I Will Not Say This Again. All Right, Just One More Time. Maybe.

Tonight, we had a CrimeWatch/Coffee with a Cop meeting.  The meeting was run by Chuck Ross, our CrimeWatch Chair, and others appearing included five of our officers.  Also, Nicole from the County CrimeWatch was there to provide part of the presentation.

Much of the meeting was a review.  Questions were asked, and tips were given.  We went over again the importance of calling 911, if anything looks at all suspicious.  Or concerning.  Or unexpected.  We as residents do not have to figure out whether a call should go to 911, or to Non-emergency.  911 will triage that, after we call.  And they're quick.  And they keep calls recorded.  And everyone in enforcement wants it that way.  So call 911.  Nick Wollschlager says he would rather go on 1000 cold calls than miss the one that was hot.

It was Nicole from County CrimeWatch who said it first.  Brad Kern belabored it.  Way too many crime events and unwelcome entries occur, because doors are not locked.  Doors are not locked.  Car doors.  House doors.  Left unlocked.  To this day.  And tempting items are sometimes left in clear view.

We never even talked about traffic control, except for the mention of speeding, mostly on 6th and on Griffing.  Under our new Management, we're stepping up ticket-writing.  But we make very little money on tickets written.  Most of the benefit of it is the message it sends, or, as Roy Camara and others put it, the education it provides.  Roy says you can educate a lot more people by turning on the blue flashing lights for all traffic, or even just for speeders, than you can by stopping one person, and writing them a ticket.

So, not that it's ever been mentioned before, but PLEASE LOCK YOUR DOORS.


PS: We also talked about a wall along the tracks.  Reason #2 that we don't have one is that it's unclear on whose property it would be.  Reason #3 is that some BP residents along the track don't want a wall (for who knows what reason.  Maybe they like the noise and the trespassers.).  Reason #1, according to Bob Anderson, is the cost.  Bob says there was a time some years ago when that cost was estimated at $1M.  No one got an estimate today.  But if it was $1M, that's about $900 per home in BP, once.  Or, if someone doesn't have $900, it's less than $50 per year for 20 years.  That amount of money substantially reduces train noise and intrusion from mischief-makers.

Oh, Please, No. Not Another "Love Fest."

What's with Sharon Ragoonan?  She has to tell us about her love and devotion for her boyfriend?  He's in Afghanistan long term, and they visit each other quarterly.  "Quarterly?!"  That's a relationship?  And she says she's deeply devoted to him.  What's with this girl?

And then, she comes on like she's about as deeply devoted to us.  Come on, Sharon.  Get a life, will you, girl?  She's going away to visit Troy, who's probably the luckiest man on earth, on Thursday, so how does she use Tuesday and the run-up to it?  Creating a presentation for us.  She wanted to update us.  This is what she can think of to do with her spare time (of which she doesn't have any) before she goes away.

And she made sure we wouldn't forget the presentation.  She put together an 11 page (really 10, and three lines) document of all she wants us to know.  There's a review of how she got where she is with us, what's accomplished and in progress with each of our/her departments, what her further goals are, and a summary of where we are with our fiscal reports: the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs), the productions of which are behind two years.  It's not her fault, and she let us know that, but she's working on them, and she has target dates for completion.  And if it's supposed to assuage our anxiety about it, we're not being penalized.

The woman is loaded with enthusiasm.  Dressed to kill, too.  I don't know if I'd like to be Troy, or if it would kill me.  But Sharon didn't hold anything back in her presentation to us last night.  She tried to confine herself to an hour and a half, but it didn't completely work.  She whipped up about as much enthusiasm from us as she had for us.  Almost everyone there was grateful.  The chronic, inveterate malcontents, of course not.  The rest of us, yes, very much.  And lots of us were there, too.  SRO.

Tianna Shepard alluded to it, and Art Gonzalez called it what it was.  Two of the current sitting Commissioners-- Roxy Ross and David Coviello-- were there, as were all the other Commissioners who hired Sharon (Bob Anderson, Barbara Watts, and I).  The fact of the matter is that when I got the e-notice of this meeting, I contacted Sharon.  I asked her if the meeting was her idea, or was she pressed to do it.  It was her idea.  She wanted us all in the loop.  So she sent e-mails to all of the current Commissioners, asking them to sponsor the meeting.  Roxy Ross told me she responded to the e-mail, agreeing to sponsor it.  I don't know how or if David Coviello responded (but he was there).  The meeting was not sponsored by the Commission, so the rest of the math isn't hard to do.

