Perspective and Focus, Dan Keys. It's the Medians.

Dan Keys and I have had this conversation many times.  Some of those times have been private, and some have been public, either in public meetings, on Nextdoor Biscayne Park, and even in comments to posts in this blog.  Dan remains intransigent on the matter, and he generally manages to find me, and the topic, more or less comfortable to dismiss.  So I thought maybe a more formal and stand-alone airing here might be deserved by the topic, and it might stimulate more thinking and even expression of opinion.

It should also be noted that one of Dan's complaints about management of this issue is that individual Village residents (I think of Harvey Bilt, Chester Morris, and whoever put the pandanus in the median at 10th Avenue and 115th  Street) sometimes get frustrated and simply take it upon themselves to make improvements.  Dan objects to acts like these.  But it seems he leaves Village residents who care about the medians, and their own properties, no other choice.

Dan will say in his defense that he doesn't act alone.  This is partially true.  He sometimes relies on some form of consensus from the Parks and Parkways Board, of which he is the Chair.  But he has managed this Board in a very particular way, trying (generally successfully) over time to extrude members he can't control. At other times, he simply does an end around the whole concept of the Board, and he "makes himself available" to be asked, such as by one or another Manager, to make a plan, which he does on his own.

Oddly enough, although Dan seems averse to having the input of other people in creating landscape designs, he has enjoyed success in getting many of us to help him with the actual installation of plants.  I wonder if this seems as much a one way street to Dan as it does to those of us who are happy to help, but feel shut out of the planning process.


Dan,

For some years now, you and I have been having an endless argument.  It's been endless because you won't do what I ask, and I won't stop asking.  The issue is the Village's medians, which I consider inadequately developed (and therefore not the aesthetic and functional features I think they should be).  You, on the other hand, have responded by identifying a variety of reasons the medians could not or should not be better developed.  Your reasons include things like cost, maintenance, selection of materials, and some more loosely related concerns.  But, as what I believe is an important, and possibly critically important, frame of reference, I don't believe you ever said we should not further develop the medians-- further than they are-- because you think they look very nice already, or as nice as they could or should look.  I have never been given reason to think you believe that, and I have never heard anyone else say they thought it, either.

I want to put you in mind of a few ways of looking at this matter, Dan.  About two years ago, you sent to all of the then Commissioners an e-mail.  You had gotten it from somewhere, and for whatever reason, you thought the Village, through its Commission, should be aware of it.  The e-mail was an educational one-- of sorts-- and it had to do with pruning trees.  If I remember correctly, it described five mistakes that should not be made in how trees are pruned and maintained.  As it turns out, Dan, I happened to be particularly interested in this e-mail from you.  At least, I was at the outset.  The fact is, I'm not an arborist, I've heard it makes a difference how trees are pruned, and it just so happened I actually wanted to know what was the proper approach to this task.  But I never found out.  All I learned, having read carefully what you sent, was how not to prune a tree.  Given a tree, and a chainsaw, I still didn't know what to do.  And I don't today.  Dan, you do versions of this a lot.  And every time you do it, in every setting in which you do it, it is as useless, and frustrating, as it was the day I didn't learn how properly to prune a tree.

Do you know the joke line, "the operation was a success, and the patient died?"  Consider all the reasons you always give as to why and where caution has to be taken, and caveats applied, to the project of median development and maintenance.  Being respectful of all those caveats is the operation.  Now, go look at the medians.  That's the patient.  You've been very, very careful, Dan.  You have cautioned the Village to avoid many traps and pitfalls.  You've urged us to save ourselves from many mistakes of many kinds in attending to our medians.  The result is medians that are awful, and in no way the credit they should be to a neighborhood that is uniquely endowed with medians.  Your operation is a success, Dan.  And the patient is dead.

In that connection, have you ever heard the aphorism "the best (or perfection) is the enemy of the good?"  In the interest of saving the Village from imperfections, you have left us with something that isn't good.  In fact, it's bad.  I'm quite sure you've heard the saying "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face."  That is what the Village has done, at your very strong and unwavering encouragement.

I'm going to ask you to reconsider, and think through the approach you have taken to the Village's medians.  Dan, you say you have some relevant training in this area, you had a career in something to do with landscaping or public works or something, and you have always encouraged the Village to rely on you, and to consider you some sort of expert, in matters related to this.  And the Village has accepted your offer.  You have even shown us partial versions of what you have suggested we could expect from your taste and judgment, by doing smaller scale designs for us, like of our southern 6th Avenue entry.  So the Village is even more inclined to assume you have special and applicable expertise and value.  If that's what you wanted us to think, you succeeded in getting us to think it.  So now, Dan, give us the help we really need from you.  And if you won't, then take personal responsibility for what our medians look like.

