You Have A Decision To Make. Or You Already Made It.

One person too many mentioned it, and I got curious.  So sue me.  I wanted to see what Milt Hunter was going on...and on, and on, and on, and on...about.  So I went to his blog to read his sputterings.  There were three recent posts, which Milt presented as his synthesis -- no need to ask questions, or even contact the candidates -- as to what the two incumbents (Tudor and Kennedy) and the former Commissioner (I) were about.

I found it not possible to read Milt's whole production about Mac Kennedy.  Suffice it to say that Dr Milton Hunter has applied to Mac a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, presumably based on what he gleaned from Readers' Digest, or wherever he gets his psychiatric knowledge.  I didn't get terribly far into Milt's explication, because it was intellectually faulty from the outset, purely nasty, and WAY too long.

Next, Milt dealt with Will Tudor, of whom he mostly disapproves.  In fact, Milt approves of only two things about Tudor.  One is that he recommended the creation of two new boards, one of which Milt claims to believe has "done some [unrevealed] things for the community."  Presumably, Milt thinks the other one didn't do anything for the community, and the one Milt presumably thinks did "some things for the community" hasn't met since 2019.  The other Tudor feature of which Milt doesn't disapprove is that Tudor knows his place as a Commissioner, in that he doesn't interfere.  But this reads as just the other way of expressing Milt's otherwise complaint that Tudor doesn't do anything, illustrated, for example, by Milt's complaint that Tudor "[turned] a blind eye to Tracy Truppman when she was running roughshod over our Charter and residents."  So it's hard to figure out what Milt thinks of Tudor.  And maybe he telegraphs or summarizes it at the end by suggesting that perhaps we could do worse than Tudor, but the question is whether or not we couldn't do better.  Not a ringing endorsement, but, as Milt himself says, he wishes he had more to say, but "it is what it is."

If most of Milt's unloading was on Mac, I was his second favorite target.  He begins by calling me a "troll," by which he says he refers to the internet, and he soon enough reveals the products of his attempts to "harvest," or mine, or trawl, or troll, this blog for what he tells himself is dirt.  A lot of what Milt produces is like that.  It would take very little attention or time to read what Milt believes are the characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which he thinks characterize Mac Kennedy, and realize whom they vastly better describe.  Likewise, Milt refers to what he calls my "twisted pretzel logic."  (Yes, it's redundant, but he's probably a fan of Steely Dan.  So am I.)  And what he declares as my "comfort in lying and misrepresentations in order to prop up...ambiguous narratives."  I have said before about Milt, and it bears saying again, that he's boxing with his own shadow.  Just to take one tiny example, Milt recalls that once when I ran for Commission I "secured a last place finish, edging out Harvey Bilt by a mere six votes."  This is minor, of course, but if I had more votes than did someone else, then I didn't come in last.  But Milt is dedicated to his non-reality-based narratives, and he tells it the way he likes it told.

Milt spends time on what he apparently likes to think of as my character flaws.  Top of the list?  I don't say the pledge of allegiance.  And Milt invents his own reasons for my refusal.  (No, of course he never asked me.  That might ruin the..."narrative.")

Another story Milt seems to like to tell himself is about my imagined alliances.  He can "remember" "only" one time Roxy Ross and I did not vote in lock step.  Well, I guess it's to Milt's credit that he reveals he's relying on his memory, which I suppose he is indirectly admitting might not be complete.  Milt also tells himself that Mac Kennedy is my "BFF," and he's sure I'm in some sort of cahoots with Mac.  Milt has no way to know about how many things Mac and I disagree, and he clearly doesn't care: "Narrative."

Milt makes three other complaints about me, and I think they're important.  One is that I pushed for higher taxes.  That's just one way of looking at it, but Milt is right.  The other way to look at it is that I wanted the Village better funded, so it could accomplish more.  That perspective doesn't reduce to as captivating a sound bite, but it's actually much more accurate.  Second, Milt complains that I wanted the Village to address our drainage problem.  Milt implies, of course, that the Village doesn't really have a drainage problem, and that the wish to address it is somehow corrupt.  But Milt is right about that.  I did, and do, want the Village to address the drainage problem.  And we're beginning to see a pattern with Milt.  Anything that costs money is something Milt will resist.  The same goes for Milt's other criticism of me, although Milt had to sidestep reality to make the complaint.  He noted my ongoing argument with Dan Keys over median development.  True, I've been arguing with Dan about that for years.  I think with better medians, we have a better Village.  But Milt has constructed a false and straw argument that I ever, once, suggested the Village pay to improve the medians.  I did not.  I said that if P&P would provide a comprehensive median scheme, I suspected that Village residents who have medians in their blocks would themselves pay for the improvements. And maybe others would, too.  No, of course Milt wouldn't, but I didn't necessarily mean Milt.  I meant Village residents who care about the Village.  And about their own surroundings.

An interesting swipe Milt thinks he's taking at me is regarding what he tells himself was my failure to recognize any imperfections in the Village manager at the time I was a Commissioner, until, as Milt tells it to himself, "her misconduct slapped [me] in the face, and [I] was forced into action."  No one is perfect.  The then manager wasn't perfect, I'm not perfect, and, if I can be so sacrilegious, Milt isn't perfect.  Nothing was unknown or not recognized.  But we were a team, and we worked together.  What Milt either bizarrely fails to know, or he has somehow forgotten, was that he was the reason I lost confidence in working with the manager.  I came to believe she was unfairly picking on him, and I, as a Commissioner then, couldn't have that.  I had a long talk with Milt about this.  He told me he didn't want my help or support, and he wanted to fight with the manager by himself.  But that wasn't the deal, and it wasn't my job to back away from this.

If it's Milt's idea of decency, I appreciate it.  He quoted me.  He quoted from this blog.  Not, of course, without corrupting what I said, but at least copying the quotes correctly.  I said there were two current Commission candidates whom I could not recommend -- and I clearly gave my reasoning -- and one I strongly recommended Village residents not vote for, also for reasons I made clear.  He concluded that I was "acting as judge and jury here [and] actually having the gall to steer you how to vote."  Which I didn't do, have no way to do, and which was very precisely what Milt himself was going to a tremendous amount of trouble to do.  Just as he did when he did everything to suppress me in 2016, and bring you Tracy, Jenny, and Will.  All of whom he quickly decided were terrible Commissioners.

And Milt ends with his recommendation that I am most deserving of a padded room.  Ah, yes, always the good doctor, Milton Hunter.

The fact is, there are several things Milt said about me -- presented, of course, as indictments, and badly distorted -- with which I don't disagree.  I do want us to do a better job of funding ourselves.  I do want Village improvements, even if they cost money.  Guilty, if you will, as charged.  And even if you took some of Milt's whining and flailing at something like face value, you have a decision to make.  Do you want a better Village, or do you want someone who is mild-mannered?

"I [Don't] Gotta Be Me." I Gotta Be...Everyone.

Yesterday, the Commission candidates, except Will Tudor, to whom Mac Kennedy isn't allowed to send this, got a detailed and extensive recapitulation from Mac about Mac's conversation with a representative of Waste Management (WM), a contractor who collects and hauls waste.  WM has very many contracts in very many municipalities, probably all over the country.  Mac was talking to this representative about what the Village is looking for, or prefers, in services a solid waste contractor would deliver.

