Last night's Commission meeting started out in an interesting way. We had a presentation from FPL, about replacing the lamps we have with LED ones, and Tracy Truppman properly suggested that we take all issues related to that presentation back to back. One entry was part of new business, which would have come at the end of the Agenda, so it was more efficient, and more respectful of the FPL guy, to address it early. And then, there was Public Comment.
Several Village residents spoke, and almost all of them addressed the same problem: Tracy's having single-handedly (mis?)managed the matter of how to dispose of hurricane debris, and in detail how to apply to the State and FEMA for help. The Commission had previously agreed to apply for a state grant of about $400K, and Tracy, either on her own or in concert with our Manager, Krishan Manners, decided to request about $1.2M. Everyone who had anything to say about this criticized Tracy for taking up this matter alone, without consulting the rest of the Commission. Tracy's excuse, at the time and reiterated now, was that there was a "state of emergency" (which she had also single-handedly declared, but didn't clearly announce to anyone), and a very tight deadline for applying for state aid, and Krishan was out of town for a couple of crucial days, and all she did was make a back-up phone call to the state, and somehow, that this matter was either entirely proper or easily understood and excused. And to help her position, she threw Krishan under the bus.
What was even more interesting about this matter was that Krishan unwaveringly accepted his position under the bus. Tracy overstepped, and Krishan apologized. I have to say here that I think I may have been wrong about something Tracy did in the past, and why she did it. She fired Sharon Ragoonan, seemingly without consulting anyone else (except we all believe she has active illegal conversations with her stooges outside Commission meetings), and I thought the firing was at least indirectly about Sharon. I thought it was that Tracy didn't like Sharon, for whatever were Tracy's unrevealed reasons, and that she resented that she, Tracy, had nothing to do with Sharon's hiring, so she wanted to be rid of what she didn't choose and couldn't control. But now, I think I might have made a mistake. Now that I've watched Tracy over time, and seen what she does, and how certain other people (Krishan and John Hearn) react, I think she fired Sharon as a signal. I think she did it to show what power she had, and to let Krishan and John know that they will do her bidding, or else. And both of them seem to have gotten the message.
Tracy thinks Village government is all about her, and she has reassured herself that a majority of the current Commission will support whatever she says and wants all the time. Which they have shown they will. In that sense, Tracy is an autocrat. She's' a dictator. She's a tryant. And one of the first rules in autocracy/dictatorship/tyranny 101 is to declare a state of emergency, so the budding autocrat/dictator/tyrant can expand him- or herself into the vacuum thus created. Done. Some Village residents last night said that even if Tracy had thought a "state of emergency" existed, she should have called an emergency meeting, so the other Commissioners could share in making decisions. One person pointed out that Tracy appears to have declared a state of emergency a day or so before the actual hurricane. Tracy never responded to any of this, except to implicate Krishan. She did not otherwise try to defend what she did (which everyone who addressed the matter seemed to consider indefensible anyway), and she didn't apologize. She ignored all of it, apparently because she really doesn't care. She does whatever she wants, and no one has the nerve, or whatever, to stop her. We listened to this throughout the evening, when Jenny Johnson-Sardella kept repeating her favorite phrase--"I concur,"-- Harvey Bilt agreed, too, and Will Tudor launched himself repeatedly into aimless and self-contradicting ramblings that seemed almost always to end in some kind of endorsement of whatever Tracy wanted.
Another example of this pathetic Commission uselessness had to do with a proposal from Roxy Ross. Roxy introduced as new business a request that the Village write an Ordinance outlawing "conversion therapy" in people not yet of majority. I will be entirely candid here to say that at first, I thought this was a ridiculous use of Commission time or the Village's time. And money, since Roxy's proposal was to create an Ordinance. Roxy never asked me about this (even though I'm a psychiatrist), and I never discussed it with her. When the matter was introduced as New Business, and Roxy explained whence she was coming, I saw it in an entirely different light. I saw why Roxy was right. First, although my initial reflex was to say to myself that it made no sense to outlaw a professional business practice in a municipality that doesn't have any businesses, Roxy pointed out quite correctly that the Village does in fact have businesses. For all I know, it might have lots of them. And it is entirely possible that one of those "home" businesses is one or another form of psychotherapy. So "conversion therapy" might be happening in the Village right now. Roxy also pointed out that the legislature of the State of Florida recently refused to outlaw such therapy, but that there is a growing number of municipalities that have created exactly those Ordinances outlawing this "therapy." Roxy's thinking was that it did societal good to increase the number of municipalities that had these kinds of Ordinances on their books, to pressure the State. So once Roxy explained this, I could see that she was right, and that the Ordinance she proposed was the right thing for us to do.
But Tracy and the two stooges who were left (Harvey had been present by mobile phone, the reception had been useless, and he had dropped out of the meeting) couldn't see that Roxy was right. Their embarrassing argument was that Ordinances cost money (a few hundred dollars, all tolled), so we shouldn't use Village money for this one. And this from Tracy Truppman, who wastes vast amounts of Village money, hiring our Attorney to be present at the meetings where Tracy can't shut up. But Tracy got stooge Johnson-Sardella and stooge Tudor to agree that an Ordinance was too expensive, and we should do the free Resolution instead. And here's the difference. Tracy herself (how bizarre could this get?) pointed out that she has heard of young people literally being killed in these "conversion therapy" exercises. In theory, Tracy might be expected to think it's a bad idea, both to go to extraordinary lengths to stamp out homosexuality in a minor, and certainly to kill them over it. We're talking about Tracy Truppman here. The result of a Resolution against this "therapy," when a minor complains, or is killed, is that the Village can then say we really wish the parent and therapist hadn't done what they did. We had suggested they not. The result of an Ordinance against such pseudotherapeutic misbehavior is that the act is illegal, and can be prosecuted. But in Tracy's relentless crusade to frustrate everything that Roxy suggests, Tracy acts not only against the best interests of Village residents, but even against her own best interests.
And she gets away with it, every time, because she has three stooges who blindly "concur" with any nonsense Tracy does or says.