Fred

Oh, Yeah. That.

Today, Tracy Truppman held what she called a workshop to discuss the Village's police function, and "Codes."  The latter was more broadly a discussion of the general condition, and the visual impression, of the Village and its properties.

Tracy organized the event for today, and it appears enough of her colleagues knew in advance about it that she didn't have to ask them if they liked the idea, and if they were available for today.  Only Roxy Ross and David Coviello had to check their schedules, to see if they were free.  How all that was known by two of Tracy's colleagues, before the meeting at which it was announced, is a mystery.

The meeting was Tracy's solicitation to her neighbors, to find out what they thought, and what they wanted.  And the answer was various, as it always is.  The meeting was divided into sections in which the police were discussed, and Code was discussed.

There were lots of thoughts, ideas, and wishes regarding the various domains of enforcement, but the bottom line of each consideration was the same: we have limited resources.  We can wish for all the police, and all the Code compliance, we want, but if we can't afford more officers, or speed bumps or humps or tables, or more coordinated Codes, or a new Code Officer vehicle (ours is now out of commission, and we temporarily rely on a loaner from Sunny Isles), we really can't move forward with anything.

And that's the way it always is around here.  Even during the Meet the Candidates event, each and every candidate identified as our biggest problem our fiscal limitation.  But instead of a real effort to solve that problem-- our acknowledged biggest problem-- we give ourselves over to fantasizing about how we'd like it to be.  In the ways it can't be.  Because we can't afford it to be that way.

Barbara Kuhl made a point Janey Anderson also makes: the Village as a municipal entity should lead the way, if not at least play by the same rules, regarding an adequate standard of order and visual appeal.  And that point was indirectly reinforced by the police-related concern regarding people who cut/drive across our medians.  They're not supposed to, but they do it anyway, and they don't get caught.  The concept during that part of the discussion was that our meager police force should, in addition to all the other places two officers should simultaneously be, always be there to catch and ticket people driving across the medians.  Or parking on them.

I had nothing to do with this.  I didn't say a word.  It was one of our newer 117th St. neighbors who seemed to put two and two together, and hit upon what seemed to be the kill-two-birds-with-one-stone logic that if we planted in the medians, people wouldn't park or drive on them.  They couldn't, if the medians were occupied with trees and shrubs.  From the mouths of "babes," it would seem.  The poor man had in mind that we should have beautiful medians, as they do in other municipalities nearby.  Like it would be a good thing for us somehow, to have our medians look better.  So he simply thought...  Oh, never mind.

If, in the future, Dan Keys is remembered for anything in BP, I suspect it will be for his unflinching intransigence regarding improving the medians.  As much as he possibly can, he refuses to see it done.  And he spoke against it again.  If he hasn't got a half dozen reasons why not, he's got a full dozen.  He rotates them around, depending on the conversation.  Today's convenient excuse was that specimens should not be planted simply according to the whim of the resident.  Dan carefully stayed away from adding something like "without a real plan," because he knows very well who has worked hard and tirelessly against providing that plan.  But there he was again.  Good old Dan Keys.

So we had a fun time imagining all the improvements we can't afford to make.  Although... A minute or two before one of our neighbors said it, I sent an e-mail to a guy who has access to low-priced electric cars.  He's got some new vehicles, made in China, and he can add enough batteries to get the range to 30-40 miles per day (more than enough for us), with AC.  I'm waiting to hear back.  I asked Heidi Siegel about this, but she wasn't receptive.  Sharon Ragoonan seems to be.

By the way, regarding our discussion about speeding, one of our neighbors, Ernesto Ortiz, said he would donate $1000 for speed bumps/humps/tables.  A bunch more gestures like that, and it's something to think about.  Assuming you agree with the concept of speed bumps/humps/tables.  Absent that, we're still stuck on having the right Commission at the right time to do something meaningful to get us a better revenue stream.  Then, we're not preoccupied with wouldn't-it-be-greats, and this, that, or the other, but not all or both, or maybe not any of them.  Our three new Commissioners did agree it was our biggest problem.  Let's see how motivated and creative they are to try to solve it.  Not easy?  Yeah, I know.

I'm Not Sure What to Call This One.

Tuesday night, the new Commission met for the first time on record.  There didn't need to be much discussion, but there was some.  Here are my choices as to how to title the report of this meeting.

I  considered calling this post "Thank 'God.'"  If I go with this title, I would say that Roxy Ross asked the new Commission to reaffirm, or reconfirm, a gesture the last few Commissions have honored.  Her suggestion was that a Resolution of Decorum be asserted, so that Commissioners would remember to treat each other, and non-Commission residents, with proper respect.  This gesture was sort of mindless.  It was the type of matter that is routinely passed in regular meetings by Consent: it was obvious, and it did not require any discussion.  But since there was no Consent Agenda Tuesday night, and Roxy wanted special and explicit affirmation, she introduced the matter on its own.  It was on the new Commission's Agenda.

