Tuesday, August 21, 2018
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.
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Without a vision at which to aim and a plan to execute to get you there, a budget is meaningless except to put numbers in columns. Another example of BP getting itself nowhere at the direction of incompetents. Please tell me they aren't actually giving our do-nothing manager a raise. For what: being nice, sitting quietly on Tracy's lap?
ReplyDeleteMac,
DeleteI cannot yet tell you officially that they are imposing raises on the Manager and Police Chief, even though raises were not apparently requested. All I can tell you officially is that Tracy said she wants this. But since Tracy has four votes (or three, if one of her stooges doesn't show up), then whatever she wants goes.
Yes, I presume that's the reason Tracy wants to give him the raise he didn't request.
Fred
PS: I like Krishan. I always have. As far as I can tell, he's a good, decent, caring person. As I have also said, it's impossible to tell what his managerial skills are. Tracy does not permit him to be independent, so we have no way to know what he would do if he was. We can't know if any lapses we think we see in what comes out of the Manager's office represent his personal lapses, or Tracy's lapses. The only complaint I could make about Krishan is that he would agree to take a job in which he is not allowed to function independently, as the job requires. And if anyone made that complaint, I couldn't argue with them.
Perhaps they should include internet for the manager since he does not reply to emails from residents, im assuming its because he has no internet. This is really all so stupid, its a total and complete sad joke!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, there were two suggestions to increase the salary of the Police Chief. The second one came from Tracy, for unrevealed reasons. (I doubt it was to make the Chief beholden to Tracy, so she could order him around, as the Charter forbids, and he'd do whatever she told him.) The first suggestion came from Krishan, whose stated rationale was there was at least one member of the BP Police force who, because of seniority, was actually making more than the Chief's salary, and Krishan (this is what he explained) decided it was unseemly for a police officer who was not the Chief to make more than did the Chief. I can't really explain or support either Krishan's or Tracy's positions. None of this made the slightest bit of sense embedded in an almost four hour conversation that contained lots of suggestions to shave a little here and a little there, because the Village can't fully function, because finances are too tight.
ReplyDeleteIf Tracy was concerned about retention of Village employees, she should give us all an apology for having arbitrarily and unceremoniously fired a new Manager in whom we all had confidence, and who earned the enthusiastic support of the whole neighborhood. Except Tracy Truppman.
Fred
Yes, Krishan is "nice," on that we can all agree. However, he wasn't hired to be nice. He was hired to be the boss, to run this place, and to be effectual. He succeeds at being nice and fails at getting anything done. Take a walk and look around this place, remembering that tax bill we'll all be receiving in the coming months.
ReplyDeleteNo one has ever argued that Krishan is not a very nice person. The unfortunate fact is that he is not competent to be village manager. He ignores residents and simply does not manage....it’s that simple. The reason more than half of the village staff has left over the last year is because of mis-management, not inadequate pay. Let’s be serious here and just admit, Krishan was hired to do nothing so Tracy could run the show. We are supposed to be a village with a “weak” mayor and a “strong” manager. Sadly, our “bull in a China shop” mayor, decided to hire the weakest manager she could possibly find in order to make herself stronger. It is the exact opposite of what our village charter intends and it shouldn’t be allowed to continue.
ReplyDeleteNo offense, Mac, but Dan is right. Krishan was not hired to run the Village and be effectual. He was hired by this Commission to, as Dan puts it, "do nothing, so Tracy could run the show." Dan, I couldn't say if Krishan is not competent. He has not been allowed to do his job.
DeleteTo look again at the budget, and come back to all of our original point, we have no idea what Krishan would have done, if the Commission had done the job it is supposed to do, and given a broad direction, springing from its vision, as to what Village functions it would like to see preserved, or enhanced, or diminished. And an expression like that should have sprung from open meetings and discussions, not Tracy Truppman corralling the manager privately, micromanaging his function, or doing his job for him.
It's all twisted. None of it is in keeping with the Charter. And to add insult to injury, the results are terrible. Tracy isn't even a benevolent and adaptive dictator. She's just a self-involved autocrat who is content to be in charge, and doesn't require herself to accomplish anything.
That’s a good point and I agree, Fred....Krishan wasn’t given a chance to do his job and that is extremely unfortunate and unfair to Krishan. Unfortunately, Krishan has promised to both me and Mac that he was going to enforce code and get this place cleaned up. Thus far we have seen no indication that he has followed through on any of those promises and for that I hold him personally responsible.
DeleteDan, it appears as if Krishan made you a promise his one boss won't allow him to keep. It's up to us whether we want to hold that against Krishan or against the tyrant. There is of course the understanding that it was Krishan's choice to take this job, and his choice every day whether or not to stay in it.
DeleteOne point I made in my comments at the meeting last night is that Tracy owes her neighbors some communication as to what is her intention. For example, and thinking of the complaint you just made, if her intention is that the Codes should not be enforced, we are owed a clear statement to that effect. Tracy, of course, thinks she doesn't owe anyone anything, and that what other people think and want is of absolutely no importance. To Tracy, the value to her of her BP neighbors is that she gets to take our money, while she gets to play queen of the castle.
Everyone knows that Krishan is Tracy‘s lap dog, but Krishan is a grown-ass man, and if he wanted to keep his promises, he certainly could. He is a “strong” manager and there is no reason why he cannot use his authority given to him by the village charter. Either enforce the code, or go find a different job… That’s the bottom line for me...We all know that Tracy wants to be the king of the castle, but Krishan, at least as far as the village charter is concerned, IS the king of the castle. He needs to grow a spine and use it…
DeleteHe'd get fired. If you say that's his problem, and he should be self-respecting enough to prefer to get fired, or to quit, than to live under Tracy's thumb, I would completely understand that. But I'm just saying he will not grow a spine, and be here to use it.
Delete