The following e-avalanche was written by Steve Bernard. For whatever were his reasons, he admitted he was once a Commissioner in BP. The B-mail is typical for Steve, in a few ways. It is nasty. It contains various accusations, typically, as here, that the Commission on which he does not sit and of which he did not endorse part of the majority is both incompetent and uninterested in the opinions of BP residents, or anyone else. The B-mail also includes some classic tactics, such as referring to conversations that occurred in everyone else's absence, and with people who are no longer here. It is a dazzling display of figures and calculations that are so clear and "bottom line" that it is impossible that anyone else, and everyone else(!), wouldn't naturally have known and adopted them, too. Unless, of course, as Steve makes clear, the other people are idiots, criminals, or both. The final essential feature of B-mails, although this is equally true of Steve's verbal offerings, is that they are remarkably well-presented. He's a great speaker and writer. Actually, and importantly, he makes a fine raconteur. When you're in the presence of Steve the speaker or Steve the writer, you become so enrapt that you sort of stop paying attention to what Steve is saying. I always said of Steve that if you didn't know anything about a topic, Steve is the smartest person on the planet. Because he knows everything about everything, and there's nothing he misses.
Because Steve has generously provided a "super long" B-mail, I am going to present it in three parts. Passages in red are from me.
Hi Everyone,
It's been a long while since I've been able to get involved in Village matters, but there's a couple of issues that are pretty important I wanted to share with you.... so I'll make this super long.
The first issue is Annexation. Yes, it is still alive, even though no Commissioner wants to hear what you think (Members of two Commissions have of course listened to and heard a great deal of what BP residents think about this issue. A majority of the last Commission did what it could to quash annexation. A majority of the present Commission has revived the effort. What Steve means to suggest to his neighbors is that a majority of the current Commission did not do what he himself prefers, for whatever are the real reasons he prefers it.), no newsletter mentions it, no newspaper article has discussed it, and there is a County Commission Meeting NEXT Tuesday, 7/19/16 to determine what will happen. What? You didn't know? Shocking! I guess the "TRANSPARENCY" word plastered all over letterheads and police cars in the Village is just a bad joke.
Because you see, if the County Commissioners approve the next step next week, there will be a vote among residents to determine if a mostly commercial area will become part of Biscayne Park. And do you know who votes? Not Biscayne Park. (Admirably clever and tricky. Pure Steve. Congressional Republicans do the same thing. The people, as represented by their chosen President, should have a say about who replaces Scalia. But Barack Obama is the people's twice-chosen President. So shouldn't he be the one to make the nomination? No, because, um, uh, it's in the final year of his term. Or something. Steve did not complain when the last commission tried to sabotage the annexation effort, without a vote from the residents of BP. He only complains now, when the duly elected Commission wants to go forward. Now he suggests the residents of the Park have not been consulted.) Only those in the apartment buildings in the area. Not even the Office Building Owners, or the CVS... just those renters. Hey, in the interest of TRANSPARENCY, do you think that Biscayne Park will explain to the renters that the Owners of their Buildings will have their taxes rise from 1.983 mils to 9.7 mils? And that will raise their rents to the point where maybe they have to move out? (Only a few paragraphs in, and Steve is already in high gear. This is his classic stuff. He tries to hypnotize his readers into thinking there is a proposal that would more or less quintuple the tax paid by property-owners in the annexation territory. How much clearer could it be? Their millage is now let's call it 2 mills, and it's to increase to almost 10 mills. I don't think Steve would object if I referred to this kind of gross highway robbery as insane. And it would be. If it were true. Look at your property tax bill. It has three main ad valorem portions. One is for the Village, one is for the County, and one is for the School Board. There's a fourth ad valorem amount, but it's small. It's called "State and Other." The School Board portion is taxed at 7.6 mills, the County tax is about 7.8 mills, and the VBP tax is 9.7 mills. If you owned property in the annexation area, you would still be paying the School Board 7.6 mills, you would still be paying the County 7.8 mills, and your "local" tax-- they call it UMSA-- would be let's say 2 mills. It's that last part that will go up, eventually, to whatever is the BP millage. The whole tax bill doesn't quintuple. Only a third of it eventually might. And not in one year. Steve also forgot to mention that until recently, there was competition to annex that area. If we didn't annex it, it would be because CNM would. What's their millage, 9.2? So the third part of the ad valorem tax is going up considerably for that area one way or the other. What was Steve's complaint? Lack of "TRANSPARENCY?" Uh, yeah.) I'm betting against it. Because BP hired some Lobbyists for over $50,000 to get 25% of those renters to sign a petition that allowed annexation to proceed. When asked what they told those renters, they wouldn't tell us. The lobbyists said they didn't have a script, and they never once explained how they got them to sign that paper. Transparency is so beautiful, isn't it?
