should patients insist upon a free initial consultation, and only pay for services they agree to receive?  In fact, should they only pay if they think they benefited?

We in the Village have paid for studies before.  We've paid for traffic studies, and some of us have relied on the results of those studies.  We've used them as reasons to make statutory changes, as in the speed limit.  But the studies themselves represented only observation and measurement of traffic patterns, and sometimes advice about adjustments that could be made.  The studies didn't do or change anything.  They just gave us information.  That's what the current proposed studies are intended to do.  They're like a traffic study, or a doctor's advice, or an architect's drawing.  They just provide vital information we could not get any other way, and we need that information in order to make the tangible, substantive changes.