Tuesday, April 2, 2019
Oops.
Tonight's Commission meeting started as many of them start. There were a few gratuitous and meaningless presentations, the Commission got raked over the coals for a collection of gaffes it has committed and insults it inflicts on Village residents, Commissioners ignored what was bothering their neighbors (or the fact that anything was), and the Consent Agenda was approved. Then, there were two Board position fulfillments to approve. It was really all a piece of cake. And then, new business.
All the new business was Dan Samaria's. Dan gets certain things stuck in his craw, and one that wouldn't go away was his continuing sense of offense that the March 5 meeting didn't happen when it was originally supposed to, and Dan wasn't told properly that it was postponed. Dan takes this as a personal affront. He won't let it go. He still has visions of the meeting that wasn't, and how it could have been just him, and Will, and maybe even just one other person. He could have been a fish in a slightly smaller pond. Why and how Dan's going on and on hit Jenny Johnson-Sardella the way it did is a mystery. Dan must have pressed some button in Jenny. Maybe she felt somehow blamed, because she wasn't there, and Dan got beaten out of his meeting, and he was the last one to have been told, and he's still complaining about it. Maybe it was that that finally pushed Jenny. For whatever reason, she just didn't want anyone to blame her. So she said it. "Someone," she said, contacted her, and told her there was no meeting, so she shouldn't come.
Now, the story we had all been told until that instant was that Tracy, Betsy, and Jenny all coincidentally told Krishan Manners that they were unavailable on March 5, and they allegedly told him this just a couple of days before March 5, so Dan and Will Tudor were told there wouldn't be a meeting, because there was no quorum. Three Commissioners were needed to make a quorum, but only two were available. So we were told. And so Dan was told. But nope. That's not what happened at all. Jenny spilled what she wasn't to have spilled. Dan was ready to meet. Will was ready to meet. And Jenny was ready to meet. The whole Village was ready for this meeting. The whole Village, except Tracy. And possibly Betsy. Unless Betsy was scammed the same way Jenny was scammed. And Dan and Will were scammed. And we were all scammed. And the "someone" who called Jenny to tell her there was no meeting, and she shouldn't come? Eh. The big money is on Krishan. But it could have been Tracy. For whatever thus far unrevealed reason, Tracy did not want to have a meeting on March 5. So, all by herself, she crashed the meeting. Was Krishan complicit? Probably.
A long time ago, I did a blog post about one of my favorite butcher stores: Proper Sausages. But I was slightly careless, and I called it Proper Sausage. I thought that was the name. Freddy Kaufmann, who owns Proper Sausages, contacted me. Or maybe he left a comment. He thanked me for the boost, and he corrected me. As Freddy put it, my error was "a small thing, but it's a big thing." And he was right. Moving that meeting from March 5 to March 19 was a small thing, but it was a big thing. The glaring complication was that it threw off the variance hearing that really could only have taken place on March 5, because that's how it was advertised. The less dramatic complication was that people who would want to attend the meeting expected it to be when it's supposed to be, and maybe they weren't exactly as available on some other Tuesday. The subtlest, and most corrosive, complication was that changing that meeting, in the underhanded and manipulative way it was done, was an insult to everyone. It was just another manifestation of the autocratic way the Village is being run these days, until we can get rid of Tracy Truppman. Moving that meeting as it was moved was a reflection of how Tracy disregards and dismisses everyone else who lives in Biscayne Park. It was a demonstration of complete contempt for all of us. "A small thing, but a big thing." Almost undetectable, but earth-shattering.
Well, Betsy, who had gotten a piece of several people's minds during public comment, was very quiet tonight. Maybe she was also thinking, about what Jenny revealed, and what Tracy did, and maybe what she herself did. And Tracy danced, getting herself all caught up talking meaninglessly about other things. But no one forgot what Jenny said: "someone" called her to tell her there was no meeting, when there really was. Or should have been. It's a bad, ugly, destructive business.
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Indeed, that one sentence defined the meeting. It's no longer a question that something shady happened in early March. There would have been a quorum on March 5 and no need to abruptly cancel the meeting.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAnd, with that meeting canceled, the quasi-judicial variance hearing that was held on March 19 instead (and was subsequently declared invalid because proper laws regarding public noticing weren't followed by our incompetent village manager, then rescheduled to May) would have been conducted as scheduled, saving the village all that money for the attorney. So, they insult our intelligence AND waste our money. Sweet deal. Jenny's in the doghouse now, for sure. I sensed something about the way she purposefully reported the fact that she was told the meeting was cancelled. No one asked her the question, so she didn't need to report that salient piece of info ... she CHOSE to. Remember, Jenny's a real, practicing attorney at a real law firm, so she needs to steer clear of even the appearance of impropriety, and this situation is starting to smell like the fish department at Presidente Supermarket on 125th.