To make a long story short, WM declined to bid on the Village's needs, because the strictures were too great and too perilous for the contractor.  According to whatever Mac discussed with the WM rep, there were too many risks, mostly fiscal, and we were too small a client for them to be willing to take this level of risk on.  (Don't fuss with me about the terminal preposition.  I'm not in the mood.)

So, I wrote back to Mac, and to the other openly copied recipients of this e-mail, to say that I thought WM was right, and that it was certainly not in their interest to take this level of risk.  Certainly not with little us.  And more important, and the reason for this post, it's not in our interest to contract with a solid waste removal company, which we then jeopardize by making it either too difficult, impossible, or just not adequately profitable for them to do what we want done.  There's a big picture here, and it includes more than just us.  As I put it to Mac, in a different context, we need them at least as much as they might in theory need us.

I reviewed with Mac some of the problems we have increasingly confronted with WastePro, our current solid waste removal contractor, and how we and they colluded to set them up to experience those problems.  Which have naturally been visited on us.

In 2014, when we outsourced whatever of sanitation wasn't already outsourced, we agreed to contract with WastePro.  I'm not sure I remember exactly correctly, but I think WastePro proposed to charge us the lowest yearly fee.  And they agreed to do the whole solid waste removal task, including the part that was already outsourced to MSV.  They offered to do it in 2-3 days per week, instead of the five days per week we then had someone's (ours or MSV's) trucks on the road.  They agreed to do it by hand, instead of using the state-of-the-art automated container lifters.  Because some of us didn't want automated container lifters.  Because...?  They agreed to go to side yards of BP residents who simply didn't want to bring out their own containers, and they would bring those containers out to the truck to empty them, and return them to the side yards.  And put the lids back on, nice and tidy.

Well, we didn't look out for WastePro, and they didn't look out for themselves.  They agreed to what was impossible, and over time, they have been increasingly, and increasingly conspicuously, unable to do what we asked them to do, and what they carelessly agreed to do.

We outsourced sanitation, and agreed to hire WastePro, in about the spring of 2014.  I was on the Commission then.  It was before the end of my term, at the end of 2016, that some Village residents were already complaining about garbage, etc, not being picked up at the right time.  First, it was complaints that the pick-ups were extending too late in the day.  Then, it was pick-ups that weren't even occurring on the originally agreed-upon day.  And already, even when I was still on the Commission, I suggested to WastePro that they had made an agreement they couldn't keep, and that they should perhaps add a day, and/or more trucks.  It was more important that the garbage get picked up on the day Village residents expected this to happen than that we name that tune in two or three notes.  WastePro couldn't do it all, and we couldn't have it all.  And for a rock bottom price.

The problem, as I wrote to Mac, was that each part of this dynamic looked out only for itself, and did not apply perspective to realize what this would mean to the larger dynamic.  And it's necessary to do that, if anyone expects a system to work adaptively, and be able to sustain itself.  We didn't know we were asking too much of WastePro.  They're...Pros.  They should have known.  But we found out, and so did they.  And if it was still unclear, WM reminded us that asking for a lowball price, with no built-in CPI, non-automated collection, and other -- I'm sorry to say -- immature foolishness was not doable.  No, they wouldn't even bother to bid on our job.  They didn't need to waste their own time talking to us about champagne tastes and beer budgets.  We had to function as part of a much broader system than just ourselves, and WM concluded we were not, apparently, willing to do it.

Which raises questions about the contractors, which still and again includes WastePro, that are willing to bid for the VBP contract.  We were kidding ourselves.  Are they kidding themselves, too?  If we don't want to continue to complain and be unhappy, we're going to have to look at this much more broadly, and fairly, than we did in 2014.

We are VBP.  But we also have to be, or at least very clearly understand, all the other parts of the system.  We need to speak their language.

We have been at a huge disadvantage since the end of 2016.  We have had a grossly dysfunctional government/Commission, and no (competent) management.  It's possible all of that changes next week.  I hope so.  But what's most important is that we expand our focus from just ourselves (our personal selves, and our little Village selves) to all of the other interconnected parts.  They are interconnected.  And like it or not, we depend on them.  That becomes much clearer to us when something doesn't function right, and it fails us, and we find ourselves complaining and unhappy.

One of My Friends Thinks My Comment Was "Well Said."

Last night (Wednesday), there was a Commission meeting.  It was a "special" meeting (you know how some children are referred to as "special," especially in the context of school?), and there were only two items on the agenda.  Neither of them required much of any discussion.  Which I suppose explains why the meeting only lasted about 2 1/2 hours.

It's entirely fair to say I am disgusted, or perhaps beyond disgusted, with the majority of the current Commission.  They don't want anything, and they don't do anything.  Ginny smiles, is a version of adorable, and contributes nothing.  Dan is in some orbit no one can track.  And Will Tudor fumfers.  (I know I use that word a lot about Will, but it is truly all he does.  Tune in to the past meetings, and watch him.  He sits quietly under his headset, and when he gets called on, and asked if he has anything to add, he first says "no," and then he fumfers for a while.  The "content" of the fumfering is stock phrases, or pieces of them, almost always reiterating things someone else has just said, and he adds absolutely nothing to the discussion.  Check him out.)

To be even more fair, there's the minority of the Commission.  Roxy Ross, "bless her heart," goes on about vitally important things that don't make any difference, because the majority ignore her, and in that context, she wastes time.  And it was her last real meeting anyway.  She'd do better to shrug her shoulders, say "naw, I got nothin,'" or "what difference does it make?  you people are going to do whatever you want anyway," and not waste her time or anyone else's.  And I'm not complaining about Roxy, or sniping at her.  Roxy Ross is one of the best friends I have ever had.  I treasure her.  I just don't like her spitting into the wind, or giving people what they don't deserve, or using up time for what unfortunately turns out to be nothing.

And there's Mac Kennedy, whose verbal productions account for a whole meeting's worth of content in themselves.  Mac talks WAY too much.  I've told him that repeatedly.  And it's not that what he says isn't worth saying, or even very important.  Much of it is.  It's just unmodulated.  And it seems self-serving in the sense that it often has a sizable component of reminding everyone else what a terrific and devoted and thoughtful Commissioner Mac is.  Which he absolutely is.  Mac is in most senses a wonderful Commissioner.  He represents very special value to the Village.  Here's what I told Mac several weeks ago, in an unrelated conversation.  If I arrived at the poll to vote on November 3, and I got there just as the poll was closing, and I was the last voter, and the poll worker said that all the votes (except mine) were in and counted, and it was already known that Art Gonzalez came in first, and Judi Hamelburg came in second, and Mac and I were tied -- dead even -- for third, and whoever I voted for would win, I'd vote for Mac.  He's great.  But he simply does not (can not?) rein himself in.  And he should.  He should have a talk with John Hornbuckle, who might be able to help Mac understand that all you have to do is figure out the issue, and decide where you stand on it, so you can vote.  No one needs the whole, seemingly endless, speech, where you demonstrate how smart you are, how much you care, and how there's no detail you haven't thought of.  I already know this about Mac.  That's why I'd vote for him over myself.  It's why I voted for him -- and Art -- already (and I checked the website, and I know my vote has been counted).

