If You Can't Stand the Heat...

I wasn't sure what to call this post.  I was thinking about "Tracy to Village: 'Go F**k Yourself,'" but Tracy recoiled at Mac Kennedy's reference to getting a "kick in the ass," so I figured that F**k would not be acceptable, and I searched for a different title.  I was thinking about Tracy's sudden interruption of the meeting with a 10-minute recess, because one of her neighbors asked her a question she wasn't prepared to answer, and I  decided "If You Can't Stand the Heat..." was a good enough alternative.  Tracy immediately exited the room, and attached her ear to her mobile phone, so it was clear that the recess must be pretty serious, and the title about the hot kitchen was likely a propos.

The purpose of today's special Commission meeting was actually very straightforward.  We had to agree to a contract for hurricane clean-up services, and since the RFP didn't go out until this past April, and there was only one company that offered to fulfill it, then there was really no decision to make.  We had no choice, and we had to agree to the one applicant.  The questions from several Village residents, as to why it took two years to put out the RFP, went unanswered.  The Village manager made a couple of snide and obnoxious cracks at two Commissioners who tried to inquire further about this, but the fact was that there was really nothing to discuss, this being a Friday afternoon after business hours, and a hurricane is expected by Monday.  In fact, no questions got serious and respectful answers.  This was a patent scam, and we were at every kind of disadvantage.

No one was happy about this meeting.  Even Tracy Truppman, who scurried out during the recess, seemed very stressed.  Krishan Manners and Rebecca Rodriguez did whatever cleaning up they could find to do, but the mess remained there.  It was just further evidence of the pervasive mismanagement this Village has suffered for the past 2 1/2 years.

I left when Tracy left.  It was clear there was nothing else to discuss.  Chuck Ross still wanted to talk about the failed project known as communication between the administration and Village residents, but that never got addressed, either.

I'm trying to remember who said they might be considering running for Commission next year.  Oh, yeah, H Weitz.  Good.  He's a good guy, and if he runs, he's got my vote.

Government at its Worst

I'm what you would call a left wing person.  By that, I mean a number of things, including that I recognize the value of government, and that it acts in the public interest to do things that should be done and that the private sector won't do.

But I certainly know right wing people, and I understand why they see it differently than I do.  Of course, to support their view, they generally have to dismiss whatever government does that's of value, and focus only on the problems-- and there most certainly are problems-- created by government.  Generally speaking, right wingers blame government for being inefficient, taking money it doesn't spend in the public interest, imposing regulations and restrictions that are much more onerous than they are valuable, and functioning essentially as a force for its own purposes.  They view government as self-sustaining, and disconnected from the interests of the public, who are supposedly the constituents of the government.  I don't entirely disagree with right wingers, but I think they fail to credit government when it does good, and they exaggerate what government does bad.

We have a problem here in Biscayne Park, and we've had this problem for over 2 1/2 years.  We now have a government that has worked concertedly to disconnect itself from its constituents, marginalizing them as much as possible.  Our government has come to exist for its own purposes, which appear to rest mainly on arrogating power and control to itself, and excluding as much as possible anyone who is not part of the government, and especially anyone who criticizes the government.  Our government corrupts all the functions of public administration, in part rendering itself a weapon to punish complainers, or even people those who govern simply don't like.

Yesterday, I received an expose of our government's corruption of what is normally the Village's legal representation.  The document was long.  It was 81 pages.  There were two main offerings in this communication.  One was a list of all legal contacts between Biscayne Park residents (the vast majority from Commissioners) and administrative staff, and the Village's legal representation, and the other was a synthesis of what were interpreted as problems with the seeking of legal input, and the use of that input, and the value of that input.

There were a few interpretations of (complaints about) this bill.  There was the concern about double and triple billing (the fact that the Village has been billed for the simultaneous services of two or three attorneys, when we were told at the outset of this contract that we would be billed only for one attorney at a time).  There was also note of vague descriptions of services, like that calls and conference calls focused on "various legal matters."  There were entries like that, although they were not most common.  And of course ("the proof of the pudding...," as they say) that too often, the results of this consulting was wrong legal advice.  But for me, there were broader issues.

