"I" Have an Idea. I Think I Can Save Us a Lot of Tax Money.

I admit I didn't just think this up myself.  I took the idea from a number of Village residents.  Here's my current synthesis.

For a tiny and limited municipality, we have a noteworthy amount of overhead.  And our ad valorem tax rate is high to accommodate our needs, since we have no other real way of raising revenue.  And most of the non ad valorem revenue comes from us, too, in the form of user fees and utility charges.  Very many of us complain about all of this.  I think our real complaint is about the taxes, and if everything we did was free, we wouldn't be complaining about it.  That's what I think. If someone thinks I'm wrong, I hope they will correct me.

So the question is, could we have what we have, and not have to pay for it?  And I think there are some who think we could.  Here are some examples:

One current Commissioner pressed us into appointing a group of residents who will plumb the outside world, to see if we can get someone else to pay for us by granting us money.  And the resident group who will supposedly do this will do it for free.  They'll donate their time.  Another current Commissioner--actually our Mayor-- has suggested that some other imagined Village residents will also complete grant applications for us for free.  Unfortunately, one of our past Commissioners offered to do this for us, then reneged.  Our current Mayor claims expertise in this area, but she would never do it, either.  So I'm not sure this will ever happen, but the theory is that if it did, it wouldn't cost us anything.

Another of our current Commissioners sponsors a yearly gardening event on some public tract in the Village, and she calls it an MLK Day of Service.  Some of us help, and we do it for free.  Not only do we not get paid, we actually pay the Village!

Another resident a few years ago offered to donate to the Village a lawn mower.  There was a condition for the donation, though, and the condition was not met, so the neighbor did not donate the mower.

A year or two before that, a Commissioner-- the Mayor then-- offered to donate his own money to pay for a tiny public copying center at the recreation center.  I'm not sure that ever happened, but the offer was made.

Another resident, who happens to be a gun enthusiast, told me he thought we had, and paid for, too many police, and we could really contribute to our own security, literally by arming ourselves.  I suppose we would have to patrol, too, but we already have CrimeWatch, so maybe it would only be a short additional step to being organized vigilantes.

So here's what I'm thinking.  We could pretty much eliminate all of our expenses simply by doing for ourselves.  One neighbor will donate a lawn mower.  The condition was that we do our own solid waste collection, which would require us to buy at least one garbage truck.  Let's say we do that, too, and we can do it either with donations, or maybe we have to tax ourselves just a little bit.  Richard Ederr's son once spent a year as a Village employee, picking up garbage with our other hired guys.  But Richard's son got paid.  We can do this for ourselves with volunteer shifts, so we simply save the whole expense.  (Except the cost of the truck, maintenance, licensing, gas, and other possibly minor incidentals.)

We can get rid of the Manager and almost all Village employees.  Instead of volunteering to clean up one little patch of public land one morning per year, we have shifts to maintain all the public tracts all year.  By the way, we would need a Charter change for this, so that's an expense, too, but it's only one time, and it's not that much money.  We're already OK with blatantly miserable-looking medians and unrepaired streets, so what do we care if it stays that way?  We can just keep saving the money.

We already have two Village residents who volunteer at Village Hall and the recreation center, and they're both retired.  So we get more residents like that, and switch those two to full time.  Cha-ching.

Raise your hand, if you think we spend just too much money for our recreation function, and it serves people who don't even live here.  Exactly, just what I was thinking.  So we dump the whole business, and save ourselves the dough.

Our current Commission has hit on the brilliant idea of using more "reserve" ($1 per year, possibly negotiable) police officers (this is one of the great things about our new Commission: they think of the things that never before occurred to anyone).  So let's do that, supplement with ourselves on a real volunteer basis (not beating the Village out of $1 per year), go back to donated cruisers, instead of paying to lease new and reliable ones, and become truly hands on.  We have some firearm experts in the Village, and we can run our own training program.  In fact (oh, I did think of this myself), we can even train outsiders, and we can charge them for the training.  Cha-cha-ching!