Anyway...  Public comment.  This meeting was only going to be pathetic anyway.  There were no other options.  The agenda contained something about the manager search, and something about WastePro.  The thing about WastePro, just to show you how bad things have gotten, is that the majority of this Commission, and the interim so-called manager, have still done absolutely nothing, and last night's proposal was to extend the contract yet again, this time until June.  As for the manager search, and again for a frame of reference, we had 28 applicants.  A special committee of non-Commissioner BP residents chose its 10 favorites.  Of those 10, five have already found other jobs, or withdrawn.  Because the majority of this Commission is inert.  It is paralyzed.  I didn't hook it up to an EEG, so I'm not sure if it's brain dead.  But it might be.  Nothing happens, unless it happens on its own, or a can gets kicked further down the road.  They can't.  They won't.  They don't want to.  They don't care.  They don't know how.  Whatever it is, they just don't do anything, because they don't want anything.  And maybe not wanting anything is either a cover or a consequence of having not the slightest idea what to do or how to do it.

So I pointed all of that out to them, and I suggested they just adjourn last night's meeting, don't even pretend, and let the next Commission, as soon as next week, consider these matters.  If the next Commission tragically includes Will Tudor, then we're dead anyway.  If it includes Judi Hamelburg, or William Abreu (I know, you forgot about him, right?), we're probably still dead.  But there's a chance we can rise from the ashes of the past four years.  So here's hoping.  In any event, nothing was going to happen last night.  Nothing could have happened.  Not with these three.  And I added that Will Tudor should withdraw his candidacy now, and Ginny and Dan should resign now.  We really do need to function, and it's not going to happen with those three.  It probably won't happen with Ginny, Dan, and Judi, either.  And after I made my comment, I walked away from my mobile phone, and the Zoom meeting.  What was the point in staying, and listening?  When I came back, maybe an hour or an hour and a half later, the predictable was happening.  I missed the bit about the manager, so I don't know what they did about that.  Whatever it was, it had no way to be adaptive or purposeful.  They were going on, endlessly, about WastePro.  They discussed matters like agreeing that WastePro garbage trucks should be equipped with brooms, to sweep up crumbs left in the street.  This is the kind of matter that got Commission attention.

And I discovered the text message from one of my friends, who had also been part of the Zoom audience.  

I should add here that Tudor never has anything to say.  He never has had.  I've said before, and I'll say again, that by his emptiness, and willingness to go along with anything, he has enabled every bad thing that has happened to the Village since the end of 2016.  He agreed to all of Tracy's insanity.  He never challenged any of it.  He was fine with Krishan.  He was the only current Commissioner who didn't want to see him go.  And once Krishan was replaced by David Hernandez, who was actually much, much worse, Tudor had no complaints about David.  Tudor signed on to Roseann.  Yesterday, I got an e-mail from Roseann.  It was sent to all the Commission candidates.  It was about how large campaign signs can be, and how close to the street they can be placed.  Now, two months after the campaign started, and a few days before the election.  Now, Roseann wants to send out e-mails about campaign signs.  What Roseann can't be bothered to send e-mails about is candidate financial reports that are due at various intervals.  I hear about those from...Mac Kennedy.  This is nuts.

The only other "funny" thing about Tudor is his alleged "research" into the "numbers" involved in reviving our own sanitation program.  That came up, again, last night.  I'm not going to say the word fumfering again, because I think if I do, you'll explode.  (When I was campaigning door-to-door, one of our neighbors, a Tudor devotee, said Tudor is a "numbers guy."  Yeah?  As evidenced by what?)  Waiting for Tudor and his researches about an in-house sanitation program is like waiting for Trump and his health care plan.  No one should hold their breath.

Oh, Really?

One of my friends asked me today if I read Milt Hunter's blog.  No, I do not.  I have no idea what Milt goes on about.

My friend then started to tell me that Milt's current spouting has something to do with me and Mac Kennedy...and I cut my friend off.  I'm genuinely, seriously, and passionately not interested in whatever is on Milt's mind.

Milt says whatever he wants to say.  Part of this is that he thinks of himself in a certain way.  But the fact is that what Milt says is not necessarily true.  And in the past, when I have found Milt saying what is not true, and I have tried to enter a comment on his blog, correcting the untrue things he says, he blocks the comment.

Also, it was Milt who worked hard, and successfully, to bring us Tracy/Jenny/Will, about whom he very quickly started to complain bitterly.

I don't know what Milt wants.  I don't know if he knows.  But whatever it is, it is not in the best interests of Biscayne Park.  And that's the only thing that's of interest to me.

Moving On: The Commissions from Hell.

I just got a call from Mac Kennedy.  Mac called to tell me two things.

First, the next candidate financial report is due tomorrow.  It's still a complete puzzle to me why I'm hearing about this from an opponent instead of "the old-fashioned way:" from the Village clerk.  I suppose if we had a competent and interested Village clerk...oh, never mind.  This is a pipe dream by now.  Because the second thing Mac called to tell me is...

Yet another -- the third in a week, Mac says -- highly regarded manager candidate has accepted a job elsewhere.  This commission, and the last one, and the one before that (all starting in 2016) have saddled us with one awful manager after another, and none of the commissions wanted better.  None of them wanted, or cared about, Village functioning.  I don't know what any of them did want. As far as I can tell, it's nothing.  $2000 a year, or $4000 a year for one of them, is a satisfying end in itself?  Or is the sense of power a rush to them?  We can do SO much better.  We used to do so much better.

So, very possibly, we will now have to redo the search for a manager.  Or find out who's left, take another look, and fall in love with candidates who didn't ring our bells the first time around.  Frankly, it's sickening to watch this happen.

I get it, I get it: none of them had any idea what to do, or how to form a vision for the Village, or any sense of ambition for us.  I won't bother to ask why any of them ran for commission.  But when you're at that level of disadvantage, and disinterest, the least you can do is listen to someone who knows better than you do, and does have a vision, a sense of where things should go, and how they should get there.  What a relief it could have been, and should have been, to be able to follow Roxy Ross' lead.  And Mac Kennedy, who calls himself a "newbie," gets it.  Since he came on board, with Roxy, in January, they could have listened to him.  But no, that wasn't allowed to happen.  Just inertia and erosion.  That's what we've had for about four years now.  It's as relentless as it is mindless.

Please, if you haven't voted yet, VOTE!  Please put Will Tudor out of our misery.  Unless you hate the Village of Biscayne Park, and you want to see it get more completely destroyed.  And if that's how you feel about the Village, why do you live here?  Are you masochistic?

Meet the Candidates Event

This is it.

Enter any questions by pressing the orange comment button at the bottom of this post (or you can accomplish the same thing by clicking on the orange title of this post).

Address your question to any particular candidate or a few of them, or just ask the question of all of us.

For the candidates, the way to reply, or respond to the question, is to click the "reply" option just under the question.

Again, candidates, you're going to want to give a relatively complete answer, but please be more or less concise.  There are no limits, so we have to limit ourselves.  We will do this out of courtesy for our neighbors and for each other.  If anyone wants more discussion, s/he will ask for it.

In my opinion, the questions can be personal, but there is no need for them to be nasty or accusatory.  There's no "gotcha" here.  Voters have to compare candidates, so they should leave room, and motivation, for as many candidates as possible, and as are interested, to respond to each question.

Meet the Candidates

 I'm kicking myself for not having thought of this a few weeks ago.  But those few weeks are gone.