ReplyDeletePS: The look of disdain and "why the fuck did I agree to do this" on Betsy's face is physically palpable. Watching her watch Dan Samaria is worth the price of admission.
Yup, Jenny's in the dog house. I had a sense she sees how bad this is, and she's trying to separate herself, to the extent she can, or that it's worth the gesture.
DeleteBetsy's always full of that kind of disdain, but tonight, she just kept her mouth shut. She doesn't usually do that. I wonder if what she learned at IEMO has her attention. Or does she, too, feel like something is going to come crashing down on her? We all heard the maneuvers that will be tried to prevent the Village from losing several hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost FEMA reimbursement, but we also heard that none of this effort is guaranteed to work. I doubt they're starting now to see what's wrong with Tracy. That was always clear. But maybe they're starting to see how they can be implicated.
Jenny apparently wanted to distance herself from my public comments blaming the 3 women on the commission who for reasons known only to themselves decided they didn't want to meet on the regularly scheduled date of March 5. As a result tax payers will now foot the bill of several hundred dollars for re-advertising and posting of that variance. Obviously the applicants can't be expected to pay for something that was not their fault. What she in fact did is confirm what we all figured. This was a behind the scenes manufactured situation that could only occur in - as you phrased it so well Fred - the autocratic way our village is now being run.
ReplyDeleteBetsy was rather quiet tonight. Although I seriously doubt she gets the irony in accusing residents of being the ones to waste time and money!
Janey, what we learned last night was that it was not three Commissioners/women who did not want to meet. We/you assumed it was three, because that's what we were told. We now know it was no more than two, and maybe just one. Jenny did not have some reason not to want to attend that meeting. She was told by "someone" not to attend, that there was no meeting. Whether the same scam was pulled on Betsy is anyone's guess, and I suspect Betsy is clever enough not to say.
DeleteGood job setting that up, Janey. You forced Jenny's hand in spilling those beans. Now, we need to get a straight answer on what happened. Did it involve a Sunshine violation, or did someone in charge lie to a commissioner? I think what we are sure of is:
ReplyDelete1. Tracy was in Tallahassee with an excused absence, representing BP at a conference.
2. Jenny was TOLD the meeting was cancelled, so she would have been 1 in attendance.
3. Dan was told the meeting was cancelled, so he would have been 2 in attendance.
4. That leaves Betsy and Will. If they BOTH reported they couldn't attend, all is well with legitimately falling short of quorum. However if one of them could have attended and was told the meeting was cancelled, then we have a serious issue afoot.
So, how do we get to the bottom of this? Aren't commissioners legally required to explain why they missed a meeting, at least to determine if the absence was excused or unexcused?
Mac, someone lied to Jenny. We now know that. Are we sure Tracy was out of town? Even if she was, your point 4 is not correct. Will did not report he couldn't attend. He and Dan, and Jenny, as we now know, were ready to attend, and were told there was no meeting. Dan and Will were told there was no quorum. Jenny didn't say what excuse was made to her. But whether or not Betsy would have come, there was a quorum. It was Jenny, Will, and Dan. Obviously, Tracy is so autocratic that she could not allow to occur a meeting over which she didn't preside, and at which decisions of which she was not a part were made. And she can't imagine that that's her problem, and not our problem, or the problem of someone who wants a variance.
DeleteAs for your last question, three Commissioners did explain why they missed the meeting. They all missed it, because they were told there was no meeting. But had they not been told that, and lied to about it, there would have been. Which is what serves "the residents" of Biscayne Park. The problem is that Tracy is not about serving anyone except her own totally self-absorbed self.
Interesting that the ordinance governing the code board has specific requirements if a member is going to be absent. We must inform the clerk of exactly what the reason is. Out of respect we bring it up a one of our meetings. The board must vote on whether or not to consider that an excused absence. To the best of my knowledge no such requirements exist for the commission. So.....board members are held to higher standards than are commissioners.
DeletePlease remember - it's not just the money for the attorney. Under the current contract not sure if we are charged by the hour so not clear on what attorney fees would have been. Of course would be nice to know.
ReplyDeleteBut re-advertising and posting is surely a few hundred. Not huge but money that we didn't have to spend.
