"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.