Well, fine.  Sharon seems to love us (second most in the world, it seems), and those of us who were there at the very least very much appreciated her and her devotion.

Sharon is working very hard for us.  She's dealt with disarray, tasks left undone, and some instability in Village staffing.  This doesn't seem like a good time for sabotaging her or failing to be supportive and encouraging.  Unless, of course, further disruption and undermining are the goal.  Not in evidence last night.   There were just some very conspicuous absences.  What a damn shame.

Yet Another Correction, of Sorts. Maybe Just Clarification.

On February 12, I summarized parts of the Commission meeting from earlier that week.  I talked about two items discussed by the Commission.  One of those items had to do with a variance request.  Last night, eight days after the post publication, I got a call from the Village resident who applied for the variance.

The resident called, because his wife/family were upset by the post, and because he had heard from other Village residents and even people who do not live here (but who had somehow read the post) to the effect that my comments about his variance matter, and about him, had implications for his "reputation."  He and I had a long discussion (I didn't keep track, but it seems to me we were on the phone together about an hour), the seeming upshot of which was that he would like me to offer his side of the story.  It wasn't quite clear whether he wanted me to "correct" myself in any sense.  But he did think I was sort of wrong about some things.  At least, he thought there were things I didn't know, and that what I said subtly distorted what he considered to be the full reality.

I offered this neighbor the opportunity, as I always do, to write his own post: the other "he said."  But he told me that because of his involvement in media, he couldn't do that.  He, or his wife, or his friends, wanted something said, and he wanted me to say it.  I asked him, by the way, if he wanted me to avoid using his name, as I did in the original post.  He was slightly equivocal, but ultimately, yes, he wanted me to continue to avoid it.

I made a number of kinds of comments about this situation, and about our neighbor.  I said that he was an attorney, or at least that he was a member of the Florida Bar.  He thought the qualification was somehow dismissive or minimizing, and he wanted me to know that he is most certainly a law school graduate, that he is indeed a member of the Florida Bar, and that he has done formal legal work.  He does pro bono work for someone now.  In fact, he told me, his specific media work now is in investigative journalism, and he is either much aided by his legal training and experience, or he couldn't do the media job without it.

But the reason I quoted him as having said he was a member of the Florida Bar was that the mention of it seemed almost gratuitous, and coming at the time and under the circumstances it did, I thought it had the subtle implication of a threat.  Our neighbor said he meant no such thing, and he dismissed the idea that anyone would have thought so.  I told him I was merely an audience member, with nothing at stake, and I thought it sounded that way.

Second, I alluded to his background in the US armed services.  I'm not sure what was his issue about my mention of it, but he wanted me to know that he flew fighter planes.  If there was any impression on anyone's part that I was not respectful of his service record, he wanted me to know that it is very fully legitimate and advanced.  Twenty years, I think he said.

The matter of his "genetics" was a very interesting discussion between us.  His first comment to me was that his genetics had nothing to do with the variance issue, and it was unclear to him or anyone who approached him about it why I would even bother to mention it.  I hope our neighbor won't mind my revealing that he is 58 years old.  I suggested that in 58 years, he must have experienced many times that his genetics were held against him.  He agreed without hesitation or equivocation.  When I suggested that it could also be that his genetics may at times have accrued to his benefit (I mentioned "white guilt" and other similar dynamics), he bristled.  He insisted that he, and his family before him, have worked very hard for everything they've gotten, and he seemed to react as if I was accusing him of getting undue benefits, just because of his race.  Which, of course, in the matter of this variance, I was.  I told him that given my experience on P&Z, and my time on the Commission, I felt quite sure that taken only on its merits, the variance would never have been approved.

This led to our discussion of the variance.  Our neighbor, in discussing with me his legal training, told me he had provided a brief as part of his argument.  He asked me if I had seen the brief.  No, I had not.  He sort of scolded me for having come to conclusions without having investigated the entire record, and he told me he was sure I would be much more careful in evaluating a psychiatric case.  But, since I had not, in fact, seen his brief, and he offered it as the record of the unique circumstance which should properly have legitimized his application, I asked him to review with me what was the unique circumstance.  A longer conversation boiled down to the traffic-- vehicular and foot-- in the Village, and especially on Griffing, and especially on lower Griffing.  He says his neighbors agree with him.

