Bolero

Ravel is said to have described Bolero this way: "eight minutes of orchestration looking for a melody."  It happens I love Bolero, and I'm not complaining, if its composer thinks it was aimless.  Anyway, it only takes eight minutes.  The budget workshop tonight took almost four hours.  I have a serious issue with that.

Budgets are just numbers.  I said that when I was on the Commission, and I said it tonight.  They don't, in themselves, mean anything.  The least anyone can expect is that they are "balanced:" that the money allocated to be spent is the same amount as the revenue collected.  What budgets really do, or at least what they're supposed to do, is deploy money collected to accomplish goals.  That means you have to have goals.  And that's where the upcoming BP budget fell apart.

The workshop tonight was what amounted to systematic lurching.  The budget was well-organized, as BP budgets always are.  There were categories, subcategories and line items, and amounts of money.  Sometimes, they were the same as last year's amounts of money, and sometimes, they were different.  What was systematic was the page layouts, and the titles of the departments.  There was no system at all to guide how limited money was allocated.

Commissioners addressed each of the categories and line items.  Well, when I say Commissioners...  It's the same thing, all the time.  Roxy Ross provided perspective, depth, and a kind of wisdom regarding what spending money had to do with the health and welfare of the Village.  Tracy Truppman was idiosyncratic and autocratic.  Jenny Johnson-Sardella and Will Tudor dedicated their meager and meaningless contributions to "concurring" with Tracy.  Tracy announced where Harvey Bilt was, but she mumbled unintelligibly all night long, and I couldn't make out where she said Harvey was.  Someone else near me said he was sick.

The problem with the juggernaut was that it was powerful, but it had no direction.  Often, the theme was trying to reduce expenses.  Sometimes, it was to increase them.  But that, too, was incoherent.  Here are two conflicting examples.  The majority were bent on reducing the available expenditure for travel and training for Commissioners.  Roxy tried repeatedly to point out how frankly essential it was for Commissioners to attend perspective-broadening and enlightening educational opportunities.  The rest, who neither know anything nor want to know anything, would have none of it.  (I was going to call this post "Ignorance is Bliss" in recognition of the pathetic approach taken by the majority.  But I liked "Bolero" better.)  On the other hand, having resisted a disconnected range of opportunities to spend money to make the Village better, Tracy introduced, on her own (her stooges are only there to agree with her, not to think for themselves, so it doesn't matter if she does all the deciding), the idea that we have trouble retaining Village employees, because we don't pay enough.  So we should increase the salaries of our two highest paid people: the Manager and the Police Chief.  (Who were not reported to have expressed feeling underpaid, or to have asked for an increase.)  None of this made the slightest bit of sense.

Like every Village meeting for over the past year and a half, it was really the Tracy Truppman Show, Starring...Tracy...Truppman.  And Tracy worked hard on this episode of the show.  She was noticed spending inordinate amounts of time at Village Hall with Krishan Manners this past week-- Saturday included.  It was very clear that the budget was not Krishan's, as budgets are supposed to be.  It was Tracy's.  And since Tracy has limited herself by having refused to develop and commit to a vision, the budget didn't reflect anything.  It didn't signify anything.  It was just a bunch of numbers, which Tracy and her assistants then adjusted.  In no real direction at all.

PS: To be entirely fair to the majority, Issa Thornell and Dan Keys were in fact able to convince Tracy to allocate money to resod and maintain the field at the recreation center.  So thanks, Issa and Dan.