As you know, we have always had Meet the Candidates events before elections.  That is, until after 2016, with the exception being the special election at the end of 2019.  Someone (it seems to me that in recent years, it's been Linda Dillon, and maybe other people) puts together the idea, goes about some process of deciding what questions to ask, asks the Commission to waive the fee for use of a large public space (recreation building or log cabin), and asks Drew Dillworth to be the moderator.  These events are orderly, and they provide a forum for whoever is the interested public to see how candidates answer questions.  For the record, the set-up, for as long as I've witnessed it, is that each candidate answers the same question, there are time limits, and there is no follow-up.

This year, probably for coronavirus reasons, no one organized a Meet the Candidates event.

Because I associate this event with Linda Dillon, I reached out to Linda, to ask her if she would organize such an event.  She told me that one of the candidates is a good friend of hers, and so she would not organize the event.  I didn't bother to press Linda on how there can be any connection between having the event and preferring one of the candidates.  Linda said no, and I took no for an answer.

During my very brief stint on Nextdoor, I happened to encounter a comment from Barbara Kuhl, in which Barbara bemoaned the absence of a Meet the Candidates event this year.  So I wrote to Barbara to ask her to organize one.  And I said I would do anything I could to help, if she needed or wanted my help.  Barbara did not respond to my e-mail.

I then (in the past day) had the idea to use this blog to have a written Meet the Candidates event.  I imagined reaching out to the five candidates other than myself, to ask them to participate, and I was going to try to figure out what questions to ask us.  I figured I would ask us about the millage, the complaint about meetings, WastePro/sanitation, 6th Avenue, and anything else I could think of that seemed like a standard community matter question.

I was reluctant to do this myself, because I didn't want it to seem as if I had rigged it in any way, so I called Mac Kennedy, to see if he wanted to help me try to get engagement from the other candidates, and come up with questions.  Mac thought that his doing this with me would be as bad as my doing it myself, and Mac had a very interesting idea.

Mac's idea was that none of the candidates participate in posing questions -- as normally none of them do -- but that I announce an empty forum, and let the composition of questions come from the public.  Mac's concept was that this would be set up like a town hall presentation, that anyone who has a question ask it, and that any candidates who want to offer an answer go for it.  And this may be the best idea there is left at this very late hour, when increasing numbers of Village residents have already voted by mail, and it takes time -- at least a couple of days -- for Village residents to pose questions, and candidates to answer them.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems we have this year, which is the same problem we had in 2016, 2017 (special election, no Meet the Candidates event), and 2018 (no Meet the Candidates event) is that painfully few candidates formulate and communicate a vision or an agenda, and they are not forced to do it here, either.  So in many respects, voters are still voting blind.  And it's too late to do anything about that.  If an idea like this one had been hatched a few weeks or so ago, someone could have set up a Zoom Meet the Candidates event, and we could have cured our deficiency.  But, as I say, those weeks are gone now, and this is all there is.

So, I will take care of reaching out to the five candidates other than myself.  I will give them the address for this blog, and ask them to check it often.  I will publicize this opportunity as much as I can.  You can begin (very quickly!) to compose and enter questions.  I hope 1) you get answers, and 2) those answers are relatively concise.  Obviously, there's no time clock, and I do not feel like trying to guess how many words or lines a candidate should be limited to using to answer you.

This post is introductory.  I will wait several hours or so, and I will publish a second post called Meet the Candidates Event.  (I'll add the word Event.)  It is in the comment section of that post that you can pose your questions.

Fasten Your Seatbelts, and Get Ready for Take-off.

At the last Commission meeting, one of the agenda items was the approval of a new member of the BP Foundation.  The applicant was Rafael Ciordia.  I hadn't seen his name, nor heard from him, in quite a while, and I was very happy at this appearance.  I sent him an e-mail that was apparently more cryptic than I intended it to be: "Thank you."  He didn't know for what I was thanking him, he asked, and we reconnected.

We reconnected even more when I reminded him that I had been a member of the Foundation from its inception and for a few years or so, and he wanted background.  He wanted to know how the Foundation was started, what was its mission, and what it accomplished.  (And what it didn't.)  Rafael is a diligent gentleman, that lad.  He's hitting the ground running.

So we reviewed all I could remember.  We talked about the Foundation's approach to soliciting donations, and what projects it entertained to do with whatever money we collected.  We talked about "Food and Tunes."  (Remember that?  An oldie, a goodie, and perhaps not yet relegated only to the history books.)  We talked about projects discussed: some of more interest, and some of less interest.  We talked about the bricks the Foundation wanted to "sell," as a footpath to the log cabin.  Actually, the Foundation did sell some of those bricks.  It sold four of them to me.  But the project died at the end of 2016.  That's math you can do for yourself.

But the point is that Rafael is fully on board as a Foundation member.  I knew Jorge Marinoni is still there, and president, and I didn't know about Yesenia Gonzalez.  Marie Smith has moved away -- which is why the Foundation needed a new member, which has turned out to be Rafael.  And Rafael was less clear about the participation status of David Goehl and Kate Eaton.  If they're still both there, and fully plugged in, then the Foundation has a full complement of five members.  If one or both of them have receded, then there's room for more membership.

I hope I can be looking forward to a new term on the Commission.  But if I don't get elected, and if David Goehl and/or Kate Eaton is no longer active or adequately interested, it would be an honor for me to be back on the Foundation, working with Jorge and Yesenia.  And maybe even especially with Rafael.

It's an Interesting Question: How Many "I"s Are There in Team? You Think There Are None?

In my opinion, William Abreu, or whoever advises him, set a trap.  It was on Nextdoor.  Mac Kennedy fell into the trap, and Art Gonzalez partially avoided it.  The trap was this: William accused Mac and Art of being in league with me and with each other to form some sort of team or slate that was trying to get itself elected as a bloc to the Commission.  For the purpose of this discussion, I'm going to set aside that William was not remotely correct.  There is, however, a however.  And we'll come to that.

Mac was first to react to William's accusation.  He defended himself by making clear he doesn't campaign, and hasn't formed an alliance or any sort of cooperation agreement, with me or Art or anyone.  And that's true.  There have been formal and informal "slates" of candidates for BP Commission before, but there isn't one now.  Mac happens to be a Commissioner right now, and he has chosen to run for re-election.  In that sense, he's on his own.

Then Art responded to the bait William was dangling.  Art, too, declared his independence from any and all other candidates.  And Art was right, too.  Elsewhere, Art said that he chose to run for Commission at least in part because some Village residents -- presumably friends of his -- suggested he should.  I'm quite sure Art is right about this, because it turns out I happen to be one of those people.  Art was on the Planning and Zoning Board, and he resigned in order to run.  So he's been involved, and those of us who know him like and respect him.  But he's not beholden to anyone, and he, like Mac, has not offered himself as anything like a part of a mutually cooperative team.

It seems to me that in Mac's and Art's efforts to defend themselves from William's accusations, both of them used the word team, as in something of which they are not a part.  And on the surface of it, they're not.  Neither am I.  I have little reason to think any of the six candidates running now is part of a pre-agreed team.  There are three seats to fill, six candidates, and each of us is in some sense running against all of the other five.  The only partial exception to looking at it that way is that three of us will be elected.  Whoever gets elected defeated three people, not five people.  There's no advantage to coming in first instead of second.  There's some advantage to coming in first or second instead of third (the top two vote-getters get four year terms, and the third highest vote-getter gets a two year term).  The huge advantage is coming in first, second, or third instead of fourth, fifth, or sixth.  The last three get nothing.  They lose.

