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.