MATH PROBLEM #1
Am I against Annexation? I sure am against THIS Annexation. Because the numbers don't work... not even close. This Commission has approved a plan that has the following expenses, in their entirety:
$134,713 - TWO Police Officers
$ 25,000 - ONE part time Code Enforcement Officer
$159,713 total expenses
That's it, I swear. Two cops and a part time code guy. No legal costs. No administrative costs. No street repair costs. No street lighting, no parks upkeep, no zoning costs, no signage, no lawsuits, no building inspection.... nothing. No additional costs of any kind. (Oh, Steve swears? What could be more reassuring? As even Steve himself mentioned, he used to be a Commissioner in BP. Ask him how much interest he took in legal costs, street repairs, street lighting, zoning costs, and signage, then. As soon as he became a Commissioner, he was on the horn often to the Village Attorney. It seems one of our new Commissioners kept thinking of wild goose chases and other time-consuming tasks for our Attorney. Steve never advocated for one cent to be expended on street repairs. And we have terrible streets. People today are clamoring for street lights. Steve is referencing it now. Do you want to know how many street lights the Village added in response to Steve's urging? Or how much urging he provided? Steve's idea of parks upkeep, from when he was on the Commission, was to keep the park as poorly conditioned as possible, so that whomever he considered to be BP outsiders wouldn't want to use the park. He was a little hazy as to what he expected BP residents to do with the park he didn't want to spend the money to maintain. We have a new major entry sign at the 6th Avenue bridge. Steve had little or nothing to do with it. As for building inspections, Steve may have been too busy terrorizing Village administration to have understood that building inspections are almost like a revenue center for the Village. Permit fees pay for the inspector as well as part of the support costs, like part of the salary of the Village employee who is the building clerk. If you do talk to Steve, also ask him how someone with such expertise and vision managed to miss the fact that the new Public Works building, installed during his tenure, somehow didn't have a septic tank, and Steve, the architect, missed it. That oversight cost us.)
But the money will come rolling in, our amateur Commissioners claim! (What's an "amateur" Commissioner? Or more properly, what's a professional Commissioner? All elected officials in the world are amateurs. Some are very good at it, and others are less so. But there is no training to be an elected official. Steve has promoted a few candidacies of BP Commissioners. He promoted his own. He's not a professional Commissioner. He initially moved to encourage the candidacy of Roxy Ross, until he realized he wouldn't be able to control her, and she did the horribly traitorous deed of not voting for him to be Mayor. She's a paralegal, but she's not a professional Commissioner. He promoted the candidacy of Bryan Cooper. I was never clear exactly what Bryan does, but it has something to do with a college library. Bryan had briefly been on the Parks and Parkways Board, but he has no other meaningful qualifications. Steve promoted the candidacy of Barbara Watts. Barbara, like Bryan, has a PhD. Hers is in art history. Professional Commissioner? I don't think so. Steve promoted the candidacy of Noah Jacobs. Noah had worked briefly on the political campaign of some candidate out in Arizona or someplace. Then, he became a teacher of special needs children. At the time Noah ran for Commission, he might or might not have lived in the Village for a year. He had never served on any Board or other work group. His claim to fame at the time was that he was angry at the Village about something. That, apparently, was qualification enough for Steve. Steve promoted the candidacy of Manny Espinosa. Manny is a corporate accountant, and he had to declare his candidacy at the last moment, because he had to wait until the day he had been here one year. He had no Village or other relevant experience, but he, too, was angry at the Village about something. If we are to assume that Steve's swipe about the current "amateurs" is to distinguish them from the Commissioners or candidates he likes, I, for one, am not impressed. Steve also promoted the candidacy of David Coviello. David is an attorney, with a specialty in zoning, and he had served on another municipal governing Board in Connecticut. That's pretty qualified. But David later voted for outsourcing sanitation and was one of the Commissioners in support of the new construction and renovation about which Steve will complain, so I suspect Steve has demoted David to "amateur.") Estimated revenue is $429,285. Subtract the ONLY expenses budgeted, and the village rakes in $269,572! Hooray!
Seriously, like little kids who don't want to hear the truth, that's what this Commission is counting on. Check out page 213 of the 2/4/14 agenda -http://www.biscayneparkfl.gov/
(don't worry, the driveway nonsense is coming up soon)
SO LET'S TALK ABOUT CRIME, SHALL WE? (MATH PROBLEM #2)
Because if you want to have less police in our village, then this is the plan for you! Because the math is very simple - there are 168 hours in 1 week, and 2 cops, working ALONE, can patrol 80 of them. You know what happens there for the other 88 hours? Nothing, unless our regular police officers leave Biscayne Park to do so. No patrolling, no accident reports, no robberies, no domestic disturbance calls... no NOTHING unless they leave our village to go over to that area - which is not accessible through BP - you have to speed through North Miami or Unincorporated Dade to get to the area. What could go wrong?
