That's Curious. They're Supposed to Be Candidates Trying to Engage the Voters.

On Monday, September 24, I sent an e-mail to each of our Commission candidates.  Four of the e-mails went through, and one failed.  The one that failed was to Dan Samaria, who appeared as if he had changed his e-mail address.  So I called him and left a message for him to call me back, so I could get his correct address.  The e-mail I sent is as follows:

Hi,

I want to do something that I envision structuring as a Commission meeting, with the five of you as Commissioners.  The agenda would be four issues.  They are essentially the ones I described in the blog post of 3/13/17.  I would have to adjust them a little, since the circumstances have changed since then.  The blog address, if you don't know it, is www.biscayneparkfla.blogspot.com.

I would not impose time limits on speaking, but rather let you discuss these issues as a group, exactly as you would if you were Commissioners.  You would say as much or as little as you want.  You would come to conclusions, or not.  Someone would make a motion, or not.  This would be an opportunity for your neighbors to see what you would look like as Commissioners.  We already know that about Will, but not about the rest of you.  And maybe Will interacts differently with a different group of colleagues.

So let me know ASAP if you're willing to do this.  If you all are, or even if most of you are, I'll schedule a date, time, and place.  It would be best for everyone if it could be in the log cabin.  And sooner is better than later.

By the way, my role would be like a silent mayor, or like the manager.  All I would do is get the topics introduced.  I would have no contribution about what you do with the discussion.  The only possible exception to that, which I would have to consider, and maybe discuss with you, is if I wanted you to specify something or go further with something you said.

Let me know today or tomorrow, if possible.

Fred

PS: It's possible someone else might want to do a different Meet the Candidates event, more like the ones we typically do.  I find them stilted and inadequately productive, and I think this is better.  But there's certainly room for both.

I heard back fairly promptly from Jared Susi, agreeing without reservation to this exercise.  His exact response was "Count me in."  I never heard back from any of the other four, including that Dan Samaria did not return my call.

I proposed the same exercise last year, when we had a special election to fill David Coviello's seat.  At that time, Dan Samaria, Harvey Bilt, and Mac Kennedy declared candidacies.  Mac immediately said he would participate, and the other two declined.  It was my impression that Harvey was suspicious, and he somehow convinced Dan, his one remaining opponent after Mac dropped out, also to decline.  I have to this day failed to understand why Dan took the advice of his opponenet over the advice of a completely unbiased person.

I saw Dan Tuesday night at the Commission meeting (don't even ask; it was unbelievable), and he told me his e-mail had been hacked, and he also hadn't gotten around to returning Monday's messages until then.  But he didn't return my call.  Anyway, he didn't ask what the e-mail was about.  Will Tudor, Manny Espinoza, and Betsy Wise were also there, at least for part of the time.  None of them approached me with an answer to my e-mail proposal.

In the meantime, I learned that David Raymond and Art Gonzalez are putting together a different Meet the Candidates event, and Milton Hunter is doing interviews.  David told me everyone eventually agreed to participate in his and Art's event, but only on condition the issues not be presented as Ordinances.  That's pretty weird, because discussing Ordinances is exactly what a Commission has to do.  So why wouldn't they want to show what they got?  Unless they know they got nothin', and they don't want it to be that obvious yet.  And Dan reportedly started to balk, because he doesn't want to have to do three things (two events and an interview).  I wonder if he plans to limit the number of meetings he's willing to attend as a Commissioner, too.

The whole thing seemed to me very twisted, because people who should want every opportunity to show themselves to their neighbors seem to be balking a lot.  Maybe it's like two years ago, when discussions would happen on Nextdoor, and there would be comments to the effect that readers wanted to know what Tracy and Jenny and Will thought, and the "three pack" were very careful not to reveal anything.  It's pretty clear now what that meant.

So David and Art will try to get their event planned, and I'll try to get mine planned.  It may work out, and it may not.  The Commission meeting Tuesday night was the final acceptance of the millage and the budget, and David Raymond wanted a quick word at the end, to get the Commission to agree to let him and Art use the log cabin for free.  But Tracy refused to listen to him, and he'll have to wait until next week, at the regular meeting.  I guess I will, too.

