As best I can tell, we're on the imminent verge of hiring a new manager. Some interviews occurred last night, more will occur tonight, and there's another meeting -- to choose a manager? -- on Friday night.
We've been sorely in need of professional management for almost four years now. I'm not going to get embroiled in the question of whether, under proper circumstances, Krishan Manners could have been an adequate manager. We were never allowed to find out, and we don't know. Case closed. But what is without any question is that Krishan's replacement, David Hernandez, and David's replacement, Roseann Prado, are grossly incompetent, clearly don't know what to do, and are not particularly interested. And that's been going on since January. Our need for proper professional management at this point is desperate.
So, after a number of us leaned hard on a very resistant Commission majority (Ginny, Dan, and Will Tudor) for several months, these three finally agreed, grudgingly, to begin a search. And it wasn't going to be even that "easy." Soon enough, Dan Samaria proclaimed that our outreach/advertisement hadn't been productive enough, and Dan wanted to...delay...while we advertised for a longer time. Dan was at that instant claiming we needed enough choice, which he claimed we didn't have. That was his claim then. At that fleeting moment in time.
We wound up with 28 applicants. There's no theory by which anyone could possibly say 28 applicants for the job of BP manager weren't enough. They were more than enough. But Dan, Ginny, and Will were still nervous, and they continued to try to delay this.
I would say there were two possible reasons for the delay antic. One was that none of the three of them had the slightest idea what to do, or how to hire a manager, and they just didn't want to face the task. The other was that at least two of them were taking direction from someone else who not only also has no idea how to handle a responsibility like this, but who had a separate agenda of trying to prevent Roxy Ross from having any influence over the process. (I don't know. That's just how this guy is. Some people are afraid of ghosts, some are afraid of the devil, some are afraid of spiders, and this guy is afraid of Roxy Ross. If you want to know more about this phobia, you'll have to ask him.)
Anyway, we had our 28 applicants. And our grudging and terrified (and intimidated) Commission majority agreed to the next step, which was to appoint a group of non-Commissioner residents to analyze these 28 applications, and make some recommendations. There was also a group of county people who did a version of the same thing, as they have for us in the past. And the Commission majority protected themselves, and their patron, by agreeing that they would not be limited by those of the 28 applicants the non-Commissioner resident group most favored. The BP group used a combination of methods, and arrived at a recommendation of 10 of the 28 applicants. And of course, this group (we) understood that the Commission would do whatever it wanted, and had freed itself from having to pay any attention to what we thought.
So the question then became what would the Commission do with this recommendation of 10 of the 28 applicants, and whatever ranking or winnowing the county group did. We're talking here about a Commission majority that really, really didn't want to do anything. So, they, um, uh, well, took into some form of consideration, uh, perhaps, hmm, choices, huh?, we should maybe think about doing something about this at some point, um...and they arrived at a schedule for, um, let's see, maybe doing background checks?, on, uh, maybe the 10 of them, well... And that's what they did. Background checks. After which, at some point, would come figuring out how else to evaluate them. Which eventually would lead to, you know, making contact with them.
Well, it didn't take that long before five of the 10, including some of the non-Commissioner resident group's top choices, either got hired by someone else, who actually wanted quality management, or simply withdrew. And the other 18, who weren't part of the 10? Some weren't remotely qualified, and no doubt, some of the rest also made other arrangements for themselves. Life goes on, kind of thing.
Frankly, my thinking was that we had botched the job, and lost our opportunity to examine 28 or 10, qualified, interested, and available applicants, and we should really just start over again. I said so publicly. But the Commission didn't agree. They thought we should forge ahead. The "new math" curiosity is that 28 choices weren't enough, but five, after we wasted our opportunity to consider five more, were more than enough.
Of course it's true that we're only going to hire one person. But Dan Samaria would have said, and I would have agreed with him, that one applicant wasn't enough. Approaching it the other way around, if we had attracted 28 applicants, and then wasted so much time that 27 of them quit waiting for us to function, then the same 1 is still not enough. In fact, I'll go a step further. If 26 of the applicants had evaporated, and we actually had a choice, between two, I wouldn't think that was enough, either.
But, we're apparently going to get a real manager soon. I watched the interviews of two of them last night. One was much sharper than the other, but either one could do the job. I have late appointments, and I can't watch the remaining interviews tonight. If you're interested, you can watch them yourselves. Go to the Village website -- www.biscayneparkfl.gov -- go to the calendar, click on the special meeting for tonight, look at the agenda, and you'll find the Zoom meeting code at the bottom of the header. And perhaps Friday night, these three bumbling Commissioners, and the two excellent ones, will have agreed to make some applicant an offer. That's not the end of the story -- of course it's not; why should this ever end? -- because the offer has to be accepted, or modified until it's acceptable to everyone.
I don't know what was wrong with the old math. At least you could use it to accurately understand and predict things.