And by the way, guess who gets in really good physical condition doing all the yard work, and chasing thieves.  Our new "tax" rate?  What taxes?  You're welcome.

Local Treats and Treasures.

I love gems.  And I love them even better when they're local.  Recently, I discovered two local gems.

At a MOCA art opening a couple of months ago, there was food service, as is typical of MOCA art openings.  One of the items was popsicles.  These were unique popsicles, with very unusual flavors.  And they were amazingly good.  I don't generally care for popsicles.  They're sweet and standardized.  Not these popsicles.  They didn't taste overly sweet at all, and they were a frozen version of gourmet dessert.

The person behind these popsicles is Megan Danko.  Her popsicle store, Ladyfingrs (no, I did not forget to type an e), is on 6th Avenue, just above 123rd St, on the east side of the street.  Her sign in the window says Popsicles, and she keeps a little bistro table and chairs outside during business hours.  Her slogan is "Fresh Popsicles Handmade with Love."  Do you think that's a bit too flowery?  You think it's a bit much?  Go taste one of Megan's popsicles.  Then tell me what you think of the slogan.

This is how Ladyfingrs' website describes the birth of this business: "It all began with two girls from fashion school and a love for ice cream. After working in the corporate world for several years, they both decided that bringing their passions together and starting their own business was the way to go. Mariana, already having amazing success with an ice-cream business in Brazil, brought the idea back to Miami to link up with business partner Megan and from that moment, Ladyfingrs was born."

I never met or spoke to Mariana, but Megan might be all the heart and soul this business needs.  And here's what they sell: "natural and hand-made ice cream popsicles with ooey-gooey surprises in the middle...sourced from the best chocolates from Italy, the freshest local fruits, and the most unique fillings from all around the globe."  They make their proprietary "Booze Pops, which are famous classic drinks served as a popsicle."  Their range of flavors includes coconut pineapple, lemon basil, passion fruit with condensed milk, strawberry mint, lychee rose water lemonade, mango ginger, chocolate lava (yes, "chocolate fudge gooey filling"), cream 'n' nutella, oreo madness, strawberry and condensed milk, watermelon flavor (sounds tame by comparison, right?), strawberry cheesecake, and dragonfruit blueberry.  Are you still reading this, or have you gone to Megan's place by now?

I know you're going to say $5 is too much to pay for a popsicle, but I think you should try "one" before you make up your mind.  If you love these as much as I do, and you really think $5 each is too much, ask Megan how many you would have to buy-- you know, to keep handy in your freezer, just in case you should ever want another one-- for her to give you the wholesale price.  And for what it's worth, not that I ever care about such things, but Megan is a delightful woman.  The address of the shop is 12327 NE 6th Avenue, and the phone number is 305-970-9252.  Megan's not always there when she's supposed to be, so maybe call first.

Last week, I went to the last installment of this season of musimelange.  I've told you about musimelange, and if you don't go, that's your problem.  It's quite an amazing cultural treat, like nothing you ever attended.  One of the central features is food.  The other central features are music and wine.  The food offering is always different from one musimelange evening to another.  This last time, they featured a bread offering (along with all the other food, the main course of which was extremely unusual tacos), and bread-based desserts.  The reason for this focus was the discovery of Bryan Ford and his wife, Alycia Domma.  They run a brand new bakery called Lesage.  Lesage is so new that they don't even have a storefront yet.  They work out of "shared [commercial baking] space" in Hallandale, and they deliver whatever their patrons choose.  They have two main offerings.  One is bread, which is fundamentally sourdough, and the other is croissants.

I love bread.  That, and tomatoes, are my favorite foods.  And I love sourdough bread.  For the past couple of years, I have bought little else, and I get Zak's bread, which I buy from Marky's gourmet grocery store on 79th Street.  I was completely content with Zak's bread, and I would not have considered getting any other bread, until I encountered Lesage.