But Roxy didn't get the affirmation she requested.  David Coviello affirmed the concept, but our new majority, the "three-pack," joined together to defeat it.  "Cost" was raised, even though there is no cost.  (Presumably, in time, given enough time, our new Commissioners, who have absolutely no relevant experience with Village matters, will learn the difference between an Ordinance, which has a cost, and Resolution, which doesn't.)  There was expressed concern about "First Amendment rights," even though no one proposed to limit anyone's opportunity to speak.  It was just a reminder to be courteous.

But the other important--critically important-- basis for resistance was that the Resolution was already on the books.  So if this intention has already been established, our "three-pack" argued, and it's already on the books, then it does not require reaffirming.  As a purely personal matter, I consider this fabulous news.  I refuse to say the "Pledge of Allegiance."  There are two reasons I won't say it, but the most glaring and superficial one is that I am a militant atheist, and I am deeply offended that our new Pledge, the one adopted in 1954, had a reference to "god" inserted in it.  This is every kind of wrong.  It violates concepts of the separation of Church and State, and it's unnecessarily provocative, and deeply offensive to me.  If anyone thinks I should say the Pledge of Allegiance, they can restore the one that existed when I was born.  I might say that one.

Since the new Commission regime doesn't want to reaffirm what's already on the books, then it should be easy for them to stop the New "Pledge of Allegiance" nonsense.  It's already been said (I said it in elementary school, and I still remember having said it), and it doesn't need to be said any more.  Just like the Decorum Resolution.  Thank you, new Commission majority.  Thank you, "three-pack."

My other choice for a title is "Dream Interpretation: Manifest Content and Latent Content."  Here's how I would put that one together.  I would talk about so-called manifest dream content, which is the obvious story of the dream.  It's the part you remember and relate to someone else.  The latent content is what the dream really means, and what the conscious symbols unconsciously represent.  So your memory of the dream is that you waited for your friend to meet you at the park, but your friend forgot and didn't show up.  That's the manifest content.  The latent content, which you learn in analyzing this dream with your therapist, is that you haven't gotten over the loss of your father in your childhood, when he went to work, but had a heart attack and died, and you never saw him again.  But you were too young to have been able to understand this, and all you unconsciously continued to feel was that you were abandoned.

So I would still have started this story with Roxy Ross' proposal about the Decorum Resolution, and I would have summarized the "three-pack's" multiple and nonsensical resistances.  I would have suggested that these interactions were manifest content: Roxy proposed something, and three of her colleagues gave her a range of reasons why not.

I would then have looked a bit more deeply into these interactions, and I would have interpreted that Roxy, in proposing something that was not strictly necessary, was asserting her own considerable seniority on the Commission, and she was asking her new colleagues to adopt now accepted conventions.  She was being the big dog, trying to civilize them, and she was reminding them who was the heart and soul of the Commission.  That, I would have said, was Roxy's latent content.  The latent content of the response she got was that her new colleagues, much like the other "three-pack" of Cooper, Watts, and Jacobs, were asserting themselves, too, and rubbing Roxy's nose in the mess they were about to make.  The latent message delivered to Roxy this time could be translated to "siddown and shut up, Ross, or we'll smack you down.  Your wisdom, perspective, and good nature are no longer relevant around here.  Do we understand each other?"  I believe that was the latent message from our new "three-pack."  After all, they had to work a bit hard to come up with really lame and irrational excuses not to do something harmless, that a succession of prior Commissions have done.

There wasn't much else that happened in the meeting.  Mayor Tracy Truppman wants "workshops," so we can closely examine Village residents' thoughts about the functioning of various Village areas, such as the police, recreation, and our Code function.  It will be interesting to find out what Tracy has in mind, and if she cares any more what her neighbors think than she does what Roxy Ross thinks.  And both Tracy and Jenny Johnson-Sardella want to be more closely "in the loop" regarding hirings, like of our new Code Officer.  This hiring is the responsibility of the Manager, not of the Commission, and it's unclear what kind of say the new Commission wants over it.  Tracy herself has been equivocal as to whether she thinks the new Manager was a terrible choice, as she told us just after we hired the new Manager, or whether she thinks the new Manager is a wonderful asset regarding Codes, as she told us when she was trying to get us not to approve the new driveway and swale Ordinance.  Perhaps she'll eventually figure out what she thinks of the new Manager.