But as people analogize about chess, it's important to think numbers of moves ahead.  Suppose a candidate wins.  That new Commissioner becomes part of a group of five Commissioners.  So what happens then?  It can depend entirely on who are the other four Commissioners.  And the new Commissioner may wind up experiencing a very great stake in who are his or her Commission colleagues.

To take the very recent, and current, examples, if four Commissioners are in very tight league, and Roxy Ross is not only excluded, but demonized, then Roxy Ross will accomplish nothing.  Or, if three Commissioners are in tight league, and Roxy Ross and Mac Kennedy become the minority, then Roxy and Mac will accomplish nothing.  They'll just get persistently outvoted and trampled by what "functions" as a stable majority.  And if the majority don't happen to have any idea what they're doing, and don't want anything, let's say, then the Village will suffer.  Because Roxy, or Roxy and Mac, were not part of a functioning and functional majority.  If Roxy and Mac have a vision for the Village, and want something in the Village's interest, and Dan Samaria is still taking good and adaptive advice, then we have a vision and a competent and professional manager.  If Dan goes the other way, so to speak, as in fact he unexpectedly did, and stops taking good and adaptive advice, and allies himself with Ginny O'Halpin and Will Tudor, then we have no vision, no competent management, and nothing gets done.  We do things like extending, at a higher cost, a WastePro contract that very few people, if anyone, wants any more, because Roxy and Mac are part of a minority.  Because Will Tudor never cared, and never wanted anything, and Ginny O'Halpin also doesn't care or want anything, and Dan has joined them.

To give you one other angle of what this looks like, some bcc'ed group of us recently received from Commissioner and candidate-for-re-election Mac Kennedy a supposedly encouraging statement of what Mac has "accomplished."  Mac's version of accomplishments, as his e-mail stated, is how many items he has gotten sponsored on recent Commission meeting agendas.  The problem becomes that few of those agenda items have been adopted.  Because Mac is part of a minority.  It's a very different Commission, and a very different Village, if Mac is part of a majority.  Or, to put it a slightly different way, if Mac is surrounded and supported by a majority.  Will Tudor wasn't going to change after 3 1/2 years of mind-numbing, while simultaneously infuriating, disinterest and inertia.  But if Ginny and/or Dan had turned out to be functional, instead of what they are, the last 10 months would have been very, very different from what they were.  Of course, none of that was Mac's call.  Not then.

So today, Mac, and Art, will say with fierce pride that they are independent.  They are not in league with anyone, there are no pre-arranged agendas, and they don't have cooperation agreements with each other, or with me, or with anyone.  On the surface, they're absolutely right.  And generally, they should be right about that.  We've all seen way too much of what it looks like when some Commissioners use their seats to do no more than "concur" with one dominant Commissioner/mayor.  Everyone should be independent.  I will say for myself that I had very good working Commission relationships with Roxy Ross and David Coviello.  The three of us commonly formed a majority that accomplished a great deal.  We didn't commit ourselves to each other.  We didn't all always agree.  We just all wanted the same general thing, which was what was best for the Village, and we worked together.  As soon as I was displaced in 2016, and Rox and David were still there, but now as a minority, everything started to unravel, and the Village progressively deteriorated.  That's all it took.  Just one seat shifted.  All progress, competent professional management, decency toward neighbors, e-mails answered, mail responded to, all stopped.

Mac and Art are technically right.  They're independent.  And in most respects, they should be.  We should all be independent.  But they have to be very careful to form preferences, and perhaps try to affect, who is on the Commission with them, if one or both of them win seats.  They will be part of a team.  The question is whether they will be two members of a three person team, or if they'll be the two members of a two person team.  If the two of them win seats, they ought to care very, very much who wins the third seat.  If it's the two of them, for example, and Will Tudor, or seemingly Judi Hamelburg, they'll be sucking the same exhaust Rox did, and Rox and Mac do now.  And never mind how frustrating that will be for them.  It will be an ongoing disaster for the Village.  If it's the two of them and I, then the Village returns to adaptive functioning. 

It's All About Keeping Focus

To be entirely frank about this, I do not expect to win a seat on the Commission.  Although I believe I've spent much more time, and worked a lot harder, campaigning than has any of my opponents (Mac Kennedy has spent a good deal of time, and worked hard, too, but not as much as I have), I have the second fewest yard signs of any of us.  (I get distracted with the conversations, and I forget to ask people if I can put a sign in their yard.  Sometimes, it's they who make the request of me.)  And I'm not an incumbent.  And I haven't lived here as long as has one of us.  Although I also think I'm one of three of us who want the right thing for the Village.  But somehow, I don't think that's going to prevail.  I have a little collection of stories I tell myself as to why I'm not going to win a seat.  And they all sound pretty convincing to me.

But I might win a seat.  I did once before.  (You remember, that's how I got myself into the Baseball Hall of Fame.)  And if I do become a Commissioner again, my constituency is the Village, and everyone who lives here.  That includes people who moved in last week, people who didn't vote for me, people who dislike me tremendously, people who didn't and don't vote at all, and people who can't vote (because they're not citizens, or they never registered, or whatever).  I have to care about everything and everyone.  I have to try to represent and honor people who don't want the same thing, or who completely disagree with each other.

If this sounds like an impossible task, of course it's an impossible task.  That's why being an elected representative is often described as a "thankless job."  Whatever you do or don't do will meet with someone's disapproval.  In my limited experience in elected office, the disapproving people are not one bit reluctant to let you know how dissatisfied they are, and what a wrong-thinking loser you are for disappointing them.  They're not thinking about you, or about their neighbors who were not dissatisfied about whatever it was.  They're just thinking about themselves, and how dissatisfied they are, and how right and smart they are, and how wrong and stupid are other people.  Like you.  Of which they will remind you.  For years.

I haven't told this story, because...well, I don't know.  It seemed weirdly personal.  But it's sort of about all of us.  So I'll tell it to you now.  I got elected to the Commission at the end of 2013.  A new manager -- Heidi Siegel -- had been hired not long before that, by the preceding Commission.  I had nothing to say about hiring Heidi.  I was just there, in the audience, for the presentations and questioning of the three finalists.  In my comparatively uneducated opinion (I didn't know anything about all the applicants who were not the three finalists, and I did not know in detail about the three finalists), Heidi was not my first choice.  She was my second choice.  But hiring her was not my job.  I was prepared to be happy with anyone we hired.  And of course, at that time, I had no idea I would be a Commissioner several months or so later.  Sure enough, I liked Heidi.  She had her quirks, as we all do, and they were sometimes at issue, but overall, I liked her, I liked having her as our manager, and I liked working with her.  One day, Heidi was in a bit of a funk, because a lot of people were giving her a lot of trouble about cost and schedule over-runs regarding the log cabin renovation and the administration building construction, and she asked me if I thought it was time for her to resign.  None of the problem was Heidi's fault (except maybe she should have been more open about it, but I think she was just afraid of being hounded and criticized if she told the public in advance that things would cost more and take longer than promised), and I told her it was absolutely not time for her to resign.  I was very supportive of Heidi, and in most respects, she did a very good job, quirks and all.  But later, it came increasingly to my attention that one of our neighbors (no names, I think) was being hounded with alleged Code violations, because he criticized Heidi about something.  You remember there were "quirks," and I believed that the possibility that one of our neighbors could be hounded for criticizing Heidi was one of them.  As I became increasingly sure our neighbor was right, I addressed this with Heidi, who insisted this was fabricated.  Well, I became so sure that the neighbor was right, and was so frustrated with Heidi's responses to me, that I told her that now it seemed time for her to resign, which she did.  And I will reveal that the neighbor in question is a huge pain in my ass, as he's a pain in the asses of many of us.  But he's a constituent, and constituents come first.  (As an aside, I went to the neighbor to ask more about his side of this, so I could advocate for him.  He told me he didn't want my help, and he wanted to handle this himself.  I told him I'm a Commissioner, I'm Heidi's "boss," he should want my help, and he needs it.  He declined.  I told you he's a pain in the ass.  I confronted Heidi anyway.  It was my job.)

