More Than Your Money's Worth

GableStage never fails to put on an excellent production.  The acting, directing, and set are top notch.  By that, I mean in part that a play done at GableStage and on Broadway is done better at GableStage.  I have seen this.

The play for the coming month is "White Guy on the Bus."  One description is "A fearless new play that unravels a complex web of intrigue, moral ambiguity, racial bias, and revenge."  Reviews include "Critics' Pick!  Thought-provoking, riveting theater!" (NYT), "Drama at its finest!  A must see!" (Broadway World), and "Satisfying!  A story of power and revenge, shrouded in intrigue!" (Theatermania).

The showing on Friday night, August 10, at 7:00, is special.  The normal run for this play is August 11 to September 9, so this performance is a special dedication.  Proceeds that night will go entirely to OrchestraMiami, which is a wonderful organization.  And that night, the price is discounted to $40 per seat, and "drinks" and "light bites" are included.

So, for a low price, you get great theater, "drinks" and "light bites," whatever that turns out to mean, and what you pay for your ticket will support a great local classical music organization.

Give it careful consideration.  If you're interested, the GableStage box office phone number is 305-445-1119.


As an aside, the only actor in this play whose name I know is Tom Wahl.  He was terrific in two GableStage plays last year ("An Act of God" was off the charts spectacular), and I went to Lake Worth just to see him in something else.


I forgot to mention that GableStage is at the Biltmore Hotel.

What Did I Say?

Toward the end of 2016, there was what seemed to present itself as a triumvirate, or a slate, of Commission candidates.  They were Tracy Truppman, Jenny Johnson-Sardella, and Will Tudor.  Tracy had some inconsistent and remote experience on minor Boards, Jenny was on the important Code Compliance Board, and Will had no identifiable presence at all in the Village, except that he happened to live here.

In most settings, these three offered no meaningful agenda.  There was the de rigueur pablum about "listening to residents," but no real attention to important Village issues.  Whenever an issue came up, as they did in places like Nextdoor, these three were conspicuously absent, and not because no one asked them to chime in.

I said in this blog, on Nextdoor, and verbally that I was very concerned about this slate getting elected.  (I had not planned to run again myself, and I only ran anyway to offer myself as protection from this slate.)  They would represent an instant majority-- there was every appearance that they were in lock step-- and they had no identifiable agenda.  It seemed to me, as I said repeatedly and publicly, that a majority like this, of people most of whom had no relevant experience with Village government, and who had no agenda (didn't want anything, and expressed no vision for the neighborhood), would function in what I considered a predictable way.

I said they would do nothing, because they had nothing in mind to do, and their only available posture would be to criticize and blame other people.  I specified that they would blame the prior Commission and the Manager.  And that would be their agenda: doing nothing, and blaming other people.  I committed myself openly and repeatedly to this suspicion as to what would happen if Truppman, Johnson-Sardella, and Tudor got elected.

Was I close?

Personal Insult Added to General Injury

This morning at 8:10, I again encountered the guy with the two Siberian huskies.  You remember them.  They're the dogs bred for ultra cold weather, and he keeps them in a very hot climate.  About 50 minutes before I saw him, I encountered another casual walker, who commented to me that today was a "steambath."  I guess it was more so 50 minutes later.

Anyway, the guy recognized me, smiled in a friendly way, and told me he hoped he would make it to my age.  I asked him how old he thought I was.  He said he himself is 40.  (This sounds like a non sequitur, and I would hold it against his intellect, but I already wasn't very impressed, from my last encounter with him.)  I asked him again how old he thought I was, and he guessed 60.  Sixty-eight, I told him. And he repeated his hope that he himself would make it to my age.

I imagine he thought he was complimenting me, like he thought he was taking good care of two Siberian huskies-- you know, the dogs bred for extreme cold, but he keeps them in a very hot climate.

We Compromised

Tonight's special Commission meeting was for the purpose of choosing a new Village attorney.  There were three finalists.  There was a solo private practice lawyer, who is really an employee of Broward County, but who can do private work.  There was an attorney with a firm, but he himself doesn't have any personal municipal clients right now.  And there was a large firm specializing in representing municipalities.  Each finalist had good credentials and more than adequate experience.  And there was a range of fee schedules, ranging from about what we pay now per hour ($165) to considerably more than that ($250).  The large firm that charges $250 per hour said they could negotiate the fee.

Each firm or attorney made a presentation, and each answered questions from Commissioners.  Then, the Commissioners voted.  There was some discussion before votes were taken.