Talking about by the hour of the attorneys, does anyone know what the village bill is up to for grey amd Robinson with regard to fema? We have a partner in the law firm now showing up to commission meetings. At some point the village has to cut its losses. I do not think the village can recover the attorney fees from FEMA. So that begs the question, when do we just take what we can get and not line these attorney's pockets with our tax dollars?
ReplyDeleteJared, we have a contract with Grey Robinson. They offered us the choice to abandon it, but we didn't. That contract includes a fee. The fee doesn't change just because they send us someone for whom they would normally bill more. Last month, they couldn't find anyone to attend our meeting, so they sent someone from their Tampa office. They paid for transportation and lodging, and we paid our normal hourly with them. They lost money last month, but that's not our problem. And I'm sure it was not their first choice to send a partner this month, either. Clearly, they don't have the "deep bench" Betsy and Tracy keep claiming they do. They have to scramble to find anyone at all to come to our meetings.
DeleteFred, I am sure we are going to get a bill for hours outside of the commission meetings along with paralegals and research/ massive amounts of other fees that lawyers bill.
ReplyDeleteOn Jared's point of fees, Reso 2018-23 outlines the engagement terms for Village Attorney. The charges are to be for actual time expended on the Village's behalf (no charge for routine phone calls or travel time to/from the Village). There is no annual cap, except that we had John Herin's assurance that he would work to stay within the budgeted amount for legal. Even with the added meetings for (IMHO unnecessary) re-financing and to fix the Finance Director/Manager's mistake in advertising the amount of property tax levy, Herin was on track to stay within budget. The added work for a FEMA appeal is outside of the regular budgeted scope of work.
ReplyDeleteFor good reason, attorneys are often asked to project a budget for their work on a matter, and that amount is factored into strategy to pursue or settle -- it serves a reality check for the attorney and the client. Many Village decisions seem to be made behind the scenes these days (including tasking Gray Robinson v. other outside counsel with this appeal) so we don't know for sure. But, does anyone out there think that a budget was considered in this instance?
"Many Village decisions seem to be made behind the scenes these days......." Rox as they say truer words were never spoken!
DeleteAnother example being the re-scheduling of the March meeting. In an email exchange I had with Wil he confirmed he could have been there on the 5th. So - after Jenny's comments last night we now know for certain there would have been a quorum. What we don't know and likely never will is why Tracy chose to move the meeting. Last night when she said she could not possibly have made the meeting on the 5th she never did say why. If Tallahassee were the excuse I'm thinking she would have said so. So - IMO she needs to be reimbursing the village for the costs of re-advertising that variance since. It's an unnecessary expense that she in fact caused and tax payers shouldn't have to eat.
As for the applicable attorneys fees for that portion of the meeting on the 19th dealing with the variance I would hope Gray Robinson will be absorbing those costs. Their attorney surely should have read the back up and informed the commission that they could not proceed with the hearing. I guess this is the kind of service we can expect with revolving door attorneys now.
A comical example of a decision made "behind the scenes" occurred last night. Before the meeting was called to order, Tracy huddled with the attorney. She wanted to show the attorney the Code that disqualified Jared from returning to whichever Board he applied for, so the attorney would confirm Tracy's suspicion that Jared was, in fact, disqualified. But it wasn't necessary for Tracy and the attorney to have had this conversation before the meeting, and for Tracy to have shepherded the attorney to this conclusion. That would have been part of the discussion when the matter came up during the meeting. Tracy would have said she read the Code to say such-and-such, and asked the attorney to take a look at it. But Tracy does very little during the meetings. Everything she does is done outside the sunshine. And that's what March 5 was about. Tracy demands to control everything, all the time, and she could not have allowed a meeting she didn't want to attend to occur. I doubt she was out of town that day, but even if she was, the meeting had to go on without her. I don't know any of us who attended every single Commission meeting when we were on the Commission. You're out of town, you get sick, or there's something else. So you say you won't be there. It's uncommon, but it happens to everyone. The problem with Tracy is what I already said: she can't not be in charge of everything. So a meeting she doesn't dominate can't happen. For whatever are her undisclosed reasons, she decided not to attend that meeting. My guess today is that she told Krishan to call all the others, and tell them the meeting was to be cancelled. Now that I know she pulled that on Jenny, I'm guessing she pulled it on Betsy, too. And yes, because the meeting could absolutely have happened, then Tracy should personally reimburse the Village for the readvertising, and for the attorney's time. Tracy was the sole cause of that rescheduled meeting. And she was completely wrong to have done what she did.