My slogan is "For the Best We Can Be."  If I had a second slogan, it would be "It's All About the Village."  That's the one and only focus.  It's not about power, or favoritism, certainly not about money (there isn't any), and it's not about the thrill, for those who derive one.  It's about how to make BP a happy, appealing, pleasing, safe, satisfying, (cheap?; not any more, I think) place for us all to live together.

Don't forget, you're getting three Commissioners after November 3.  It doesn't do good to decide you only like one or two of the candidates.  You're getting three anyway.  I've said this before, and I'll say it again: never mind the candidates; decide what kind of Village you want.  Then figure out which candidates will give you that Village.  That's your vote.  You're not voting for the people.  You're voting for the Village.  Focus!

I Had Fun, Fun, Fun 'Til Someone Got Nervous, and Had My Nextdoor Account Disabled.

I was wondering how long I'd last back on Nextdoor (ND).  Art Gonzalez said he figured me for a week.  I think it was about half that.

I suppose "it's deja vu all over again."  It was back in 2016, and I was...running for office.  Someone apparently repeatedly contacted ND to say I was breaking some mystery rule.  So ND disabled my account, claimed I had broken a rule, wouldn't tell me what the rule was, and wouldn't let me back on unless I agreed to stop breaking rules.  (This is sort of like the lawyers' "are you still beating your wife" question.)

The fact was, I wasn't having a good time, and I didn't feel any further need to involve myself with ND, so I dropped it.  I didn't need ND for anything, and I had nothing it was my pleasure to offer.

Then, recently -- because a number of people I know are involved with ND, and talk about various posts and characters there -- I was thinking that maybe I should check in.  I discovered I could read ND posts without being an activated member, but I just couldn't comment.  The ND censors have extremely long memories.

And it hit me.  The entree to ND is via the e-mail address.  But I have an old one that I never closed, but I don't use.  So I signed up with the old address, created some password, and got full access.  I still didn't really want anything, and all I did was check in from time to time.  Until one of my friends called me to say William Abreu, who is a Commission candidate, unloaded on me on ND.  Then another of my friends, who is himself a Commission candidate, called me to tell me the same thing.  So, hey.  That's what an active account is for.

So I defended myself, tried to correct outrageous mischaracterizations (I'm assuming William is being honest, and was simply mistaken), parried, and interacted with various people (William and several of the commenters).  I even took a little side trip, and wrote a nice comment to Gary Kuhl about some unrelated post of his.  But almost all of my activity was about Abreu's post.

And then, it was over.  I posted one more comment, and I got a message saying my account was disabled.  Mac Kennedy says someone must have complained (duh).  Dan Keys said my comments had been removed.  Someone else was "so tired of the political games on that site...This shit really pisses me off."

ND exists everywhere.  It's a pervasive franchise.  Frankly, it has a lot to offer.  Sure, there's a certain amount of...silliness there.  But adaptive and adult people could really use it to connect about a number of things.  They give each other references for tradespeople, and they give each other helpful advice.  The fact is, there's nothing at all wrong with discussions, and even debates, about community matters, and politics.  People interact about those things all the time.

William Abreu wasn't nice to me.  He was nasty.  It's hard to say he wasn't dishonest.  In my opinion, he made a fool of himself.  Maybe someone else would think I made a fool of myself.  But that's OK.  William and I are running for office, against each other.  If either of us is foolish, then the public has a right to know that.  They should know it.

And I have no objection to referees.  Sometimes, they're necessary.  As long as they themselves are fair, and honest.  But they shouldn't choose winners and losers.  Once they play games like that, they lose their legitimacy.

So I think ND and I have a mutually agreed understanding.  They run their site any way they want, and I'll see you around the campus.

If I Had Hair, I'd Be Pulling It Out.

No wisecracks, Mac.

We had a Commission meeting tonight.  They simply don't know what they're doing.  And they lurch from one position to another, depending on who gave the last piece of advice.

The big topics were 6th Avenue and the sanitation program (what is currently the WastePro contract).  It was really just maddening.

We have no idea what we're going to do about 6th Avenue, or what we want, or what the state will allow.  And we'll have a, um, workshop.  Yeah, a workshop.  That's a good delaying tactic, isn't it?

As for WastePro, the Commission simply could not marshall itself into pursuing any kind of meaningful direction.  The result?  Another contract extension (six months), presumably at an even higher price, for something almost no one wants any more.  Mac Kennedy's summary was: "kicking the can down the street again, guys.  Not good.  Not good."

Help!  Is it November 3 yet?  And we're in such desperate need of a competent manager.  Do you realize we haven't had one since the beginning of 2017?

The only two other things worth mentioning are about the question of restoring Commission meetings in person, and Dan Samaria's second thoughts about choosing a manager.

Regarding the first, the so-called governor of Florida has ended the concession that municipal meetings don't have to occur in person, and the end, according to this so-called governor, is November 1.  The so-called governor is Ron DeSantis, or Governor Ron DeSantis, or Mr Ron DeSantis.  He is not Dr Ron DeSantis.  He has no idea what he's talking about, and he has demonstrated consistently that he does not care about the lives of the residents of Florida.  So the new arrangement, which doesn't make any sense, is that meetings can happen if a quorum is present in the meeting room, and other elected officials can participate virtually.  As can the non-elected public.  The question, then, will become which three Commissioners have to risk their health and possibly life, because Ron DeSantis does not know what he's doing, and does not care.

Dan Samaria now claims that when he agreed to a meeting on October 23 regarding the new manager, he thought he was agreeing only to a "workshop."  You remember workshops.  They're gatherings where nothing happens, and nothing is expected, but sponsors can pretend they paid attention to something.  Dan presents that his vote was wrong at the last meeting, and no doubt, someone told him he voted wrong.  Now, Dan is back in the order that someone demands of him, and he was able to join his pals, Ginny O'Halpin and Will Tudor, to delay the solution to our second biggest problem.  (The biggest problem is an aimless, careless, reckless, and mindless Commission majority, and the second biggest problem, which is a complication of the biggest problem, is that we don't have competent management.  Why this is satisfactory to Dan, Ginny, and Will, is a total mystery.)  By the way, while we continue to delay choosing a manager, our preferred candidates are finding other jobs.  So the longer we take, the more likely we're going to have to redo the whole process, or settle for someone we don't favor.  Because the majority of our elected, and paid, officials can't bring themselves to do anything.

