I Wonder if That Was a Mutiny.

We had a very strange special Commission gathering tonight.  It had something to do with our attorney.  Here's how this came about.

Our attorney, John Herrin, reportedly told our manager, Krishan Manners, that he, John Herrin, would be leaving his firm soon.  This was maybe in the past two weeks.  But no one was supposed to say anything about it, and John wanted to wait until he told his firm that he was leaving to join another firm.  Apparently, that happened some time late last week, because on Friday, we received a letter from John's firm saying John was no longer with them, and we could choose to stay with the firm, and be represented by someone other than John, be represented by John at his new firm, or find another attorney altogether.  It was Krishan Manners who received this letter.  On Sunday (two days ago), tonight's special meeting was scheduled, and the purpose was to talk about our attorney situation, supposing that we have one.  It was never made clear by anyone why this special meeting had to be so precipitously soon (tonight).  And not only was a meeting called to talk about our (imagined?) attorney situation, but three resumes of firms were attached as backup, and they were the same resumes as the finalists from last year, when we hired John and his firm.  So it was made to appear that we were finding a new attorney.  But since our attorney didn't resign from representing us, and the firm of which he was a part when we hired him/them was still willing to provide regular legal counsel, we weren't without an attorney.  So why were we looking for one?  To recapitulate, why was it being made to look like we didn't have an attorney, and what was the rush to choose a new one?  All of us who delivered public comments posed those questions.  And the other thing we all addressed was the peculiar set-up involving preconclusions about any of this, a compilation of resumes, with no introductory discussion, and, as Mac Kennedy astutely observed, the fact that five Commissioners who supposedly had next to no information were there, and none of them looked at all perplexed.  It might have been Roxy Ross who uttered the "Sunshine" reference.

For Chuck Ross and me, there was one other concern.  Roxy Ross recalled that the vote to hire John Herrin and his firm had been 4-1 of the then Commission.  The one who didn't choose John was Tracy Truppman.  It has also been observed that on two known occasions, John has disagreed with Tracy about one thing or another.  One of those failures to heel was followed by Tracy's giving John a tongue lashing outside.  Tracy Truppman does not brook people disagreeing with her.  There's typically some form of hell to pay for an act like that.  So the additional question was whether Tracy was gunning for John, whom she had not chosen at the outset, and who had the nerve to disagree with her about something, in the same way, but for different reasons, that she was gunning for Sharon Ragoonan, whom she assassinated as a Village employee.  Tracy does that.  As best we can tell, there's a list of them now.

But the bottom line was that we felt that the whole scheme of tonight's meeting was ill-conceived, in part because no one knew or understood much of anything (which wouldn't matter to Tracy, if all she wants is to punish/replace John for disagreeing with her), and one of the reasons no one knew anything is that no one asked.  For example, as became clear as this meeting slogged on, no one knew about John's new firm, or what his old firm was prepared to do for us, and John had either not been told about this meeting, or had been told about it, and been told he was not welcome to attend.

It was an interesting, if painful, 40 minutes.  Almost all of the Commission, even including Betsy Wise and Jenny Johnson-Sardella, actually came to understand the disadvantage at which they had been placed.  And as much as Tracy tried unwaveringly to steer everyone's comments to some conclusion, which Tracy tried to put in their mouths, that we should find a new firm (any firm in the world that, let's say, doesn't include John Herrin), they actually resisted.  The leader in this resistance was Will Tudor.  Jenny Johnson-Sardella repeatedly "concurred" (her all time favorite word) with Will.  And Betsy Wise resisted the herding Tracy was trying to do, too.  So did Dan Samaria.

What the Commission finally decided was that it didn't have enough information, and that they should slow this process down.  Which is of course precisely what all of us tried to tell them.  Jenny Johnson-Sardella even mentioned having recognized the wisdom of some comment Barbara Kuhl made.  Obviously, these Commissioners are not allowed to say they were persuaded by anything Roxy Ross said or I said, and that's OK.  As long as they get it, it's not important whom they recognize for having helped them see straight.  Roxy had other insights and caveats, too, but Tracy refused to let her speak.  Ah, good old Tracy.  Raging and limited to the end.

Yes, it was a gross waste of 40 minutes, but it was interesting to watch what looked like actual independence and something like clear thinking.  It could be just a one off situation.  We may be back to Village government brain death very soon.  Or maybe not.  Can Tracy punish all four of them, without the cooperation of at least two of them?  It depends how she does it, or what she's got on them.