Which, of course, is what I said originally.  And furthermore, although I did not discuss this with our neighbor, I personally don't object to fences and walls in BP.  Whether property owners want them for security, privacy, or just appearance, it's fine with me.  But I don't make the rules.  We have rules, they're in the Codes, and fences and walls are not allowed in front yards.  Our neighbor already had a wall (he told me it was already there when he moved in 13 years ago), and he wanted to extend it a foot higher.  It would be OK with me, but it's not allowed by our Code.  And the fact that our neighbor doesn't like what feels to him like threatening traffic is not a unique feature of his property.  He's got a lot of company.  If he wishes we would change our Code to allow front yard fences and walls, so do I.

So, we had a very nice talk.  Let there be no mistake: our neighbor is a fully trained and Bar-admitted attorney.  He has a noteworthy military background.  He's black, but it has never felt like an advantage to him.  And he won his case about the wall extension.  It's just that I disagree.  And I have my own way of thinking through it, and trying to make sense of a conclusion that was contrary to what the Codes say it should have been.

Our neighbor called originally suggesting he and I needed to sit down and have a cup of coffee together.  In exploring with him what we needed to discuss, it seemed to me our coffee date shouldn't wait until next week, which was the next time he and I were both available for 7:45 PM coffee.  We had our conversation last night.  But he said he'd still like to meet, and I would, too.  So I suggested either that we have our coffee next week, or that he and his wife come over, and I'd cook them dinner.  He says he'll ask her.

Correction. And I Would Have Lost a Bet, Too.

In a recent post, when I was discussing a variance request before the Commission, I said Roxy Ross made the motion to approve the request.  Roxy didn't remember it that way.  She didn't remember who made the motion, although she thought it might have been David Coviello, but she insisted it had not been she.

I checked with Maria Camara.  Roxy was right.  She did not make the motion.  David did.  And Will seconded it.  But as Roxy confirmed, she did vote for the motion, and there is no dispute that the vote was 5-0.

Sorry, Rox.  I misremembered.  What do I owe you?

Why Such a Hard-On Over the Manager's Authority?

Tracy Truppman has been showing the Village an escalating, almost frantic, campaign.  She focuses, she distorts, she seems bent on cornering, for a kill.  She seems increasingly clearly to want Sharon Ragoonan out.  As best anyone can tell at this point, this is Tracy's private war.

It's been only a very short time since the new Commission and the new Mayor have taken over, and there seems to be a direction.  In various respects, that direction has been to commandeer various of the responsibilities and prerogatives of the Manager.  And most of this seems to be Tracy Truppman's agenda.  The question is, what's all this about, and why is Tracy so intent on invading the Charter-granted space of the Manager?

To remind, the Manager's authority and responsibility were devised by a Charter Review Committee back in 2005.  That proposal was immediately ratified by the then Commission, and a general vote of the Village residents by referendum later that year confirmed the arrangement.  Subsequently, three years ago, another Charter Review Committee, stimulated, funny enough, by the then preceding Commission, which also resented the powers of the Manager (among other things), took a look, and they couldn't find one thing to recommend changing.  For what it's worth, one of our new Commissioners, Jenny Johnson-Sardella, was a member of that Committee.  As an aside, Tracy Truppman, who has never been one bit shy about letting everyone know what she thought about everything, never questioned the authority of the Manager.  So we're back to our question: why does she so adamantly question it now?

Last year, our Manager resigned, and we had to find a new one.  We posted the opening in the usual way, and we got between 50 and 60 applications.  The first step, since we advertised requirements for application, was for the Village Clerk to go through those applications, and remove the ones that did not meet the minimum criteria.  There was no issue as to what qualities or assets the applicants had.  That would be for another level of discrimination.  This was simply whether the applicant had the minimal background requirements we said we demanded.

For who knows what reasons, and despite equivocation as to whether she would or she wouldn't, Tracy Truppman applied for this job.  She was in no way qualified, and half the time, she either said she wouldn't really apply, or she didn't really want the job, but apply she did.  And very predictably, she was eliminated instantly.  Never mind the gross lapse in judgment to think she was worthy of consideration, despite not being remotely qualified, or offering to be the Manager of a municipality in which she lived.  No, she simply did not in any way deserve consideration, because she has no relevant training or experience.  But still...