Over 4 1/2 hours, if you were wondering.  Don't ask me how.  I don't know.

Well, That Covers It. Pretty Much.

 

I'm not on Nextdoor, but one of our neighbors who is contacted me about a curious post.  The poster was someone named Joy Goulart, and the post was to present interviews of the three Commission candidates who were never former Commissioners (William Abreu, Art Gonzalez, and Judi Hamelburg).  There was also mention of the two incumbents, who were named (Mac Kennedy and Will Tudor).  The reason our neighbor informed me about this curious post was because one current candidate was omitted entirely.  He's not an incumbent, he was formerly a Commissioner, and somehow, it was decided that he could be treated as if he didn't exist.

I have no idea why it was Joy Goulart who posted this, but the interviewer was Milt Hunter.  Milt is not a stranger to Nextdoor, and it was never explained why he was hiding behind Joy Goulart's skirt. 

At any rate, Milt permitted each of his interviewees an opening and a closing statement, and the rest of the interview was the interviewees' answers to Milt's prepared questions.  To Milt's credit, he asked each of the candidates precisely the same questions.  At least he asked those questions of the candidates he interviewed, which was half of the candidates who are running.  And between his interviewees and the incumbents he/Joy Goulart mentioned, it was almost all of the candidates.  All but the one Milt was trying to disappear.

As an aside, the last time I ran for Commission was in 2016.  At that time, we had a normal Meet the Candidates event, and Milt was the coordinator of a group of people to put this together.  I have been told by one of the group that Milt had to be backed off from his flagrant attempt to single me out for confrontation and challenge.  Milt has found a more subtle method this year.

Milt's first interviewee was William Abreu.  William told Milt's audience that he and his family have lived in the Park for four years (he got a little confused as to whether it was four, and he had to try to remember his daughter's age, which he first gave as four, then changed to five), and he explained his candidacy.  Sort of.  He described himself as "more of a 'get-the-job-done' guy."  But he did not explain why in however many years he's lived here he did not attempt to get any Village job done.  And Milt certainly wasn't going to press him.  William has never joined a board, nor come to Commission meetings, and his theory about himself seems to rest on other parts of his life.  William said "I don't know who else has dedicated as much of themselfs (sic) to public service as I have.  I don't know."  No, I guess he wouldn't.  It was unclear what William meant about his devotion to public service, but it clearly doesn't include Biscayne Park.  Except he has suddenly decided he should be a Commissioner of this place about which his other responses made clear he doesn't know much.

The next interviewee was Art Gonzalez.  Art said he, too, has lived here 4 1/2 years.  But Art didn't say the idea to be on the Commission came to him like a calling or a dream.  He said a number of people have suggested he run.  Apparently, they finally broke through his presumed resistance.  One complaint Art would like to address is that the BP police are not very active.  Art's awareness of it is that our force only write "one or two tickets a month."  He'd like to see better enforcement.  In reviewing Art's background, Milt said he liked Art's "managorial (sic) experience."  Art was concerned about what looked to him like "cliques" on the recent Commissions.  He didn't specify which "cliques" he objected to, and Milt certainly wasn't going there.  Another place from which Milt kept a very wide berth was Art's repeated complaint about "excluding people."  Oops.  And Art even made mention of "Fred's blog," on which he said he had "posted" (comments).  I will remind that I made this blog fully available to all Commission candidates, except William Abreu, whom I did not at the time know how to reach, so they could use it to get out their messages.  You need to know what they want, because you need to know if it's what you want.  Only Mac Kennedy took me up on the offer.

Judi Hamelburg has been here 24 years.  The vast majority of her presentation was her usual: reworking any topic or question to her own personal experience.  And Judi did two things with her reworkings.  One was that she portrayed herself as the initiator of all good things that happen, because she's the only person who cares about other people, and the other was that she portrayed herself as a perpetual victim, most commonly on the basis of her gender.  One thought/idea Judi had was to wonder why CITT funds can't be used for street paving.  This seemed a curious idea, since either it can, in which case she should have said that was her intention, or it can't, in which case she should know why (the rules for use of CITT funds).  Another of Judi's comments that I thought was very important (especially considering the blog post before this one) was her criticism of Krishan Manners' (lack of) oversight, "although [she] loved him to death as a person."  Judi understood what many of her supporters don't understand: that you can personally like someone, but that doesn't mean they'd do a good job.  Finally, Milt was asking Judi, as he asked each of his interviewees, about our property tax rate.  Judi made an interesting comment in response to Milt's question about what she thought of the increase in it after 2010.  She said she would like it to come down, although she herself was not complaining, since she bought (and homestead protected) her house in 1996, so her taxes are pretty low.  Again, it seemed Judi was being distracted by her own personal experiences.  She's never publicly commented that she'd like a lower tax rate.

The interesting character here was Milt Hunter.  Milt had gotten himself into a real mess, and he seemed almost unaware of it.  First, of course, there was his years-long and ongoing efforts to bury me.  I wondered if he cringed when Art complained about excluding people.  And second, and perhaps more provocative, were those of Milt's questions that seemed to reflect complaint and criticism of the behavior of the recent Commission that he himself worked so hard to get elected.  He complained about rule-breaking among Commissioners, ordering around the manager and other Village employees without discussion with the Commission, and abuse of lawyer time.  It seemed as if he was boxing with his own shadow.  If he wasn't so dedicated to giving me a hard time, and sacrificing the Village to do it, I might have felt sorry for him.

The other mischievous thing Milt did was regarding his question about the millage, which he said was 8.9 in 2010 and 9.7 more recently (since about 2011).  His seemingly artless ploy was to imply that we were just charging ourselves more, as if for nothing.  What Milt carefully omitted to mention -- or maybe he doesn't know about it -- is that we had a huge crash at the end of 2007 and into 2008 and 2009.  We rely very heavily on our ad valorem property tax, and if we hadn't raised it, probably more than we did, we would have sunk.  As an example, and to take a page out of Judi Hamelburg's book, I'll tell you my own experience paying property tax.  I moved here in 2005, at about the height of the market.  Within a year or so after that, my yearly property tax was about $6000.  After 2008, because of drops in assessment and increases in exemptions, my tax was cut in half, to $3000.  Because I have a homestead exemption, as do most homeowners here, my assessment can only go up a maximum of 3% per year, regardless of the actual value of my house.  It will take me 33 years to get back to where I was when the economy crashed.  (So I make a lot of, um, donations to BP.)  But our costs don't go down.  They go up.  Luckily for us, there's always some turnover, and someone is buying a house that was taxed irrationally low, and paying a higher tax on it.  But that doesn't happen to the whole Village all at once.  It takes years and decades for all the houses to get sold.  So Milt was being a bit disingenuous, if not frankly dishonest, with that question.

That was Milt's continuing effort to massage this election, and particularly to try to steer attention anywhere but in my direction.  It wasn't very classy, but it might work.

PS: This post mysteriously disappeared from Nextdoor during the day on Monday.  I was going to suggest that you could at least watch the interviews, if you're interested in them, on youtube, which is where Milt keeps videos like this, but it appears he's removed them from there, too.  Clearly, some people have seen them, and if you ask around, especially of people who are Nextdoor denizens, you may find someone who's seen them.  That way, you can fact check what I've reported here.

