Tracy of the Parc.

Yes, of course I know how to spell Park.  I'm trying to make a point here.  I'm setting this up so you'll think of Jeanne D'Arc, or Joan of Arc.

Erik Bojnansky wrote an article about little old us, and it's in the current (April, 2020) number of the Biscayne Times.  We don't seem to make it into the BT unless it's to get roughed up about something, and this article is not much of an exception.  I'll say this, though: Bojnansky is a very good writer (but then, so was Gaspar Gonzalez, so maybe that doesn't do us any good), and apart from a few factual errors, at least he told the important parts of the story well.

Of course the whole police/Ray Atesiano thing has to get dredged up.  What's a BP story about anything without a rehash of that?  But then, Bojnansky gets into his real material: the Commission.  He, or the BT's publisher, entitled this tale "Punch, Counterpunch: Tiny Biscayne Park's Brawl May Be Over, But Now Comes the Bill."  And most of this write-up was about that.  You know, Tracy, the bobbleheads, Krishan, Rebecca Rodriguez, improperly canceled meetings, Dan Samaria, that material.

But here's what I found interesting.  And I'm not going into Tracy's suggestion that she might sue the Village (although Bojnansky doesn't say for what, and Tracy refused to respond to his attempts at outreach), and Dan's current suit against the Village, which he somehow constructs as not really against "the Village."  One thing I found intriguing was a quote from Krishan, in which he declares that the new new Commission (the one that includes Mac Kennedy, Ginny O'Halpin, and Roxy Ross; you know, the Commission that fired him) are "abusing [their] power," and that their management of the Village, including firing him, is what Krishan called "a political coup."  He's talking about three duly elected Commissioners (plus Dan Samaria, which makes it four) making a decision that is theirs to make, and they're doing it openly, at a proper Commission meeting, with open discussion.  If Krishan thinks that was a coup, I wonder what he thinks of the completely private and off the record, unilateral (only one person) dismissal of Sharon Ragoonan, who is said to have resigned, but reported this only privately and only to Tracy.  Fun fact: the people who are listed in Bojnansky's column as Tracy's personal attorneys-- hmm, I wonder why she needs a staff of personal attorneys-- are Judith Gersten and her husband, Ray Irizarri.  Wait, Fred, do you mean Judith Gersten, as in the Judith Gersten Tracy placed on the Charter Review Committee to push through all her Charter fantasies?  That Judith Gersten?  Yes, that Judith Gersten.  If you don't like it, hold your nose.  And if you're worried about Tracy, and what all these lawyers are going to cost her, I have a funny feeling she's not going to get a bill from Gersten and Irizarri.  And she didn't pay Rebecca Rodriguez.  You/we did.)

It was a twisted joke that Will Tudor was quoted as having said he just objected to the unnecessary fighting between "two small groups of residents who don't like each other," and he advocated for "Commissioners who are completely independent...[and] willing to listen to both sides."  Starting when for you, Will?

It might be worth a passing mention, again, that Krishan said he instituted the action against Samaria "without the full permission of the Commission."  Yeah, that's certainly true.  It was at the direction of one Commissioner-- Tracy.  The unanswered question is why Tracy or Krishan, or Rebecca, initiated a court action against a Commissioner for not living in the Village, when he lived in the Village.  And I'm setting aside that it would not have disqualified Dan even if he hadn't at that moment lived here.  But he did.

There was also recapitulation of the alleged claim by Betsy Wise and Jenny Johnson-Sardella that they felt in some way threatened, when they told police that they didn't feel threatened, and never said they did.  Rebecca Rodriguez also said that Betsy and Jenny felt physically threatened, which either they forgot, or they refused to admit it, or it wasn't true, since they both denied it, and that both of them are "now selling their houses to move out of BP altogether."  This is an interesting "fact."  Assuming, of course...  In one way, I would say good, they did tremendous damage around here, by enabling Tracy, and we're all better off without them.  But in another way, I would say they don't have to leave.  Neither one of them had anything to do with BP before they decided they should be Commissioners, both of them kept to themselves and didn't bother anyone before, and they're welcome to stay, as long as they resume not bothering anyone.  So I'm not sure how I feel about this alleged development.

But none of that is what I mostly wanted to discuss.  I want to remember Tracy, whom we apparently might not yet be able to forget, if she's really suing us.  (How come she and Judith Gersten and Ray Irizarri don't themselves pull up stakes, and move to somewhere else?)  Bojnansky came up with some quotes from her, even though she refused to communicate with him, and it seems he got his material from what she was more willing to tell the county Ethics Commission.  Ste Tracy rode triumphantly and commandingly into office, according to her, to "'fix' a Village that had been mismanaged for years.  In response to complaints that she'd exceeded her authority under the Village Charter, she told investigators that a cabal of former elected officials and neighborhood malcontents tormented her, her allies, and Village staff at meetings and online."  (This, of course, is standard new dictator material.  I told Tracy, who demanded to be called Mayor Truppman, in public comment at a Commission meeting that the most efficient form of government is a dictatorship, but that's not what our Charter provides.  Either she disagreed with me, or that's why she wanted to change the Charter.)  She added to Ethics "Trust me when I tell you, six months from now, there will be nobody sitting on this Commission.  Because everybody has had enough, including the mayor."  She said that in October, 2019, so she was partially right.  Of course it wouldn't and couldn't be true that no one would be on the Commission, and even one of her stooges is still on the Commission, but it was true much sooner than six months that her two trustiest stooges, and she herself, were no longer on the Commission.

If you know or have read anything about Joan of Arc, you know that she was heroic.  And psychotic.  She was an effective, if unhinged, leader, until she was captured and burned at the stake.  She either took advantage of or whipped up great passion among her constituents.  And the beat goes on.