John Hornbuckle

I moved here in 2005, and John was on the Commission then.  He soon became, or became again, Mayor.  John was a good Mayor, at least with respect to running meetings, which was all I could witness.   They were orderly, respectful, accomplished all the business each time, and lasted around two to 2 1/2 hours.  John waited patiently while his colleagues gave their opinions about things, at the end of which he gave his, and a vote was taken.

I met John's wife, Elizabeth, because we were both on Planning and Zoning, and I knew she was an architect.  I never really knew what John did professionally.

At some point, which could have been 2007 or 2009, John got "unelected" from the Commission (lost his re-election bid), and I didn't hear much from him any more.  But later, I'd see him around at various events, and he was advertising for himself.  He had a (new?) business called Compass Claims, the job of which was to represent people who had insurance claims, and they felt the insurance companies were not being fair in offering settlements.  I later came to realize this kind of advantage-taking by insurance companies is rampant.  And extreme.  So John had a job to do.  Specifically, you hire him to help you get your proper settlement, he does whatever he does to represent you and intervene, and his fee is 10% of what he gets you.

A year ago, one of my friends' house was damaged in hurricane Irma.  My friend had homeowners' insurance, and she immediately contacted the company to do something for her.  The damage made her house uninhabitable.  Her insurance company immediately started low-balling their settlement offer, was not providing any help with referrals to people who could solve the emergency problem, and they were jerking her around.  So I suggested my friend contact John, because I know him, and it's his line of work.  He quickly got involved, and he stayed with the project long (or short) enough to realize it wasn't going anywhere good.  So he referred my friend to an attorney with proper experience in this kind of problem.  With all of that, it took a long time for a proper settlement offer to get made, but it did.  It was approximately 14 times what the company wanted to pay.  And it is more than sufficient to address all the damage, and the dramatic life interruption that resulted from the unbelievable delays.  John has just delivered to my friend her check.  She's very happy.

I had no problem at all recommending John from the outset, because I know him, I like him, and I consider him hard-working and scrupulous.  Now, I can add that I have seen his work more or less first hand, and he is THE guy to call in this circumstance.

John is like me, in that it would be better if no one needed either of us professionally.  But if you have a problem with an insurance company, you want to contact John Hornbuckle.  John receives notices about posts to this blog, so I will leave it to him to provide his preferred contact information.  I'm sorry if you're ever in a situation where you need John's services, but you won't be sorry if you engage him when you do.

Well, I Met the Candidates.

Today, there was an informal meet the candidates gathering at the recreation center.  This gathering had an odd history.  It started as an announcement from Dan Samaria, seeming to suggest that all the candidates would be there.  Someone else to whom I was speaking thought Dan was arranging this only for himself.  What I heard was that the other candidates learned about it, and each of them backed out.  David Raymond seemed to say he and someone else had something to do with acting as go-betweens or mediators/negotiators, and finally, all five candidates showed up.

Manny Espinoza's table was first for me, because it was on my right, and closest when I walked in.  Manny and his wife were there, and they had by far the best food.  Very nicely catered.  Manny was interacting with his neighbors, and he was decked out in his Manny Espinoza for Commission tee shirt, which was comfortably faded from five years ago.  Manny was smiling and confident.  I asked him where he was all this time, since he has had no visibility at all in the neighborhood, and he explained that he had been too busy working to attend meetings, or anything else.  I pointed out that he wasn't too busy to run for office in 2013, but he stuck to his story.  He's offering to apply his accounting skills to looking over the Village's books, to find all the fat that no one else has found.  I tried to argue with him, but that was his position.