The most glaring revelation was the breathtaking extent of contact between Villagers (the vast majority of it was Tracy Truppman and Krishan Manners) and the Village's legal representation.  It is beyond unprecendented.  For example, it has been common for probably many years now that the Village budget includes about $75K per year for legal services.  That comes out to about $6500 per month.  Last year, our long time Village attorney stopped representing us, and we had to find someone else.  The new attorney intended to charge us about the same amount, but his charges appear to be roughly between about $5400 and $10,000 per month.  But Tracy Truppman didn't like this attorney, apparently because he disagreed with her about two legal matters, and she found someone else.  In contrast to monthly bills of $6500, or $5400-$10K (curiously, Tracy's new girls somehow charged us an additional $8000 the same month their predecessor charged us $10K), the bill for last month (July, 2019) was about $21,000.  The bill for June, 2019, was about $12,600.

And way too many of the contacts were between the lawyers and Tracy Truppman.  That doesn't happen, and it isn't supposed to happen, in a normal government that relies centrally on a manager.  It has certainly never happened before, not in Biscayne Park.  We've had professional management since 2006, and we relied on Commissioners before that.  But no one ever relied like this on such frequent (sometimes, it almost seemed constant) contact with the Village attorney.  And we never had bills like this.

It would be entirely fair to note that during the past couple of years, we have had a special legal problem, and that has been our attempt to get reimbursement from FEMA for the costs of clean-up after hurricane Irma.  And we can set aside whether or not we would have had this problem, if Tracy Truppman had not single-handedly commandeered the project, and botched it.  The fact is, we needed extra legal help, and that fact is reflected in the bills.  But that's not what the entries say were the topics of consultation.  In fact, apart from the glaring problem of massive legal billing, the other glaring problem is that no one knows what were the topics of consultation.  Even to the extent that they are often enough summarized, in terms of subject, neither Tracy, Krishan, nor the attorney ever presented to the Village a discussion of what information and insights were sought, and what was learned.  For this much money, yeah, I want to know.

Take, for example, a succession of entries on June 4 and 5 of this year, and starting on the 3rd, and bleeding over into the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th.  There are 47 separate entries for this one week.  The attorney for all but seven of these entries was Rebecca Rodriguez, who is supposed to be our lead attorney.  Entries represented as little as 1/10 of an hour, and as much as 4.1 hours.  And that 4.1 hour entry is interesting.  It occurred on June 4, and it was the entry for being present at the regular Commission meeting.  No one could argue with that, unless they wanted to argue with a 4.1 hour Commission meeting at which typically nothing of substance gets accomplished.  But let's assume we're not arguing about that.  What's odd is that that same day, there were 1.7 hours spent on "Several communications with [unspecified] outside counsel" regarding a few matters, 0.3 hours paying "attention to proposed agenda items," a half hour "telephone conference [with?]" regarding another agenda item, and 3.9 hours for "continued preparation for June regular Commission meeting."  That's 10.5 hours in one day, and at least nine of them were all about one Commission meeting.  At $225 per hour, that's at least $2025 spent on one day for one meeting.  And the lead-up to this meeting, on June 3, included entries like 3.1 hours spent in "in-person meeting with Village Mayor regarding various pending Village legal matters and preparation for upcoming Village proceedings."  What "upcoming Village proceedings?"  The meeting the next day, for which another 9-10.5 hours would be billed?  And then, there was the debriefing for this meeting, which consumed up to another 4.6 hours the day after the meeting.  The largest entry on June 5 was 2.2 hours with an attorney other than Rebecca Rodriguez, and which was a "telephone conference with Mayor Truppman regarding Commission meeting recap" and a few other topics.