Here's what Lesage sells: multiseed sourdough baguette for $3, plantain sourdough loaf for $6.75, papaya almond sourdough loaf for $6.75, multiseed sourdough loaf (the full size one, not the baguette) for $6.75, country white/wheat sourdough loaf for $5.50, croissants for $18 for six, pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants) for $24 for six, and fruit danish for $24 for six.  The sourdough loaves (probably 2-3 pounds)  are at least as good as Zak's-- probably a bit better-- and the croissants are the best I have ever tasted.  Bryan and Alycia, since they do not have a retail outlet, do not bake up a batch of goods to sell over the course of the day.  They custom bake what their customers order in advance.  And they deliver Mondays and Wednesdays.  So you tell them the week before what you want, and you'll get it on Monday or Wednesday.  If you're home, they'll hand it to you, and you can pay them.  If you're not home, they'll leave it for you, and you can pay them later or next time.  If you order on a given week, the prices are what I quoted.  If you commit to regular, predictable deliveries, a month at a time, you get a 10% discount.  And that discount is generous, because the bread is worth every bit of the retail price.  If you're interested, you can go to Bryan's and Alycia's site-- www.lesagebakery.com-- or you can call Bryan at 305-310-1487.  Funny enough, Bryan and Alycia live in Miami Shores, so it's easy for them to serve us on their way home.

Don't make a mistake.  Go see Megan, and give Bryan a call.  If you don't absolutely love what you get from them, I'll buy the unused portion of it from you, for whatever you paid.  And if you do absolutely love what you get from them, you're welcome.

Tracy Truppman Agrees With Me. Up to a Point. Sort Of. Maybe. Oh, Let's Just Wait and See.

Last night's meeting was one of those typically aimless ones that was not actually about anything.  Except we predictably hired Krishan Manners to be our new Manager.  We'll see if he stays on Tracy's good side.  Does Tracy have a good side?  Oh, yeah, it's if everyone does whatever she says.  So we'll see how Krishan "manages."

There really wasn't much else on the agenda.  That's why the meeting flew by in just over two hours.  Two school teachers wanted to use the log cabin for free for some awards dinner or something for their teachers group.  We gave them a hard time about it, until Tracy offered personally to provide free opening and closing of the log cabin, so they wouldn't have to pay.  Our regular charge was $500 per hour, the resident charge (one of the teachers is a BP resident) is $350 per hour, and we eventually reasoned that our only real expense was hiring some member of Village staff to open and close the log cabin.  So, if Tracy would do that, we had no expense (except the cost of electricity, which we agreed was nominal).  And Krishan also offered to be on hand for free.  And Dan Samaria offered to pay something or other.  But it was taken care of by Tracy and Krishan.  The discussion took way longer than it should have, though.  We paid John Hearn for that.

Will Tudor's ideas were back, this time at actual Village expense. Will wants us to have two new Boards.  He envisions one as a Safety Board or something, and the other as a Grant-Writing Board.  The Safety Board is supposed to be some collection of Village residents who will decide whether we need more lighting, sidewalks, or some other public safety-related feature.  Most likely, these residents will just dream up what seems to them to be safety enhancements, since no one said we had residents who were expert in this area.  And we do have a professional Police Department.  And a professional Manager.  And an amazingly effective CrimeWatch Chairman who has several yearly meetings which are attended by interested Village residents, the Police Department, all or most (until now) of the sitting Commissioners, and invited experts who make presentations.  So really, it's just not clear what this new Board is supposed to do, and on what its imaginings will be based.  And perhaps more to the point, if they do decide we should have more lighting, or sidewalks, or whatever else, which they will then suggest to the actual decision-makers (the Commission), we're limited by our real problem.  In any case, we moved this from Will's good ol' boy, plum common sense, folksy, inclusive wisdom to an Ordinance, which cost us money in legal fees.  The bobble-heads agreed with Will, too.  4-1, they agreed.  Poor Roxy Ross.  She's just spitting into the wind with those four.