Jared and Nicole Susi were catercorner across the room.  They had nice food, too.  I've already seen Jared's offerings, as in this blog, and I didn't ask him anything further.  One woman in attendance said she didn't like Jared and Nicole, or she was mad at them, because Nicole referred to herself as a "Code NAZI," and said anyone who can't keep up with Code-required maintenance should move to a tent out in the country, and the woman believes it is Nicole who answers for Jared in places like Nextdoor.  She thinks Jared is sort of a fake candidate, and what we're really being offered is Nicole.  San Pellegrino water?  That's a bit rich for an event like this.  I don't drink water that expensive, so I didn't take one.

I didn't approach Dan Samaria, because I was too busy talking to other people, but Dan approached me.  He wanted either to correct me or to scold me for being concerned that Tracy Truppman would have undue influence over him.  Dan says he will reach his own conclusions in advance of meetings, and he won't change them, unless someone gives him an argument that makes better sense than what he came up with himself.

I didn't speak to Will Tudor.  I've watched him for two years, and I get it.  Chuck Ross has been telling me he thinks Will is faintly, if mostly imperceptibly, independent of Tracy, but I don't see it in any way that counts.  Dan Keys gave me a version of the same argument at the event today, but it's hard to tell when Dan is providing real insight, or when he's just being contrary.  He's always being contrary, and I can't tell when I should take him seriously.  He did give me one or two examples of what he considered Will's actual independence, but I didn't buy it.

The interesting, and prolonged, conversation was with Betsy Wise.  She's very crafty, and she's an excellent verbal dancer.  She's also very engaging.  She's charming and delightful.  Nothing she said made any sense, but it was a real pleasure to talk to her.  I really like her.  The question I kept asking her, which I think was the question Chuck asked her, and probably other people did, too, was how to juxtapose her complete absence from anything to do with the Village, with her sudden idea that it would be great if she were a Commissioner, and that she'd be a very good one.  She talked about her "skill set," which seemed mostly to do with "branding," and how she would quickly come to understand the issues and figure out how to be an effective Commissioner, essentially on the fly.  As we talked about it, and it seemed she saw what I meant by my concern, she said maybe I thought it was what she called "arrogant" for her to make this decision.  I reassured her that that's precisely what I was thinking, and that that was the word that came to my mind, too.  So here's what happens when Betsy Wise gets crafty in conversation.  She says, with what I guess is supposed to sound like humility, that she leaves it up to the voters to decide if she can be trusted with a seat at the Commission table, and she would fully accept it if they decided she couldn't.  Which is deeply disingenuous and manipulative, in a charming and self-deprecating way, since of course she would have to accept it.  She couldn't commandeer a seat at the Commission table, if she didn't win.  But my concern wasn't what would be her problem, if she didn't win.  It was what would be our problem, if she did.  The other thing I brought up in our conversation was the idea that she is a Truppman stooge, conscripted either by Tracy or by Jenny.  (The latter was the rumor I heard.)  Betsy assured me she had only spoken to Tracy twice before she decided to run, and to Jenny only twice before she decided.  She meant to reassure me that she didn't have long connections with them.  But it left the question as to why she would have had two conversations with each of them before she decided to run.  As she herself was trying to suggest, it's not like they were long time friends or acquaintances.  And she said she's only spoken to Tracy maybe a half dozen times since she declared.  I asked her how many Commission meetings she's attended since she declared, and stayed for the whole meeting.  As best I could figure out, it sounded like the answer was one.  Which is a little odd, since I don't commonly miss Commission meetings, and I've never seen her at any of them.  But maybe one of the few I missed was the one she attended.

So today didn't solve any problems.  Very nice cold cuts and cheeses, empanadas, and desserts, though.  And it was very sweet of Rosemary Wais to make decaf, just for me.

This Joint Ain't Big Enough For All of Us

This past Tuesday night, Chuck and Roxy Ross and I were having dinner at Ricky Thai Bistro.  At some point, Chuck, who was facing the back door, saw someone.  Roxy saw it, too.  I was looking in a different direction and did not see.

It was Tracy Truppman and her partner Rhonda.  From Chuck's and Roxy's report, Tracy saw us sitting at a table, and she and Rhonda turned and left.