Ignorance is Bliss. And So, Apparently, is Being a "Mean Girl."

Last night's Commission meeting was fundamentally nasty.  I'm talking about the part that wasn't idiotic and revealing of lack of knowledge and perspective on the parts of Commissioners.

Public Comment started it off, with Linda Dillon's reading a nice, Linda Dillon-style, version of the riot act to the Commission.  Linda's idea was that it's traditional, and correct, that non-Commissioner Village residents feel free to speak their minds at Commission meetings, and further, that if the Commission expected to be treated with some sort of respect by their neighbors, they owed their neighbors the same courtesy.  I made a different version of the same point.  Later in the meeting, Dan Samaria introduced a New Business item to say the same thing, and to propose formalizing it.  Dan's idea, to which I'll return later, was that the Commission should commit itself to being respectful of non-Commissioner Village residents and to each other.  Right.

Betsy Wise started off the discussion part of the meeting, with some aimless and ultimately pointless rambling about something that was supposed to be connected to CITT funds.  This is money that's available to us, but because of the way the Village is laid out, and considering our (lack of) need, it's almost impossible to make the intended use of the money.  Some years, we don't.  And that's really OK, because it really doesn't apply to us.  It's almost as if someone offered us the opportunity to put a toll booth on the part of the interstate that runs through Biscayne Park.  So Betsy gave herself a nice opportunity to listen to herself talk, but it didn't go anywhere.

The next item was Betsy's, too, and she was eager to let us know some of the things she learned at the Florida League of Cities' Institute for Elected Municipal Officials' forum.  But first, Betsy decided she might owe us an apology.  She mentioned the possibility that she might have been a little bit sharp, or maybe defensive, or possibly even something like aggressive in her short time so far on the Commission, but she instantly segued into blaming us for it.  You see, Betsy explained, she considers herself to have been put through a "bruising campaign," and she now looks back on it all and thinks maybe we hurt her so much that she might have, you know, lashed out a little bit.  But she's sorry, and it's all our fault anyway.  But "bruising campaign?"  What "bruising campaign?"  The one where she manipulated and dissembled, and dodged Meet the Candidates fora, where hard questions might have been asked of her?  The "bruising campaign" where she and her little posse beat up mercilessly on Jared Susi?  That "bruising campaign?"  Wow, Bets, I'm so sorry.  What we all put you through.

But Betsy did pick up one really great idea from her FLOC IEMO experience.  Betsy, who had never attended any BP Commission meetings, and clearly knew absolutely nothing about the Village, its government, and how it functions, hit on the idea that there's something about the FPL Franchise Agreement, and we should, I don't know, do something about it or something.  Betsy carefully reviewed this matter, and during her little show-and-tell for us, she showed us that she now understands that the Franchise Agreement is essentially a tax (boo), but we need the money (yay), but how do we know FPL aren't stiffing us (boo), so we should audit them (yay), which Betsy understands us never to have done (ooh, we're so irresponsible).  Oh, no, Bets, you detected a shaking head from the back of the room.  And OH, NO(!), it's the mean girl of all mean girls, the meanest girl alive, the evil Antichrist, Roxy Ross.  And what is that bad, bad Roxy Ross trying to tell you?  That we did audit FPL to be sure we're getting what we're supposed to be getting?  Oh.  Well, um, when was that?  2011?  Nope, too far in the past.  We should do it again.  Yay for Betsy Wise (they sure don't call her Wise for nothing) who saved the day and the Village.