DeleteIf Will could have attended that public meeting, the meeting should have taken place. Only three commissioners are required to hold a meeting, and Tracy is no exception to that. So, someone moved a public meeting to suit Tracy? Is that a charter violation ... that being done, or it being done without public discussion/knowledge? We need all the facts: who actually couldn't attend, for starters ... then, who called it off and who called the other commissioners to inform them.
ReplyDeleteWith this kind of shit going down, they want village-paid phones so they can hide offline convos on their personal phones? I, for one, don't trust them. They have given us ample reason not to, as Fred pointed out last night.
Tracy did not go to Tallahassee until the following week as she reported about her time in Tallahassee at the meeting on the 19th, she was there on the prior Tuesday the 12th.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, Tracy was in town, in fact all apparently were home since their cars were all home so likely they or at least one or two of them were home. I was also told that Tracy was at Village hall on the 5th and left sometime in the late afternoon. Tracy and Krishan need to do some splainin!
Based on Jenny's info there was a quorum of at least three and someone arranged for there not to be! This is a very serious bombshell.
My questions are who called Jenny (probably Krishan) and was Betsy in on this?
As to the FEMA issue, at the March 19th meeting, at the very end of the meeting, they discussed the FEMA issue. They discussed in a roundabout way who should handle the appeal. They asked the attorney her opinion, seriously! She has probably been salivating over the FEMA appeal. Of course, she recommended that her law firm handle this. She bragged about the department of DC lobbyists they just acquired.
The responsible way to handle this would be to ask Gray Robinson for a budget to handle the appeal and ask H2O if they would consider this to be part of their amended contract. This was discussed when an amendment was made to the contract with H2O over a year ago. The Manager was tasked to follow up with H@O in the case that there might be an appeal. He must have dropped the ball, again. The majority of this Commission and the Manager continue to demonstrate that they are incompetent, to the Village's detriment.
They may be incompetent, but that's not the real problem. The problem is that they have no mission and no agenda, other than to sit at that desk. They don't act competently, because they're not trying to act competently. They all accomplished their entire goal the day they got elected. That was it. They never intended to do anything, and certainly nothing particularly adaptive for the Village, so their bumbling nonproductiveness represents the satisfaction of their "goal:" to have the power to decide things. What the things are, and what the decisions are, is irrelevant.
DeleteI'm sure Tracy doesn't want to get into trouble, but she's so drunk with power that she can't think about what she's doing. And if anyone were to suggest to her that what she's doing is not good for the Village and its residents and stakeholders, or actually wrong, she really wouldn't care.
Tracy is an obvious caricature. What's more interesting, and problematic, is the others. They mostly let her do whatever she wants. Lately, Will has been acting like he's thinking independently about things, although he has no perspective about the Village and how it works, or about much of anything else. And I don't even know about Jenny. Was she being independent in admitting what really happened about March 5, and trying to suggest she was in some way innocent, or did she just make a mistake, about which Tracy will chastise her? We can only wonder what's going on with Betsy, who automatically adopted her blind attack dog posture until this last meeting, when she suddenly had nothing to say. Dan has turned out mostly to be independent and reasonable, and he's the only one who directly challenges Tracy. But the rest of them have given us "Mayor" Tracy, and almost invariably vote for whatever she wants. Tracy is harmless, if the rest of them don't vote with her, and call her to account, and don't elect her mayor. Tracy is committing a range of Charter violations, and the rest of them sit quietly, sucking their thumbs. That's our problem.
We do need to get rid of Tracy, but perhaps more, we need to get rid of the rest of them, except Dan.
As for Art's comment below, what's the WORST that could happen? I'm sorry to say this again, but I told you what would happen. And it all happened. I totally get it: Fred was terrible. We're so lucky he's no longer on the Commission. But "anybody" but Fred? "Anybody?" This is exactly what I said would happen if we kept Fred off the Commission. And I didn't think Fred was such a terrific Commissioner, either. He was far inferior to Roxy (as is everyone), and not as good as David Coviello. In my opinion, he was a better Commissioner than Bob Anderson and certainly Barbara Watts. He beat Noah Jacobs, Harvey Bilt, and Manny Espinosa. Again, in my opinion, he was better than Noah or Harvey, both of whom were previously or eventually on the Commission. But this? We were relieved that this couldn't do too much damage? It couldn't have anything BUT too much damage.
Fred your first paragraph says it all and I couldn't agree more.
DeleteWhen many of these folks were elected many of us including myself said "well whats the worst that can happen or how much damage can they really do". Well this is pretty "worst & damaging" and I dont this we have reached the real worst damage yet!
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