They could not bring themselves to eat their own dinner, while we were eating ours, in a restaurant in which no one interacts with diners at any other table.  I, for one, don't even listen to the conversations of diners at other tables.

How childish.

Miami Symphony Orchestra 30th Season Grand Opening. And a Nice Discount.

The first concert for this coming season is on Sunday, October 14th.  It's at the Arsht Center, and it starts at 6:00.

The program begins with a new MiSO commission called "Orbits," and it ends with Holst's "The Planets.  Gershwin is in the middle.

I have every confidence this will be a great concert.  If you want to go, you can get tickets at www.themiso.org, or you can call MiSO at 305-275-5666.  Use promotion code PLANETS, and you get 25% off.  What, do you want it for free?  That's too much to ask.  This is a very good deal.

"A Bevy of Oddballs"

We all know John Ise.  He lived in the Park for years, then moved to the Shores.  When he was here, his big issue was that he wanted a dog park.  After he left, Howard Goldmann moved in, and he took up the campaign.  Well, we still don't have a dog park, but that's another issue.

Anyway, John got himself a side job.  He writes a regular column for the Biscayne Times.  I think he writes almost exclusively about the Shores.  But occasionally, he gets interested in his old stomping grounds: the Park.  And so it is this month, in anticipation of the November elections.

We have five candidates for BP Commission, and John decided to do a column about the election, and about the five candidates.  Since John is not a slouch at reporting, he took the approach of actually making contact with our five candidates.  Well, he tried.  And he's trying.

John reached out to each of them by phone and by e-mail.  Then, he checked in with me.  The problem was that he wasn't getting the responses he expected from five people running for office.  He wanted to know what's going on here.

Jared Susi replied to John, and he agreed to be interviewed for John's piece.  Betsy Wise replied, too, but she said she had to discuss this with the Village Manager.  What?

I then wrote an e-mail to the other three characters, to tell them to respond to John.  I heard back from Dan Samaria, who told me essentially that he didn't trust John, because, according to Dan, John misquoted him about something a few years ago.  I passed this along to John, who didn't recall ever quoting Dan at all about anything, let alone misquoting him.

John passed along to me the response he got from Manny Espinoza, stimulated by my telling these people to contact John.  This is what John wrote to Manny:

                      Dear Mr. Espinoza. 

My name is John Ise and I serve as the Greater Miami Shores “Neighborhood Correspondent” (which includes Biscayne Park) for the Biscayne Times (for previous pieces, you can see link under "Greater Miami Shores" pasted below).  I see from the Village web site you are a candidate for Village Commission.  I’m interested in doing a column on the Village election, profile of candidates, issues emphasizing, and general direction of Biscayne Park. 

I’m planning on column running for the October edition so no rush.    Please let me know if interested in chatting and if so, we can arrange a mutually convenient time.    I appreciate your consideration.  Cheers

John Ise

This is what Manny replied to John:

Good afternoon.   Before I engage my self with any type of media, I like to do my due diligence to find out who the person is trying to obtain some personal information and future plans.  With all my respect, I’ll get in touch with you by tomorrow afternoon to setup a day and time for the information you will like to make it public. I appreciate your understanding. Thanks Manny Espinoza.

What?

Will Tudor never replied to John or to me.

So John wrote back to me to say it seemed to him our current candidates, apart from Jared Susi, are "a bevy of oddballs."  If John is waiting for me to disagree with him, I hope he's not holding his breath.

I Didn't Forget. I Think I Just Couldn't Stomach It.

This past Tuesday, we had two Commission meetings.  The first was to vote on the budget, and the second was the regular monthly meeting.  Because I couldn't stomach it, I'm going to make this short.