Entries from June 6 were interesting for a few reasons.  One was that they seem only part of the ongoing pattern of seemingly continuous consultation between people in BP and the firm who are supposed to be the Village's (not Tracy Truppman's) attorneys.  Another was a "call with Police Chief regarding various ongoing Village legal matters."  Really?  The Police Chief doesn't discuss these matters with the Manager, who then calls the Village attorney?  And then, there's the matter of the ongoing battle the current Commission is waging against Biscayne Park residents.  2.1 hours were spent by Rebecca Rodriguez doing "Research and drafting of request to Attorney General's office for advisory legal opinion as to Commission authority for taking a vote of no confidence to initiate removal of current mayor; e-mails to/from Vice Mayor D. Samaria regarding same."  This is not the only example of Tracy Truppman's using what is supposed to be the Village's attorney for her own protection.  And they're not all about Dan Samaria, either.  Tracy has identified her enemies, and the attorneys know who they are.  And they work, on our nickel, to protect Tracy from...us.

The bill for April, by the way, was about $14K, and the bill for March was about $15.5K.  But the April bill also included extra charges for the FEMA appeal, so the total really came to about $23.3K for that month.

As I said, it's a long document, and I could go on about it, citing example after example.  But that wasn't my point.  My point was that if we think of the complaints right wingers have of government, and if we imagine a government that is a caricature of what right wingers don't like-- the worst nightmare any right winger could have of government; a nightmare so bad that even left wingers would be aghast at it-- that is what now sits at the Biscayne Park Commission desk.  And it sits at the center of that desk, in the mayor's seat.  We have a government that does absolutely nothing in the public interest, that squanders what for this municipality is a scarce fiscal resource, that is insular, and acts only in its own interest, and that uses its power to attack the populace, which the government sees as its enemy.  This is the populace that had enough confidence in this government to elect it, and that pays these people.  And this is what we get.

Barbara Kuhl and I Have an Idea.

Barbara and I were talking this morning about my new solar panels.  (Can I call this electric power-generating arrangement my solar system?)  I pointed out how remarkably money-saving Andrew Olis said was the solar system on the next block, and my July 20-August 20 FPL bill that I got by e-mail this morning very strongly suggests that my solar system, too, will be very money-saving.  I lowered my 7/20 to 8/20 bill about $34 from last year to this year, and I only had the panels for the last week of this past month.  On the other hand, my 6/20 to 7/20 bill this year was about $40 lower than last year, and I don't know why.  So I'm really waiting for the 8/20 to 9/20 bill to come next month.

Anyway, Barbara pointed out the obvious, which has been mentioned before, and which is that the Village should have its own solar system.  The two most obvious municipal structures, because they have good-size roofs, and not much, or any, tree cover, are the recreation building and the administration building.  The Village could save a ton of money with extensive systems on those two buildings.

But solar panel systems aren't free.  They're not even cheap.  Although...I was just reminded recently that I will get a 30% tax credit (not a deduction, where an amount of money is subtracted from my taxable income, but a credit, where an amount of money is subtracted from the tax I would otherwise have to pay) for what I spent for my solar system.  So I might even have to reconsider my statement that solar panel systems aren't cheap.  Maybe they sort of are, considering that they wind up not costing that much, after the tax credit is factored in, and they very considerably lower the electric bill.  But of course, the question still remained: where would the Village get the money for solar panels?

Barbara suggested that we already have a small surplus, and maybe that would help.  David Hernandez came along while Barbara and I were talking, and he, too, wondered where a few dollars could be scared up.  But I was thinking about something else.

I assume (desperately hope) you know the Arlo Guthrie song, "Alice's Restaurant."  If you don't know it, and you don't have youtube (which of course you do), you're welcome to come over any time, as often as you like, and I'll play it for you.  It is one of the greatest songs ever written.  But don't be in a hurry, because it's 18 minutes long.  I have this song in two places.  One is an Arlo Guthrie CD.  The other is on a casette tape I got for supporting one of the public radio stations (I no longer remember whether it was the one in Miami, or one of the two in Boston).  Arlo Guthrie was in town giving an interview, and he played his famous song.  But in the public radio studio version, he added a joke.  He was talking way back then about the Nixon tapes, and the fact that something had been erased.  He said the erasure had removed 18 minutes of something, and he took the liberty to wonder what Nixon might have been listening to, that accounted for 18 minutes, and that he didn't want anyone else to know about.  It was a very good joke.