It's also worth noting something about how Tracy deals with people.  From time to time, Commissioners (and others, I'm told) would get calls from Tracy.  The calls would always start with "I need five minutes of your time."  This meant that with some work on the part of the recipient of the call, it might be possible to end the call in about 30 minutes.  You had to fight Tracy a bit to get her to let you go, but it could be done.  The content of the call was some confidential consideration that was always said to have been supported by some source Tracy was not at liberty to reveal, and the recipient of the call was not allowed to tell anyone about the call.  It typically didn't take long to learn that Tracy had made the same call, with the same content, under the same strictures of secrecy, to various other people.

Back to the matter of the Manager.  The Committee to recommend semi-finalists gave the Commission its choices, which was late summer or early fall of 2016, and I was on the Commission. I had no intention of running for re-election, but I had to participate in choosing a new Manager.  So I made public statements-- from this blog and in a Commission meeting-- to say that I would welcome the involvement of anyone planning to run for Commission, or even thinking about it.  I knew Dan Samaria was planning to run, and no one else had yet offered him- or herself, but I figured someone must be thinking about it.  I wanted any Village residents who would be Commissioners, and who would work particularly closely with the new Manager, to have as much say as possible as to who that person would be.  I promised to share any information I got, and offer Commission aspirants extra weight in choosing the finalists, and the ultimate choice.  No one came forward to take me up on this offer.

Once the three finalists were chosen, I got the Tracy call.  She thought the person we chose would be a poor choice, and she thought one of the other candidates-- one who had already been eliminated-- would be the best choice.  And she said this for what turned out to be a very funny reason.  Well, when I say funny...  Being the provocateur he can sometimes be, Chuck Ross had told Tracy that one of the candidates had a background as an engineer, as does Tracy.   So Tracy decided the engineer would be best.  I told Tracy that the person she said she preferred was no longer in the running, and I had no way, even if I agreed with her (which I didn't), to resurrect his application.

So Tracy got elected to the Commission, and she allowed herself to be chosen as Mayor.  And without any experience on the Commission, or on any major Village Board, or any experience as a Mayor, Tracy decided the Manager had too much power, and she, Tracy, and whoever else was on the Commission, and Commissions to come, should snatch away some of that power.

As I view it, Tracy is jealous and resentful.  She's mad that Sharon Ragoonan got what she, Tracy, the pretender, wanted, and like a bigger kid, she wants to grab some of it away for herself.  She makes more or less clear she's mad at Heidi Siegel and the last Commission, thinking all of them either failed or behaved badly.  And even though Tracy is part of a new majority, and we have a new Manager, Tracy wants to punish Sharon and the minority of the current Commission for what she can't take out on Heidi and the majority of the old Commission.

But if part of Tracy's alleged reasoning is that Heidi had too much power, so Sharon should have less, the other part of her alleged reasoning is that the prior Commission failed proper oversight.  If taking power away from the Manager cures the problem of managers with too much power, how does transferring more power to the Commission address the problem of incompetent Commissions?   And further, if Tracy's answer to misguided Managers is to remove some of their authority, through what she likes to call "checks and balances" (you can never go wrong with patriotic slogans), what would be her answer to misguided Commissioners, of which we have had more than a few?  Should the voters only provisionally elect Commissioners, with those leanings needing approval from some higher power, as the Manager should only provisionally hire, subject to the Commission's approval?

Hits and Misses. Well, No Hits This Time.

Two issues stand out from last Wednesday's Commission meeting.  One was a variance request, and the other was portrayals of horror over the 2016 audit that is thus far incomplete.

The variance issue was typical of those that come before the Commission.  Homeowners wanted something, they asked Planning and Zoning to approve it, P&Z refused to approve whatever it was, and the homeowners appealed the denial to the Commission.  That's the way they're all structured.

To be eligible for a variance, homeowners have to show four things, which boil down to two things.  They have to show that the requested action is in some way necessary for the proper use, advantage, and enjoyment of the property, and they have to show that whatever they want to do won't compromise their neighbors, and that their neighbors don't mind.  In this case, P&Z considered the matter, and they concluded that none of the four requirements was met.