And next was the report from the Public Safety Advisory Board.  This one was interesting, and I have to introduce it by stepping back a bit.  It was earlier in the meeting, when the Consent Agenda was being considered, that Dan Samaria took issue with the minutes of the first meeting of the new Commission.  Dan had nominated some person who wasn't Tracy Truppman, and therefore either doesn't count or maybe doesn't even exist, to be Mayor.  But one of Tracy's dutiful stooges nominated Tracy, and we could ignore whatever was Dan's blather.  But Dan-- good old Dan-- had an idea that it should at least be part of the minutes that he had nominated this other supposed person.  No, Tracy slammed Dan, these are "action minutes," and they only have to include, let's say, pulling this out of our...hats, motions that succeed.  Dan didn't see it that way.  He thought every motion should be mentioned.  And it was at this point that Krishan Manners, whom I almost invariably try to support, chimed in to suggest to Dan, in Krishan's best sarcastic and grossly obnoxious voice, that perhaps Dan would like to propose to set aside money for plenary transcribing of the contents of meetings.  Who knew Krishan Manners could be a "mean girl," too?  He was way out of line with that crack.  But back to the Public Safety Advisory Board, they were supposed to present their list of recommendations.  Except their Chair didn't bother to come to the meeting.  In fact, only one of their members, Mike Redman, came to the meeting.  Krishan asked Mike if Mike would like to present the recommendations, or would he like Krishan to do it.  Mike said he'd not like to bother, either, so Krishan presented it.  What he actually did was show a slide.  It was all very well orchestrated, as was everything else in this meeting (except the contributions of Dan Samaria, who is apparently more of a mongrel, and not the product of obedience schooling, as were the girls; Will Tudor wasn't at this meeting).  There was a suggestion-- I don't remember whose-- just to accept the whole list.  Betsy Wise wasn't so sure, and she complained that it was all too much and too messy, and she wanted it prioritized into bite-sized projects.  Jenny Johnson-Sardella preferred this approach, too.  So they prattled about this for a while, then agreed to accept the whole list.  Jenny Johnson-Sardella had a great idea, though.  Jenny, who has minimal history of involvement with the Village and its functioning, and does not bother to research matters, thought maybe we should lower the speed limits.  Jenny is blissfully unaware of our past traffic study that showed that it would do no good to lower the speed limit, or the fact that we did it anyway, and she does not understand that the problem is people who speed, not a speed limit that does not support safe driving.

Our fearless group agreed to purchase a new vehicle for the Code officer.

The matter of the police's need for new radios had been removed from the Agenda, but now, it was being talked about anyway.  Well, talking about it was being talked about.  Should we talk about it?  We talked a lot about that.  Finally, we discussed it so much that we decided we should talk about it, so it got back on the Agenda.  How it ever got off the Agenda was never made clear.  The police need new radios.  And they're not cheap.  $29K for a case of 10.  For a purchase that big, our Charter requires us to get three competing bids.  But we really want them, and we don't want to wait.  Chief Luis Cabrera and Commander Nick Wollschlager put the hard sell on us.  Here's how dire this is: the Chief no longer has a radio.  He had to give his to another officer.  Same for the Commander.  And with hurricane season coming (in five months)...  Well, you can do that math for yourselves.  One of our nosy Commissioners asked how many radios short we are.  We didn't get an answer.  And no one asked how long the normally required process takes.  No, we were in a hurry to figure out how to circumvent the requirement to get bids.  Our Village Attorney got the message, and he helped the Commission figure out how to explain their way out of the bidding process.  It was Trump and his "emergency" wall all over again.  Anyone who didn't leave to listen to the State of the Union didn't miss anything.  So yeah, yeah, we're getting our radios.  Probably any day now.  Unless we already got them.

Dan Samaria wanted to talk again about the driveway Ordinance.  And he wanted special testimony from Gary Kuhl.  Gary was supposed to be representing the ideas of the Code Review Committee, and he told us that the 2015 agreed Ordinance was almost perfect, until the then Commission made changes.  Gary said this in the presence of Code Review Committee members who were there, but didn't speak, and in the absence of other Code Review Committee members who had strong feelings, sometimes not the same as Gary's.  It was a nonsensical discussion that ended with a decision to look again at the Ordinance.  And someone on the Commission suggested we revert back to that 2015 proposed Ordinance, and maybe make any necessary changes.  Oh, no, isn't that the kind of thinking that got the prior Commission in so much hot water with Gary Kuhl?

And then, Dan Samaria wanted to talk again about this decorum matter.  Dan had some sort of proposal he got from Linda Dillon.  I assume it was what she said at the outset.  The gist of it was an agreement of mutual respect and decorum.  That's what Linda suggested.  It's what I suggested.  It's what Dan was now suggesting.  Tracy did not, shall we say, embrace it.  What she had was more like an allergic reaction.  The tension was relieved when Tracy's lieutenant, Betsy, rescued Tracy by making a motion that the "current" decorum resolution be ratified.  Tracy looked carefully at Betsy.  "The 'current' one?"  "Yes," Betsy reassured, "the current one."  So Betsy and the two other mean girls quickly ratified the resolution they liked.  That's the one where they don't have to show respect to anyone, and everyone else has to grovel, sit, show a paw, or whatever else it amuses (and protects) Tracy to demand.

At that point, the Andersons, the Kuhls, the Rosses, and I left.  Others had left already.