But here's the thing.  My little solar system happened to cost $18K.  It will be 30% less than that when I get my tax credit on my 2019 taxes.  Do you have any idea what we are currently and highly atypically spending for Tracy Truppman to get constant legal attention from her girl, Rebecca Rodriguez, and Rebecca's lawyer girlfriends?  You wouldn't guess around $18K, per month, would you?  Our normal legal expense, when we have normal Commissioners, is about $7K per month.

Let me know if you want to come by to listen to "Alice's Restaurant."  And let me know if you want to hear the regular studio version on CD, or you want me to try to locate the casette tape with the funny joke about the lost 18 minutes.

Cool! I'm Solar!

The final completion of my project was this week, on Monday, although it started late last year.

I went to a meeting of the local solar power cooperative a couple of years ago, and it all seemed like a good idea.  But I sort of wasn't ready enough, and I didn't feel like spending the money, so I just waited.  Last year, I saw a sign for Goldin Solar in the yard of Mike and Melanie Oliva.  I think I bumped into Mike not long after, and we talked about his project.  He was very pleased.  So, I called Goldin, got my consultation (sales pitch), and decided to go ahead.  I chose, over the conflicting advice of Goldin, to get some panels in front of my house (the north-facing roof, which gets most of the direct sunlight in the summer, when I most need the power), and most of them on the south- and east-facing parts of the roof.  The Goldin people say that in the northern hemisphere, the sun is south of us more hours of the year than it is north of us, so panels in this hemisphere should all and always be south-facing.  I get it, but my reasoning was different.  Also, they say that during the winter, even though I don't need as much power, I'll be collecting more hours of the day with south-facing panels, and FPL will pay me for the power I put into the grid.  True, but they pay less for electric power than they charge for it, so if I can get it directly when I need it, it helps me more financially by reducing my summer bills, than if I just remember I banked something in the winter.

Anyway, we eventually began, or tried to begin, my project.  And there were delays.  Some of them were caused by Goldin Solar, which had some turnover in project managers, and some were caused by our dear Village of Biscayne Park, which has a Commission and administration that wreaks whatever vengeance it finds available on people who criticize the current Commission.  These acts of vengeance can take the form of something like forgetting to put my variance application on the Commission agenda.  But I eventually got through all that.  I was assigned a new project manager, who was in satisfactorily close touch, and the Commission made the mistake of relying on an attorney-- soon dispatched-- who said the Village could not stop me from having north/street-facing panels.

Eventually, the brackets that attach to the roof, and that hold the solar panels, were installed, then inspected, and after that, the panels were installed.  They were eventually inspected, too.  The final act was for FPL to change my meter to one that reads both usage and production(!), and then for Goldin to flick the switch.  I think all that happened on Tuesday.  (Today is Friday.)

Ta-Da!  My "dashboard" says I got about 25kWh of solar power on Wednesday, and about 29kWh on Thursday.  My usage was about 30kWh on Wednesday, and about 36kWh on Thursday.  And keep in mind that I collect solar power only during daylight hours, but I use electricity all day and all night (especially AC).  So, when I'm collecting, I'm collecting more than I'm using.  My FPL chart shows that surplus during those middle of the day hours.  I'm feeding the grid then.  Obviously, I'm very eager to see what my next bill will look like compared to the same month last year.

In today's mail, I got a very nice hand-written "thank you" card from the Goldin Solar project manager.  You're doing the right thing...smaller carbon footprint...we'll monitor your system periodically...we hope you'll be pleased...blah, blah, blah.  Very nice.  For what it's worth, my project manager ended up being Yesenia Adams.  Very nice woman.