Then, Will had us buy ourselves another Ordinance, too.  This one was his handy-dandy Grant-Writing Board.  Some imagined Village residents are going to meet to think of grants for which we can apply.  For, um, something.  I sure hope they're not those pesky matching grants, as almost all are.  We're going to match the grant money with what?  And who, exactly, is going to write these grants?  I reminded our fearless and thoughtless leaders of Bryan Cooper, who ran on a platform that included his offer to write grants for the Village (since he alleged he had lots of experience), but then, he got mad, because some Commission vote didn't go the way he wanted, and he refused to help us at all.  And I reminded Tracy/Will/Jenny/Harvey that Tracy had said at the last meeting that she had written many grants in her life (after my comments, she adjusted many to a few), but that in all the years she's lived here, she's never once offered to help us write a grant.  I neglected to mention the night Barbara Watts asked Candido Sosa-Cruz and me to come to her house to write a grant for something, as if any of the three of us knew how to write a grant.  So, after all these imagined grant inspirations are materialized, I still wanted to know who's actually going to write the grants.  That question remained unanswered.  Roxy Ross pointed out that any Board also makes its little claim on staff time.  But she was on the short side of yet another 4-1.

Tracy did at some point(s) come back to the matter of our real problem.  That's the one she and Jenny and Will agreed was our biggest problem, but which none of them has proposed to address.  Specifically, she reminded us that this year, there is the possibility/likelihood/guarantee that the Florida Legislature will offer a law expanding, yet again, the homestead exemption.  We used to be able to exempt $25K from being part of assessed value, then, it was/is $50K, and now, it may/will go to $75K.  That's value that will not be assessable for taxation purposes, which means assessed valuations will be that much lower, which means that property taxes will be that much lower.  There was some reference to the Village's ad valorem hit being about $200K for the coming year.  If (yeah, right, "if") the voters of Florida agree to have their property taxes reduced, which means a reduction of support for the municipalities.  And Tracy, being a good Commissioner/Mayor, said she hoped Village residents would vote against this expansion of the homestead exemption.

It's a different story-- isn't it-- when you don't just get to sit in the audience and criticize.  When you're actually responsible to do something, supposedly in support of the Village(!), you look at matters like this one a bit differently.  Roxy Ross related a comment once made to her by former Mayor James Reeder, who just died.  Reeder told her that the task in elected office is to "do something.  Just do something."  And Tracy wasn't exactly proposing to "do [anything]."  She was asking her neighbors not to do something.  She was acting as if she was worried about Village finances.  Good for her!  But later, she said in passing that we were maxed out on our millage.  We're not.  We have a little way to go to get to 10 mills, and it would make about $50-60K difference to the Village to go there.  I'm giving Tracy credit for actually knowing very well that we could raise the millage a little, but I'm interpreting that this was her way of saying she didn't have the courage and resolve to go there.  And Tracy owns three other Commissioners.  So if she wants us to increase our taxes, we'll do it.  If she doesn't, we won't.

But that wasn't what Tracy said or suggested.  She doesn't want to raise taxes.  She doesn't want to take that particular heat.  Rather, she'd like us to vote against the expansion of the homestead exemption.  We should do the heavy lifting, so she won't have to.  And won't be conspicuous for failing to do the little bit she could do.

So for a fleeting moment, and with her trying to dodge responsibility for it, Tracy agreed with me that we need to be more committed to our Village, and generous to it and ourselves.  She urged us to do what we can to keep our taxes just a bit higher.  She doesn't want to do what she can, and she'd like us to bail her out.  You got it, Tracy.  I'm voting against the expansion.

Miami Symphony Orchestra: An even Better Deal!

This is MiSO's last concert of the season, and it's this coming Saturday, May 6.  The venue is the Arsht Center, and the concert starts at 6:00.

The title of the concert is "Beethovenmania."  The program is the Leonora Overture No. 3, the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1, and Symphony No. 7.  There's a guest pianist for the Piano Concerto, and the guest pianist is not Beethoven.

I have season tickets, and my cost for a concert is $64 per seat.  The extra special deal for this concert is tickets for $20 per seat.  So that's a really good deal.  There are limited seats (50) at this price, and it's first come, first served.

If you're interested in this MiSO season finale, you can call Beatriz Cosson at 305-275-5666, or you can buy tickets through the website: www.arshtcenter.org.  The promotion code is MISO20.