All Dressed Up, and No Place to Go.

Bob Anderson announced with special pride that he showered for the Commission meeting tonight.  Although Bob is always appropriately tarted up for these dos.  I bet he smelled nice, too.  Jeff Drayman looked nice.  So did Jared Susi.  Dan Ward was casual, but he thought he should show up, just to be sure no one was making any mischief with his tax bill.  David Raymond, sans Amy, had on his guitar tee shirt.  I liked it.  And Janey Anderson looked very nice, and so did Barbara Kuhl (Gary wasn't there), and Linda Dillon.  Ernesto Oliva was his usual dressed down self.  Dan Keys has been looking consistently sharp this past year or two.  I'd even say dapper.  Dapper Dan.  And he did tonight, too.

I don't know what was so interesting on tonight's agenda.  It was some standard nonsense, including the second reading of the magistrate Ordinance no one except Tracy Truppman wants.  And a first reading of a particularly idiotic Ordinance about establishing rules and procedures for Commission meetings.  See, here's one of the disadvantages of having a Commission composed almost completely of people who have no familiarity with how normal Commissions operate in BP.  It's true they could simply have read the Charter, but I think they think they're too unique for that.  And they clearly generally can't be bothered with the Charter anyway.  Meetings are run more or less according to standard procedure, like Robert's Rules of Order, and with adjustments made by the Mayor or the Commission.  This works perfectly well, and each Commission can have its own style.  But this Commission doesn't know anything about that, and besides, Tracy Truppman is almost single-mindedly devoted to unloading Village money on her staff of attorneys.  So she likes Ordinances, so she can pay the attorneys to do what the Village doesn't need done.

We did have one unusual guest, though.  Actually, there were two of them.  They were the county Inspector General and her assistant, and they were there to talk about the whistleblower matter.

And there was some other stuff, too.  None of it worth having on an agenda, but enough to fill time, and get the attorneys paid.  But not tonight, though.

Will Tudor had already announced he wouldn't be there.  One story was that he might have claimed he would be out of town tonight.  But two people saw him at home tonight, so it wasn't clear why he took a dive on this meeting.  Tracy Truppman was there, and so was Dan Samaria.  Who wasn't there was Jenny Johnson-Sardella.  I think we've all lost count at this point, but one person sort of tabulated that Jenny has missed five or six meetings-- Commission and workshop-- in a row!  So, with only two Commissioners in attendance, there was no quorum, and therefore no meeting.

The problem of Jenny and her apparent abdication of responsibility has come up quite a bit lately.  I wrote to her in July, to ask her to resign.  Mac Kennedy wrote to her, completely unaware that I had written to her, last month, also to ask her to resign.  And both of us, independently, cited the same two problems: she misses way too many meetings, and when she's there, she contributes nothing.  None of us could get this Commission, that is clearly on the ropes, to address the Jenny problem, the obvious solution to which is to remove her from office.  I have no reason to doubt she continues to accept the checks we send her.  She just doesn't do her job.  She doesn't even bother to show up.  And tonight, the result was a room full of people who arrived for a meeting, and an Inspector General who drove up here from Palmetto Bay for this meeting, and an attorney who will wind up charging us for whatever is her minimum fee to attend a meeting, plus whatever amount of time Tracy spent with her today before the meeting (it's so uncool to see Tracy, Krishan Manners, and the attorney all walk in together before the meeting), and all for...nothing.  Because Jenny Johnson-Sardella decided not to bother to show up again.

Chuck Ross suggested another title for this post.  He was thinking of the movie "Animal House," and the line "a new low; we're so ashamed."  Yup, that works well, too.