At the end of the thank you note was a little kicker for me.  "We have a promotional program available to customers in which we offer a commission for any referrals that materialize into a contract."  I did mention the Olivas when I called Goldin Solar, so maybe they got a commission.  But here's the thing.  I don't know what the commission is, and I'm not in this for that.  So, if you contact Goldin Solar, and you decide to get solar panels, you and I will tell them to apply my commission to your bill.  It depends entirely on how many panels you want, but I'll tell you that I got 20 panels, and my project cost me about $18K.  It wasn't cheap.  But I already agreed to it, I already paid it, and I don't expect the price of what I already did to go down.  I paid $18K, and if no one I know gets panels from Goldin Solar, I will always have paid $18K.  So, if there's a discount available, you should get the discount.  I'll tell Yesenia Adams to see to it.

"Why's Everybody Always Pickin' on Me?"

For me, it started with Krishan Manners.  I had heard that the WiFi in the log cabin and recreation center has been disabled by the Village.  So I asked Krishan about this.  He explained that it was a "security" measure.  It seems, according to Krishan, that some people have been going around to various municipalities, somehow signing onto WiFi networks, and introducing viruses, and making other mischief.  No, it hasn't allegedly happened here, but our Village administration has had to take steps.  I suggested that Krishan tell me the now secured password (the other password for guests was secure, too), and I'll sign myself in, and I'll never tell anyone the password.  No, Krishan said, this wouldn't be secure enough, either.  "They" could get in through my phone.  I'm not a techie, but I asked my friend, Chuck Ross, about it, and it didn't make sense to him, either.  He said there could be a private network, to which none of us (except everyone who works for the Village) would have access, and a more open guest network, to which people would still need passwords.  And this would be good enough.  Krishan told me I was "out of line" to complain, and to interpret this as just another in the lengthening line of measures the Village and its Commission have been taking to shut down and shut out non-Commissioner residents.  I suggested that Krishan and attorney Rebecca Rodriguez, who was listening intently, were both accomplices, and stooges of Tracy "Big Mama" Truppman.  Krishan disagreed.  He also chastised me, saying he had always been respectful of me.  I told him that in return, I was the last person he finally found a way to alienate.  I stuck by him as long as I could.

Then, the meeting started.  Dan Samaria wanted to delete the second reading of the budget Ordinance, because important information was missing.  Jenny Johnson-Sardella said it would be a bad idea to delay, because we could simply continue the discussion once the information was available, and Big Mama agreed.  It was later in the meeting that Jenny wanted to delay discussion of something else, because we didn't have the full information about it.  Under the new regime, where non-Commissioner Village residents are boxed out as much as possible, it was not possible to ask Jenny when a discussion should happen, regardless of missing information, and when it should be delayed, because of missing information.

Ah, public comment.  Suffice it to say that everyone who commented was disgusted in one way or another.  I have no idea why Big Mama takes notes of the comments, since she ignores them, and the unhappy neighbors who make them, anyway.  Maybe it's her way of keeping herself awake.  If that's what it is, it would be better if she didn't take notes.

Big Mama and her Will Tudor are into lofty ambitions.  They want to address areas of perceived vulnerability, like "risk management," and Will's later goal, enthusiastically shared by Big Mama, to address the imperfections and "voids," as Big Mama called them, in our Charter.  After over 2 1/2 years, they have still failed to finish a driveway and swale Ordinance, or actually accomplish anything else, but they're looking at a much bigger picture than that.

Dan Samaria got his best opportunity to date to address the mysteriously cancelled meeting of March 5.  This was the aborted meeting where Dan and Will, and Jenny told us in April that she was included, too, were told there would be no meeting, because there wasn't a quorum.  Except the three of them were a quorum, but no one revealed that to them.  Well, Dan just had the hardest time formulating the essential questions: 1) who was Jenny's unnamed person who told her the meeting was cancelled, and 2) why did that person tell the three of them something that wasn't true.  But Dan stuck with it, and he stumbled around long enough to get the questions out.  1) Jenny couldn't bring herself to name the actual name, but she said that the only person who gives her information about things like that is the manager.  So, that was the answer.  It was Krishan Manners who lied to her, and to Dan and Will.  It was at least as hard work for Dan to put together the other question: 2) Krishan claimed that there is an investigation going on about this matter (that's true; there is), and he therefore would not be able to reveal why he told three people something that wasn't true.  And that was as far as we got.