The first meeting started out with Tracy Truppman's scolding her colleagues (I guess that's whom she was scolding) for having gotten this far with a budget Tracy called "fiscally irresponsible."  Now this is not only after two workshops, which Tracy controls, but the fact is, this was Tracy's budget anyway.  She tells the manager what to write, and he writes it.  Tracy voted for the familiar and irrational millage of 9.7.  Tracy voted for each part of this budget along the way.  So what does she mean-- what is this non-reality-based grandstanding-- by declaring this budget-- her budget-- "fiscally irresponsible?"  Now, she claims she wants things cut?  She had plenty of opportunity for that.  The woman is not well.  The Commission voted to approve it, as they should have, and must, at this point.  This was a five-minute meeting that probably took a half hour.

The regular meeting was mostly Resolutions and Ordinances, with one variance and a couple of items of new business.  None of it was about much of anything, and the meeting was not worth the 2 1/2 hours it took.  The one curiosity was the new business, some of which had been introduced by Will Tudor.  Tracy made the comment that it was important to pass these matters (which needed, and I hope will get, more time) quickly, because we have elections coming.  This crack means one of two things.  The less likely thing it means is that Tracy is in a hurry to register something she can think of as an accomplishment before it's possible she will no longer head a majority of stooges.  But this is unlikely, because the new business items wouldn't really accomplish anything, and Tracy doesn't care about anything anyway.  The more likely meaning was that she wanted something on the books that she could present as representative of Will's imagined value to the Village, so that he could use this imagined value, and these imagined accomplishments, as part of his platform in his campaign for re-election.  This is Tracy's way of trying to campaign for Will, using the Village as fodder.  Similarly, Tracy just sent out an e-mail blast in which she gratuitously and wrongly refers to the currently cementing resolution of the Village's police-related troubles of several years ago as an accomplishment of the current Commission.  Which had absolutely not one thing to do with it.  But again, she makes this statement not only so she and the woman in the mirror can compliment each other about it, but further to bolster the fantasy that Will was part of something adaptive.

Anyway, this is still very sickening, and I have nothing more to say about it.

We Might As Well Get This Conversation Started: The November, 2018 Village Election

As is almost always true, there are three Commission seats being contested this year.  And there are five candidates.  And it may be important to note at the outset that the two seats not being contested are those of Tracy Truppman and Jenny Johnson-Sardella, which really means Tracy has two votes on every issue.  Jenny's tenure has no meaning independent of Tracy.

The five candidates, in alphabetical order, are Manny Espinosa, Dan Samaria, Jared Susi, Will Tudor, and Laura Betsy Wise.  Since I'm writing this blog post, I'll give you my opinion.  If you want to give your own opinions, let me know, and I'll see to it that you can write a blog post here, too.  And you can always comment.

Manny Espinosa has lived in the Park since about 2012.  This was a noteworthy issue when he first ran in 2013, because he had to wait until the last day to qualify, so that he would have lived here exactly one year, which is the requirement.  Manny is a nice guy.  I've met him, and I like him.  He was a corporate accountant, but his candidate application says he's now retired.  Congrats, Manny.  I say Manny ran once before, in 2013.  Chuck Ross says Manny ran twice before.  Until it's clarified otherwise, I think Chuck is wrong.  Manny's issue when he ran was that he had applied for a variance for a fence or something, his application was turned down, and he had a gripe against the Village.  There was no other obvious reason for Manny to have been interested in Village government.  He had never been involved with Village functioning in any way, and he hasn't since.  I have no idea what Manny's current interest is about, except I heard he was again denied a variance for something.  But here's the possibly important thing about Manny.  (And we can never forget the elephant in the room.)  Manny shows no evidence of being connected to anyone else.  In that way, what looks initially like a disadvantage might contain an advantage.  Manny may have no reason to care about Tracy Truppman.  And if Manny or anyone else is not a Tracy stooge, this is of great value to the Village.  On the other hand, if Manny's candidacy is just about getting himself a variance for something, he could theoretically make a deal with the devil.  The problem is that if Tracy gets just one stooge elected, she stays on the throne, and we experience Village death and dysfunction for two more years.  So it's hard to know what to think about Manny and his candidacy.