I've Said It Before, And I'll Say It Again.

 Before we begin, I just want to say how disappointing it was that no one had anything genuinely bad to say about Roxy Ross.  As I said, there's so much grumbling and innuendo that I assumed someone must have real material.  Apparently not.  It was a ripe missed opportunity to give Roxy what some of us seem to allege she deserves.  We're almost led to conclude that she's terrific, and there's nothing negative to say about her.  That can't be right.  Could it?

Anyway, I was talking to one of our neighbors about, you know, the upcoming election, and I pointed out to the neighbor that I myself am a candidate in it.  My conversation started with Mr Neighbor, but Mrs Neighbor quickly appeared, and she said "we know Judi."  Yes, I reassured, we all know Judi.  At least many of us do.  

But this isn't about Judi.  It isn't about me.  It isn't about any of us as individuals.  It's about the Village, what kind of Village each of us wants, and which candidates are poised to pursue, and try to deliver, that Village.  And clearly, we don't all coincidentally want the same kind of Village.  (It's just in the broadest sense, in that we all chose to live here instead of Hialeah or Miami Beach or Chicago.)  Some of us want a Village with lower taxes, never mind what we can't do, because we're underfunded.  Some of us want a Village that isn't prone to large and persisting flooded areas after it rains.  Some want a Village where few "outsiders" are likely to go, or "cut through."  Some want a better recreation function.  Some want a Village with more lighting.  Some want a Village with less lighting.  But that's what elections are about: what kind of place do you want to be in, and which candidates will help you get there, or stay there (if you're already there).

So the question becomes, if you know Judi (or you're impressed at how many more yard signs Mac Kennedy has than anyone else does, or you think it's cool that Art Gonzalez and William Abreu probably speak Spanish, or any other factor you could name), and your friend Judi gets elected to be a Commissioner, or the Homecoming Queen, or whatever you're voting for her to become, what comes after that?  In Judi's case, she tells us a tiny bit of what she'd like to see in the Village.  She'd like more civility and transparency.  OK, let's say Judi gets elected, and from day 1, there's more civility and transparency.  Then what?  Now that we all talk nice, and no one keeps any secrets, what happens to Village functioning?  Does that mean we lower our taxes, or raise them?  Do we have more street lighting, or less street lighting?  Now that we're cordial and open, do we keep flogging WastePro, find a different contractor, or start writing big checks for new garbage trucks and more public works employees, so we can rebuild our own sanitation department?

There's an adage in medicine, and it goes "primum non nocere:" first, do no harm.  I reject that approach.  Second, if you like, you can try to avoid creating problems.  But first, and the whole reason for the medical profession, is to try to solve medical problems in the people who have them.  If your first goal is to avoid doing harm, then don't do anything.  Let the patients stay sick.  You didn't cause their medical conditions, and if you don't intervene, then no one can accuse you of having caused anything adverse.

Many of us know Judi.  Many who know her like her.  She happens to create very impressive glass jewelry.  All of that is great, and none of it has anything remotely to do with the Biscayne Park Commission, or with the functioning of Biscayne Park.

I said it before, and I'll say it again, you're not voting for Judi.  You're not voting for me.  You're not voting for Mac or Art or William Abreu or Will Tudor.  You're voting for the Village, and for yourself.  The vast majority of Village residents don't come to Commission meetings and aren't on boards and don't do much of anything about Village functioning.  They deputize someone else to do it for them.  Those are your Commissioners.  Choose them not because of who they are, but because of who you are.  Choose them because of what Village you want to live in, and because you have reason to believe they'll build you that Village.

The Roxanna S. Ross "Roast"

 

Roxy Ross' presumed last term on the BP Commission is about to end.  Roxy had a four year term, followed by a five year term, and she later ran unopposed to fill in what was left of Tracy Truppman's term, after Tracy retreated to her bunker, and took a dive.  Roxy said she wouldn't run again after that, and she didn't.  I have no reason to think she'll run again in the future.

When some people get to a certain age or stage, or they "retire," as Roxy seems to be retiring from being an elected municipal official, they are sometimes feted.  Sometimes, the fete is a "roast."  Various people who know or have been involved with the person in question come together, and they commonly make fun of the person.  It's generally presented as all in good spirit.  They say things that are essentially true, but they say them as if they were being affectionate about it.

We could do that.  But we have the advantage of people who really, truly, genuinely don't like Roxy, and think terrible things about her.  They honestly do.  I've heard some of them say so, or at least allude to bad qualities they think Roxy has.  So I think we should try to take advantage of some of that authentic ill feeling.  We can roast Roxy in style.  We can say openly all the things we know are awful about Roxy Ross.

I would have hoped to include Steve Bernard to start us off.  But he ran away.  Bryan Cooper could have been right behind Steve in pointing out what's wrong with Roxy, but he's gone back under whatever rock used to cover him.  Then, there was Noah Jacobs.  But he's run away, too.  And Barbara Watts, who's gotten very quiet since she left the Commission.  I bet Tracy Truppman is good for loads of great material, and I hope she shares it with us.  The bobbleheads (Jenny Johnson-Sardella, Will Tudor, Harvey Bilt, and Betsy Wise) could have stimulating viewpoints.  Betsy, too, ran away, and Tracy, Jenny, and Harvey have become invisible, but maybe for an occasion like this one, they'll treat us.

Milt Hunter must be a gold mine of great whining about Roxy.  Milt is careful not to take personal responsibility for anything, so he probably won't personally contribute, but I'm hoping he can get his current puppets -- Ginny O'Halpin and Dan Samaria -- to say what Milt is not courageous enough to say.  Hey, it's got to be good material, no matter who says it.

And then, there was one of our neighbors who told me after I got elected to the Commission in 2013 not to vote for Roxy for mayor.  There was something about "baggage."  I got the message, so I nominated Roxy for mayor, and I voted for her.  (Whatever terrible things are wrong with Roxy Ross, she's an amazing, off the charts fabulous, elected representative.  Not to mention, just as an irrelevant aside, that she's a magnificent human being.)

When I'm meeting and talking to my neighbors, some of them whisper innuendo about Roxy, or "the Rosses."  There's never content -- at least not reality-based content -- but someone out there has opinions that could contribute to a good roast.

So, I'm going to get us started.  Last week, I was talking to one of our neighbors, and our neighbor mentioned "that woman with the purple hair, and her husband takes pictures at Commission meetings."  It took a little longer to realize that our neighbor meant Roxy and Chuck Ross.  I didn't remember Roxy's having dyed her hair purple, but I do remember very unnatural red, and I agree with our neighbor.  I didn't like that color, either.  My other complaint about Roxy is that she likes pet dogs.  I don't.  So, there you go.  I don't like Roxy's occasional taste in hair dye, and I don't like it that she likes pet dogs.  Hey, I socialize with the Rosses, and I spend time at their house.  I'm exposed to that beast.  It's actually kind of a nice dog, as dogs go.  I just don't like domesticating animals, and I don't like dogs all over me.

I hope others will have much better material than I do.  I'm not much of a judge of people, so I've probably missed a lot of Roxy's pathology.  Let's all go for it.  Let's give Roxy a real send-off.  Let's really fill up that comment section.  You know, like "don't let the door hit you in the...butt...on your way out."