And now, immediately former Mayor David Coviello told us he will be resigning from the Commission, because a family situation is causing him to have to move out of BP.

So that was the meeting.  If you have a preference for the title, feel free to comment.

"Funny Little City(sic)."

I was talking this morning with my brother.  The topic was politics, and new regimes.  We talked about the big new regime, and the small one.

My brother was under the impression that we in BP "can't pay [our] bills" on our revenue.  I told him that we do pay our bills; it's only that we're selective about what we agree is a bill.  We won't agree that street repair is a bill, because we choose not to try to repair our streets.  (Because we couldn't afford to repair them.)  The same is true of median development.  We built a new building, and renovated the log cabin, but only because more than half the money was donated to us by the State, and we groused about paying the rest.  Not only do we not agree to improve drainage, and therefore that improving drainage is even a bill, but some of us want to claim that we don't need to improve drainage, because we don't have a drainage problem.  That's what some of us assert.  So we won't have a bill.  And we won't then fail to be able to pay the bill.

My brother of course fully understood our little "situation."  We have extremely limited ability to have revenue, because we don't have the diversification of revenue sources available to almost all municipalities.  He knows all about Golden Beach and Indian Creek Village.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He also knows all about the municipalities like CNM, and CMB (where he lives).  They have revenue sources, and they're not one bit shy about tapping them.  They know what they need, and they know what they want, and they're going to take proper care of themselves.  Among other things, they have pride.  Or call it self-respect.

My brother thought we charged ourselves as much as we could: 10 mills.  No, I told him, we can't quite get ourselves to pull that particular trigger.  We stall ourselves out at 9.7, a number that has no meaning, except it's been the same number for a few years now.  It's not the same revenue for the Village, nor is it the same tax from property owners.  It's just a millage number we choose not to change.  Even though it doesn't mean anything.  My brother asked me how much the difference between 9.7 mills and 10 mills was worth to the Village.  I told him I didn't know, because property values are a moving target, and there are new sales, but I estimated that since it was recently about $50K, and values have improved and been bolstered by some recent and substantial sales, it was probably somewhere around $75K or so now.  It's the difference between trying to decide whether to redo the Codes, or instead resurfacing the tot lot, but being unable to decide which to do, so not doing either...and doing both.  That's what we could do with $75K: both.

And I pointed out, being back on my soapbox and all, that what that $75K would cost the average BP property owner used to be about $45 per year, but is now probably about $60 per year.

My brother thought we were limited to 10 mills ad valorem property tax, but I told him that the 10 mill limit is only for the easy part.  It's what an elected body can impose on property owners, on it's own initiative.  But a municipality is not limited at all to 10 mills.  I don't know if there is a limit to what residents of a municipality can choose to charge themselves for ad valorem property tax.  It's just a matter of how motivated they are to address municipal issues and responsibilities, and how much pride they have.

The fact is, we could charge ourselves twice as much millage as we do, if we agreed by referendum to do it.  The Village portion of the ad valorem tax bill could be 19.4 mills, instead of 9.7.  And that wouldn't double the overall ad valorem bill (the one you just paid, or are just getting ready to pay).  It would only double about a third of the bill.  The two other major portions are for the County and the School Board, and we have nothing to do with how much they charge County property-owners.

I realize I get very little support for an idea like this.  I get none from the Commissions.  Some years back, Steve Bernard suggested we tax ourselves at 10 mills.  He was on the Commission then.  Nowadays, Dan Keys is known to agree we should increase our millage.  I don't know what he thought many years ago, when he was on the Commission.

Very interestingly, Mac Kennedy advocated for increased millage, so we can get our work done.  What's interesting about that is that Mac, and Dan Schneiger, are new Village residents.  People like them do the heavy fiscal lifting in the Village, because they established a property value recently.  They homestead, of course, but in the meantime, they're the big dogs, ad valorem tax-wise.  And they're willing to go higher, and suggest the rest of us do, too.  People like Max Deitermann, who owns very expensive property here, don't urge low taxes.

People like Max, and Mac and Dan, not only have the most to "lose" by our having higher millage, but coincidentally (?), people like them are also strong advocates for an improved, "Best We Can Be," Village.  And they have the experience with property ownership, municipal development, and design sense, to know what it takes.

But too many of the rest of us can't see that far, or that wide.  We fuss over the silliest, most insignificant, things and amounts of money.  We resist ponying up a few dollars to improve ourselves.  We complain about a very substantial Village Hall project, because we have to pay for part of it.  Some of us form whole campaigns over not wanting to have to construct driveways on our properties, which we have to do anyway, and which will improve our own properties(!), as well as the Village overall.

My brother and I talked about all of this, which is what led him twice to describe us as a "funny little city(sic)."