Also in this case, a few things are worth mentioning.  The homeowner is in some respects a public celebrity.  He is a television newscaster.  A few years ago, when the then Commission honored some Village residents for military service, this resident, who had been in service earlier in this life, gave what amounted to keynote comments.  He is also, as he found a way to mention in his argument last Wednesday, an attorney (or at least he went to law school and was admitted to the Florida Bar).  He's forceful in presenting whatever he wants to present.  And for what it might also be worth, he's black.

P&Z's "case" was presented by its representative, Dan Schneiger.  According to Dan, the application was not felt to have met any of the four required criteria, so P&Z unanimously denied the request.  In addition (as is not uncommon in these disputes), P&Z disagreed with some of the applicant's assertions of the state of the wall in question, and whether, as the applicant claimed, even a seven year old child could easily walk over the four foot wall.  P&Z's conclusion was that if anyone could scale the wall, it was because dirt had been mounded up on the street side of the wall.  But even at that...

The other part of the assertion of necessity for this wall (actually, it was only an extra one foot vertical extension of the wall that was requested) was that the applicant was concerned about crime.  He cited wider-spread concerns on the parts of some Village residents that crime here was increasing.  And it should be recalled that the applicant has what is perhaps more visibility, being a kind of celebrity, than might other Village residents.

Finally, the application included letters from several nearby neighbors who said they had no problem with the applicant's increasing the height of the wall.

So this was the stand-off that led to presentation of the matter at the Commission meeting.  Commissioners clearly did not know how to proceed with this application.  In my personal opinion, they did not want to frustrate someone with the kind of community (County, TV viewership) visibility enjoyed by the applicant, and I believe they did not want to make a decision that could possibly be interpreted as racist.  So first, it was David Coviello who said he had no problem with the application, and then, it was Roxy Ross who offered a motion to approve the application.  The vote was 5-0 to approve it.  And this is against a vote of 5-0 on the part of P&Z to deny it.

In my opinion, the Commission was completely wrong to have approved this application.  P&Z (the trusted and relied-upon neighbors who devote their time, trouble, energy, and discretion to studying these matters) unanimously denied the application.  Although it seems they were wrong to conclude that the proposed work would compromise the applicant's direct neighbors (they said the application did not meet any of the requirements), the applicant very clearly did not meet any of the other three requirements.  And applications for variances must meet all four requirements.  To the extent that the applicant cited a concern about crime, even though his property was no different than anyone else's, this argument should allow all BP property owners to have walls, as high as they think would protect them.  This decision was a failure of confidence in P&Z, and a failure of leadership toward the whole neighborhood.

The second noteworthy issue from this meeting was concern about last year's audit, still not completed.  It was almost exclusively Tracy Truppman who was critical.  In fact, she was nearly searing.  She criticized the Finance Director, the former Manager, the current Manager, and the immediate past Commission (two of whose members are now her colleagues) for failure to materialize this audit.  Tracy did not offer any speculation as to how so many people all made the same failure.  She also did not propose anything new as to how to get this audit completed faster than the current Manager is already attempting to do it.

But really, completing the audit didn't seem to be Tracy's main goal.  She seemed mostly just to want to complain, to invent consequences, and to blame.  Tracy, and Will Tudor, who continues to struggle to find a place and a meaning for himself on the Commission, since there really isn't one, wanted to suggest that other fiscal decisions could now not be made, because, in their imaginations, we have no idea what is the state of our finances, and whether the Village's books can collapse under the weight of imagined fines and other punishments for a late audit, the results of which are not known.

Roxy Ross tried to point out that the Village's finances (within the context of their overpowering limitations) are actually in pretty good shape.  We have about half a million dollars more in the bank now than we did at this time last year.  But Tracy wasn't listening.  This was not the narrative that interested her.  It wasn't one she could use.  So she perseverated on her expressed dire concern.

This concern seems to have something in common with others of Tracy's concerns.  It's enough to fret and fuss and catastrophize about, but not enough to do anything about.  Other than, of course, to wait a little longer until the matter concludes itself, which is what it is doing.  It still seems that concluding things in an adaptive way is not what Tracy wants.  All she really seems to want is to demonize someone.  It does little good to demonize a former Manager who no longer works here, or a Police Chief who no longer works here, or a Commission majority she succeeded in displacing-- oh-oh, now what?  Tracy seems to be gunning for the current Manager.