I'd like to know who's "decorating" our medians, specifically the 119th St. median between 5/6 Avenues (and other medians with new wooden posts). The design is horrific and the execution is worse. And, from what I can determine, the posts were installed without PZ authorization or a permit. BP is required to follow the same Code and permitting process that the rest of us are required to follow.
- wooden posts are crooked, different heights, misaligned
- plant material added between the posts without PP input or authorization ... the materials are horrible choices and sickly to boot (half-dead clusia, an irresponsible, cheap choice)
The aesthetics of BP are spiraling downward fast, and BP is driving that, not merely allowing it. Whoever is playing decorator at village hall (Krishan, Tracy), please stop and get the help of professionals. You are tasked with elevating the village, but you are making this place look like a dump. Go ahead and let your front yards look like crap, but leave our public spaces alone. If you can't do anything right, just don't do anything at all.
Mac,
ReplyDeleteIt's entirely possible the Village manager could have begun discussions about the medians. Not with this Commission, though. And anyway, it's a matter more for the Commission, because it involves a vision (yeah, I know) for the Village, and it might involve money. So you're closer to right if you blame Tracy.
But the real culprit here is Dan Keys. And I'll explain this in two ways. First, I personally have been bothering Dan (P&P Chair) for years for P&P to suggest a median plan. Dan is the most stubborn and contrary person I know, and because I asked, the answer was always Dan's many, many versions of no. Second, Dan has a long established pattern of choosing projects he'd like to do, and he either takes the initiative to start discussions about them, after which he hounds Village administration or the Commission to endorse them, or he finds some way to say that someone asked him to do the thing he wanted to do anyway. So, when none of that happens, you can be sure we're seeing the evidence of Dan Keys and his refusal to do something that wasn't initially his idea.
Having said that, I will admit that I asked the Commission when I was a member of it to "task" P&P to come up with a median scheme-- and I did not ask for any money to be spent doing any work-- and all four of the other Commissioners refused to do it. Bob Anderson and Barbara Watts were reflexly and mindlessly disposed against anything I suggested, so I ignored their failure to support this request. What surprised me was the lack of support from David Coviello and Roxy Ross. I never asked either of them for an explanation after the Commission meeting at which I introduced this request, and they didn't give an explanation during the meeting, so I don't know why they wouldn't agree to make this a goal for the Village.
But be that as it may, Krishan is not your problem here. It's Tracy now, it was David Coviello and Roxy Ross before, and it's always Dan Keys.
Well, I didn't live here then, so I'm not registering opinion on that tussle. However, what's happening to our medians now amounts to the rape of our public spaces. One of BP's treasures is those green spaces, including the medians, and we should cherish and elevate them, not mutilate them.
ReplyDeleteThe city lets everyone park and drive over them without consequences, so what does it matter. Biscayne Park has shown a total lack of concern for its future. Tracy Truppman and her tribe have done a lot of damage that will take years to recover. Past and present commissioners have completely failed Biscayne Park for years and now we will pay the price. I have to say Mayor Truppman is the BIGGEST failure I have ever encountered in city government. Our village green spaces are unique and it appears no one really cares.
ReplyDeleteThe question I ask myself, but I have never asked anyone who's lived here far longer than I have, is whether the medians were always like this-- sort of an inchoate possibility that no one ever chose to realize-- or they used to be better, but Commissions over the decades let them deteriorate. The latter would be like the log cabin. I just don't know which it is. And maybe it doesn't much matter. The medians are, as Mac and Brad both say, one of our most unique assets, and we could choose any day to do them justice. "We" just keep not making that choice. And I will say again that the day Dan Keys tells any Commission that he and P&P have or want to develop a plan for the medians, no one will tell him no. Some years back, maybe when I was on the Commission, Dan even promised a design for one or two medians on 10th Avenue, which would have been a demonstration project, and everyone was pleased that he would do this. But nothing ever happened. He just chose not to do it.
ReplyDeleteAnd Brad, Tracy isn't worse or more destructive about the medians than was any prior Commission. She's just not any better. She's simply just as bad. About the medians. It's certainly true that Tracy has no interest in anything to do with the Village, apart from one person who lives here, and she's destructive about some things, but the medians aren't a worse example than anything else that doesn't interest her.
Actually, I made a mistake. Almost no one on any Commission would tell Dan Keys no about a proposal to develop a median scheme. Tracy Truppman might be the one Commission that would tell Dan no, because it would not have been her idea. But, as I said, her failure regarding the medians is no worse than the failures of any other Commission we've had.
DeleteAlso, if anyone offered me a choice between 1) Tracy decides to do something about the chronic and misery-inducing problem of our Village-wide medians, and 2) Tracy decides to do something about one decrepit house on 121st St, it would be a really, really choice to make.
Every day in BP without an agreed-up vision and a plan to execute to get us somewhere better is another day of lost potential. We just saw 2 x 365 of those days tick past with the current myopic mayor and inept puppet commission with zero progress in any area ... and I fear we are headed into another sad joke of a two-year commission helmed by Mayor Myopia. Meantime, while we have no identity, vision or "brand," (there's that word that makes folks cringe), we are being branded by local and national media, google, and public opinion. Just search BP and watch what pops up: a racist police force, police brutality targeting young black men, cops pleading guilty and being sentenced to hard time. That's our "brand" and very much our reality until someone thinks like a visionary leader and re-crafts our image. No number of arts festivals, movies in the park or dead clusia will change that.
ReplyDeleteAnd there, you can see it again. You're almost completely right, Mac, about two years of lack of progress, but there's one very tiny exception. We now have a very small "butterfly garden" at the end of one median on 114th St, because Dan Keys decided to do this project. And it cost the Village little or nothing, because of Nicole Susi's fund-raising. And Village residents provided most of the labor, as they have on others of Dan's projects.
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