Dan Samaria has lived in the Village for several years.  I don't know how many.  Fewer than I have, and more than Manny Espinosa has.  Dan's an exterminator.  He's my exterminator.  Dan's a good enough guy.  He's active and dedicated, and he was on the Recreation Board for a few years.  He never lets you forget he's there, but he contributes.  Dan has run before.  It's not clear what this is about for him.  Dan's approach could be described as unsophisticated, and I sometimes think he could be susceptible to "reason" that may not be very reasonable.  And that susceptibility can set Dan up to allow Tracy to run circles around him, even if he didn't start out wanting her to.  I have no idea how she's gotten Jenny, Will Tudor, and Harvey Bilt to check their intellects at the door, but I wouldn't put it past her to be able to have her way with Dan.  If Dan were really independent, what would he want?  What would his initiatives be?  What's his "vision?"  Beats me.  Maybe he'll tell us.

Jared Susi has lived here fewer years than Dan has.  Jared lives with his wife and their son.  Jared is a builder.  I like Jared, and his wife, Nicole.  They're very good and decent people.  They've each demonstrated wonderful devotion to the Village.  Maybe Nicole has even more than Jared has.  Jared was on P&Z until he had to resign to run for Commissioner.  The thing some people hold against Jared is that it was he, and/or his company, that renovated the bathrooms in the recreation center, and there were problems.  I myself never fully understood what was so bad about them, but I think they were fixed.  Anyway, I feel confident that Jared is independent of Tracy, and that's my main concern.  Jared can occasionally be a bit self-possessed, but this means he wants things done right.  (I'm not sure what that bathroom thing was about.)  It's true that he tends to complain about other people, but at least he has the honor and courage of his convictions to run for Commission, so he can do it better.

Will Tudor has, in my opinion, been a disaster.  His head bobbles, he "concurs," and he does nothing for the Village.  He has nothing to say, and nothing to offer.  I still say his only reason for being there is to try to prevent the Village from making him install a driveway on his property, which is the Code (which may well be why Tracy has agreed to minimize Code compliance), and that may also be his reason for running for re-election.  But if that's his theory, then he has to try to be on the Commission, with a sympathetic majority, until he moves out of the Village.  It's a lot easier just to put in the freakin' driveway.  It's a weird thing for Will to swear to uphold the Village Charter (which includes the Codes), while he resists it every day.  But hey, whatever were my reasons not to have voted for Will when he ran two years ago, I have 10 times as many reasons not to vote for him now.

I said Laura Betsy Wise, because that's how she's listed.  I don't know her name.  I don't know her, or anything about her.  Well, someone told me she lives just north next to where the Earhardts used to live, so if that's true, then that's what I know about her.  As far as I know, she has no connection to Village functioning, except that she happens to live here.  That makes her the same as Will Tudor.  Which is why I suspect she's running for the same reason Will did.  I don't know this for a fact, but I'd guess that Tracy scared up Laura, or Betsy, or whatever she calls herself, to give herself one extra chance to preserve her majority.  So since I don't know anything about Laura Betsy, I wouldn't vote for her.  Even if I came to know something about her, from her campaigning, I'd wonder where she's been all this time, and I still wouldn't want to entrust the Village to her.

I have no problem at all voting for Jared.  I'm a little concerned about how susceptible Dan is, but I'm likely to vote for him, too.  Manny is a strange duck as a candidate, but his possible value to the Village is that he might be independent of Tracy, so I might vote for him.  Will is an absolutely, positively not, and Laura Betsy is probably the same, although for slightly different reasons.  What's important for the Village is to elect three people, none of whom are Tracy stooges, so the Village can function adaptively again.  If there are three of these five.

I'm more than happy to be relieved of any unfair conclusions and reservations to which I might have come.  That can happen in a number of ways.  One of them is this: in the past, even when I myself was running for Commission, I offered full and unlimited use of this blog to any other candidates (as it's available that way to anyone anyway).  Harvey Bilt and David Coviello took me up on it.  Any of our current candidates can, too.  All they have to do is tell me they want to post things, and the blog is theirs.  They can make clear who they are, what they want, and what I got wrong.