During public comment, Mac Kennedy made an exquisitely cryptic reference to someone who has applied to be on a Board, but who should really be closely investigated through public records, including court records!  He said he couldn't name names, because his partner, Dan Schneiger, really didn't want him being so explicitly outspoken.  Mac suggested Commissioners investigate carefully before they place a potentially highly problematic person on a Board.  Who knows if Jenny Johnson-Sardella had any idea what Mac was talking about.  But she decided approving new Board members might be premature, under the circumstances of Mac's non-revelation.  Big Mama, though, reassured her girl, Jenny, that she, Big Mama, had certainly done all the homework she needed to do, and she had no further questions.  There was nothing more she needed to know.  She was ready to vote.  But J-J-J-Jenny and the Boys got cold enough feet to agree to defer this matter to the next Commission meeting.  In the meantime, Mac told me he would send all the Commissioners e-mails that would reveal what he thought they needed to know.  Well, what all of them except Big Mama needed to know.  Big Mama doesn't need to know anything.

One of the complaints made and repeated in public comment was about our current legal advisors.  Specifically, people complained about the exorbitant fees charged by our new team, and about the almost uniformly wrong advice we've been getting from Big Mama's new girl, Rebecca Rodriguez.  There were suggestions that Rebecca was incompetent, that we were overpaying, and that we should get new counsel.  Eventually, it got to be Rebecca's turn to defend herself.  But even before she did, it was frankly noteworthy how little reaction Rebecca produced, in the face of being accused and demeaned as she was.  Anyone who expected her to flinch, or to be uncomfortable in her chair, or to cry, or to leave the room in embarrassment, was disappointed.  And Rebecca's defense was to ignore most of the complaint (most especially the part about all the wrong advice, that was specifically cited by those complaining), and to resummarize her resume.  One entry she thought was worth our attention was her inclusion in some group of Florida lawyers.  She presented this as evidence of her having been noted as a lawyer of credit and accomplishment.  It turns out that the group of which Rebecca was a part had about 50 lawyers in it, and being included in a group like that is about as impressive as someone in banking or finance having the title "vice president."  They all do.  The janitor is the Vice President of Environmental Maintenance.  But the skew for the Village, and for the neighbors complaining, was that they think Rebecca is hired to be the Village attorney.   She's not.  She's hired to run interference and offer protection for Big Mama.  And she reacted as if she felt unfairly picked on.

Big Mama, too, complained about being picked on.  She accused Dan Samaria of picking on her, and falsely accusing her of various things.  She accused me, and Chuck Ross, of the same thing.  She seemed to think it was all so unfair, and unjust, and distinctly undeserved.  Big Mama hasn't done anything wrong, and nothing of which she's been accused.  We know that, because she told us so.

And to show what a dutiful person she is, she agreed that the Commission should more closely examine things like the exorbitant legal bills she's created.  Her first gambit, last month, was just to ask for more money to give her Rebecca.  But this month, under heavy pressure from her neighbors, she admitted maybe the Commission should look harder at the expenses.  Although it's unclear there's anything to find, since every area of expenditure was explained away.  In fact, Big Mama's Rebecca girl said, she has comped the Village some legal time.  She just decided that the bill was so high--she's paying close attention, and she's compassionate, that one--that she would just go without charging us for some things.  And sure enough, when the bill was closely examined, there were 185 hours of legal time, and Rebecca didn't charge us for three of them.  I hope anyone who complained, about Rebecca or about Big Mama, feels suitably humbled by the generosity of this gesture.

And that's how we spent over four hours.  Which accomplished nothing.  But which will appear on Rebecca's next bill.