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.