I agree Fred Kristyn managed and never been let go gonna be hard to replace that guy he was a hard-working gentleman always polite always took my calls always addressed all my issues how was this commission allowed to let him go is beyond belief I don’t know what is managers were getting paid but Mr. manners
ReplyDeleteputting well hundreds of overtime hours during the storms It was a huge asset to Biscayne Park Don’t know what this new manager is going to bring but he should use mr manners as a template A lot of Biscayne Park residents miss him
Luigi/Louie/"hot dog king," it was very complicated about Krishan. (We're talking about a man named Krishan, not a woman named Kristyn. If you insist upon dictating, at least please proofread.)
DeleteKrishan was here before your time. Heidi Siegel brought him in. He was exactly the hard-working, polite, responsive gentleman you describe him to be. Everyone liked him. I liked him. I like him to this day.
Tracy Truppman fired the manager we had before Krishan -- that manager was new and had done nothing but an excellent job in the couple or few months she was here --, and she hired Krishan instead. If you know anything about Tracy, you will know that she is extraordinarily controlling, and she has a disturbing vicious streak. This means two things about Krishan. One is that he could not have functioned as independently as a manager should -- Tracy would not have allowed that, and Tracy was unprecedented in spending very large swaths of time on a daily basis at Village Hall. The other is that Krishan's predecessor was fired probably for a number of reasons having to do with Tracy's problems, and one of them was to make an example of her: cross me, or don't do whatever I tell you, and this is what will happen to you.
When Krishan was going through the phony process of applying and being interviewed to be the manager, he was deferential to what I considered a concerning extent to Tracy and her stooges. I told him I was concerned about this. He reassured me that he was putting on a show that was what he called a "bait and switch," and that what he was trying to do was get hired, after which he would become independent of Tracy's domination. I hope no one held their breath. I never witnessed Krishan challenge Tracy about anything, and he wound up taking some actual initiative when it came to trying to force Dan Samaria out of the Village, and therefore off the Commission, because Dan disagreed with Tracy about things. Just to take a very small example, during Commission meetings, Krishan would address "Mayor Truppman," "Commissioner Johnson-Sardella," "Commissioner Tudor," "Commissioner Wise," and "Dan." Krishan signed his own "death warrant." I was sad to see it. I wished he had done better. I wished he had quit long ago. I wished he had done his job, which we later learned included things like bothering to answer demands from CITT and FEMA. But he didn't. He dutifully did whatever Tracy told him to do, to the disadvantage of the Village. I was sorry to see him go, but I knew it was the right thing.
You miss him? I miss him, too.
Fred
I just saw him as a very hard-working gentleman Trying to help everybody and I think he was very fair who controlled him for what reasons I don’t know He was always around he always answered questions he was always polite during the storms he gets a AAA rating I didn’t see anybody at the rec house but him helping passing out water assisting people directing people He didn’t have to put in all those hours
ReplyDeleteYou're right. He was a hard-working gentleman who tried to help everyone. At least he wanted to try to help everyone. But he allowed Tracy Truppman to get him off path, and the fact that he allowed that, even though the rest of us complained, is on him.
DeleteAs I said, I'm sorry he let himself get led around like that. I like him, and I miss him. I wanted him to be man enough to confront Tracy, even if would mean he would get fired (which it would have), or I wanted him to be man enough, and self-respecting enough, to say he wouldn't put up with this, and quit.
We reduced our 28 applicants to the 10 of most interest. We then delayed long enough that five of those 10 made other arrangements for themselves. Of the five remaining, two more had enough of waiting for BP to get its act together, and figure out if it really wanted anything, and what that might be, and dropped out. Only three were ultimately available to be interviewed.
ReplyDeleteSo the majority of your Commission -- Ginny O'Halpin, Dan Samaria, and Will Tudor -- were sufficiently nonfunctional and paralyzed that the Village never had a fair choice of prospective managers. Three finalists remained, and not because we carefully chose them. It's because they were the ones who didn't have any better prospects after we kept them waiting around way too long.
The "good news" is that either of the two I saw could do the job. BP is a very small and limited place, our functioning is normally not complicated, and most of the original 28 could have made happen what generally has to happen. And we're a stepping stone for anyone. They'll stay for a while, do a good enough job to pad a resume that will look better to a more well-heeled employer/municipality, and leave. And we'll replace them. This is fine. It's worked for us so far, and it will work for us again. Remember, from 1933 until 2006, we thought completely lay and uninitiated Village residents could manage the Village. Most of them really often couldn't, at least not in a proper way, but they got parts of the job done well enough. So anyone we get who has a certain amount of the right training and experience is a big advantage to us. We're not going to pay high on the scale, but we don't have to. We get our needs met, and so do our come-and-go managers, with much lower pay. Good for us, and good for them.
Please send Will Tudor a note thanking him for his useless and corrosive non-service, and cautioning him not to let the door hit him on his way out. And send notes to Ginny O'Halpin and Dan Samaria, bringing to their attention that at a certain stage of the life cycle, it's good to smell the coffee, or the roses, and just enjoy the days, and don't stress themselves out fussing over agendas and Commission meetings. This would be a great time for a real retirement. All of us are pretty busy trying to function, so we might not have time to throw together a going away party, but they can go to Publix, and buy themselves a cupcake. At the Publix on 6th Avenue and 128th St, the baked goods are just on the right when you walk in. I don't know where the candles are. They can ask.