I mean, if we have too many police now, let's let some go. We have almost no crime, right, so what's the difference if we fire them or send them elsewhere? What utter nonsense! And those 80 hours are if they work alone, if they take no vacations, no court time, no sick time. Who's idea was this? (Whose, indeed. The initial proposals to which Steve refers came tentatively from two people who are no longer here. One of them was Ray Atesiano, our prior police Chief, and the other was Heidi Siegel, our recently-resigned Manager. She's the Manager about whom Steve will later complain, indirectly, for faulty estimates. What Steve does is reduce complicated and undetermined matters to something about which he can conveniently complain, and for which he can criticize and accuse someone. That's what he does. As we get closer to this, we will "sharpen our pencils" and figure out what the need is, and how best to meet it. As is true of every area, the local municipality police are not always adequate to confront every situation, and other officers are sometimes called in. Right now, it's mostly County police who patrol that area. And they are less attentive than we are. Steve will also later complain about revenues that might not automatically and immediately revert to the Village, if we succeed in annexing. Although Steve doesn't mention he is merely guessing and assuming, improperly. We will certainly have help, from the County and from neighboring municipalities, if we need it, as we have always had their help, and they have always had ours.)
MATH PROBLEM #3
To have two full time officers over there, not even including sick/court/vacation time (and would 2 be enough if something big happened), it takes 168 hours x 2 divided by 40 hours each = 8.4 officers. So if 2 officers requires $134K (with no raises, ever), then 8 officers requires $536K. But wait - total increase in revenue is $429K. So, if we were to service the area with two full time officers at all times, it will cost more than we take in. As I said, what could go wrong? It's not like those roads will ever need repair, drainage will always be perfect, and nothing will ever break.... Who is taking responsibility for this? (Ah, Steve and his police math. He presents a compensation figure. Let's assume it's correct. "No raises, ever." That would be like the PW workers whose jobs Steve tried so hard to protect, except we paid them below the County's poverty level, too. No problem for Steve, though. But back to the police, Steve calculates that we would need to hire 8.4 officers to provide two extra ones per shift for "over there." If we have two officers per shift here, why do we need two per shift there? It's a much smaller area, and there is almost no crime. Oh, well let's not ask questions like that. And what about reserve officers, whom we don't pay. Oh, Steve omitted them. And Steve has, or had, another police math scheme. Maybe he'd like us to try it "over there." His idea was that police don't really cost anything, because they earn in tickets what they cost in salary and benefits. He once told us we should hire another officer, because they're free. And Steve has part of a point, sort of. We do get money from the County, representing fines levied by the police. Supposedly, we receive 40% of the receipts from ticket issuance. The check we received for April, 2015, was for $372. I am told the check has occasionally been as high as $1000. Usually, it's less. That accounts for all tickets written by all officers, and fines either paid normally or as a result of a failed challenge. This is as good as it gets, for the whole department. It doesn't appear rational, if reason is part of Steve's argument, to imagine that police pay for themselves. As for Steve's dismay at the low return of the annexation area, the current tax that the Village would receive, assuming a millage of 9.7, and not taking into account non ad valorem revenue, is about $663K. But who's counting?)
Seriously, no one is sending out emails the day before a commission meeting, crowing about how great this is gonna be, how safe we're gonna be, how safe THEY are going to be over there, how the money is just gonna be rolling in.... they just hope no one knows, no one understands.
At one county meeting, the Manager stated that we'd have a police substation over there. When I asked her about it, she said the sandwich shop might serve as the substation, but no one ever asked them if they'd allow us. Probably because they're gonna be paying almost 5 times the taxes they currently pay now. And for what? For the BP name? For 80 hours worth of BP policing a week? Yeah, I'm sure they'll love to accommodate us.
Me, I don't want even ONE of the police that protect this Village to go to some part of town that has nothing to do with us... because that's one officer that won't be here for us. Stuck there while a train is blocking their return if we need them, stuck dealing with interests that are not our own, stuck away from me and my family. That is simply unacceptable, and it is impossible to do that section right and keep us safe, the math proves it. (You can see it happening. Steve is so impassioned, so outspoken, so desperate, that you stop paying attention to what he's actually saying. He doesn't want "one of the police [who] protect this Village to go..." But what if it's not one of them? What if it's one we hired extra. Or one of our reserves? Or a County or CNM officer?)
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