Roxy Ross liked the idea of a firm with depth and with local contacts.  The other Commissioners were more preoccupied with cost.  And the other Commissioners also all noted another factor: they liked the idea of a more personal touch.  They liked the idea that the Village is that special place, that should have special and individualized treatment.  They seemed to like the idea that we would somehow have what we could pretend was someone's undivided, or not too divided, attention.

Interestingly, one of the attorney finalists mentioned the idea of municipalities that like to have voting on their own special day, when they are the only thing on the ballot.  But that attorney reminded us that that kind of specialness comes at a fiscal cost.  We've been there ourselves, and we came to realize that what it cost us to be that special was a lot of money, and the participation of many of our citizens.  So we voted to move our election to the general election.  It may seem somehow relatively impersonal, but it's a lot cheaper, and we get a lot more votes.

So that was the choice among the three finalists.  Tracy Truppman chose the private practice guy.  The other four chose the guy who presented to us by himself, and we'd be "[his] Village:" his only client.  No one wanted the firm that sent three attorneys to present, and had 300 more in the firm, with "economy of scale" (that was the term they used) to attend efficiently to our needs.

No, the feeling was that we had to try to preserve that feeling of specialness.  The one we surrendered to save money and get more turnout on voting day.   The one we surrendered when we outsourced sanitation, and saved ourselves a good deal of money, and a lot of efficiency in the Public Works Department.

I myself didn't initially want the large group.  Not that it matters what I thought, but I just thought they seemed too slick, and all business.  But after they presented, I decided I was wrong.  We're not looking for friends.  We're looking for expert and efficient legal advice.  Slick and all business is exactly what we want.

It costs us to pretend to be some little and charming waifs.  We wind up with ineptitude, inefficiency, poorly kept streets, and miserable-looking medians.  What we need is what we managed to avoid tonight.  But we got second best.  Roxy knows him, has worked directly with him, and likes his work.  And she voted for him.  That was good enough.

"Unbelievable."

It was just before 9:00, and one of our neighbors was leaving the Commission meeting in a combination of boredom and disgust, when he uttered this word.  The meeting had become unbearably bogged down, over nothing, and our neighbor couldn't stand it any more.  Coincidentally, not five minutes before he left, I said almost the same thing.  Except I inserted something between the un- and the             -believable.

This meeting had no reason to slog as it did.  It had no right.  Everything-- well, almost everything-- was going great until Ordinance #1.  The only snag that occurred before that was when Roxy Ross wanted to pull something from the Consent Agenda, because she wanted to draw attention to it.  It was the minutes of the meeting of the Public Safety Advisory Board, and Roxy wanted to point out that two Commissioners had been in attendance, and that this created what could be a Sunshine meeting within the Board meeting, and it should have been announced that way.  The problem was that Roxy was one of the Commissioners who was there, and Tracy Truppman was the other.  And of course, Tracy took instant offense, decided she had to defend herself, and did it the way she always does it: she tried to dismiss or demean Roxy's having brought it up.  So that wasted a few annoying minutes, but we were otherwise onto the Ordinances.

Ordinance #1 was a loser from the start.  Everyone who commented on it in Public Comment panned it, and three of the Commissioners didn't like it, either.  The problem was that it was Harvey Bilt's scheme, and this created a problem for his little team.  The big team wasn't present, because Jenny Johnson-Sardella was somewhere or other, but not at the meeting.  So Harvey's posse were supposed to be Tracy and Will Tudor.  Will didn't like the Ordinance, either, and neither did Roxy.  Tracy didn't like it-- there was nothing to recommend this Ordinance, which made no sense and accomplished nothing-- but she was stuck.   She was at great pains to go against her boy, Harvey, but she couldn't bring herself to join him.  So what should have been a very quick vote in opposition to this Ordinance dragged on for way too long, with Will rambling, Harvey defending and redefending, Roxy talking too much about it, and Tracy speaking against the Ordinance while simultaneously repeatedly apologizing to Harvey.  Way...too...long.  Not for Andrew Dunkeil, our attorney, though.  He's on the clock.  Keep on yammering, y'all.

Next, it was slightly less moronic, but also more nonsensical Ordinance #2.  Hoo-boy.  Should we refinance?  Well, no.  Clearly not.  Roxy Ross made that crystal clear.  Painfully crystal clear.  It made no sense.  The reason to refinance wasn't actually there, and it would have cost more than it would have saved.  Just listen, kids.  Rox is explaining it to you, making it as clear as it could possibly be, and she even got the Finance Director to see her point, and convinced him.  Just realize it was a non-starter, and vote it down, so we can move on.  Nope.  On...and on...and on.  And on.  Over nothing, except perhaps Tracy's realization that she is out of her depth, does not know and understand the issues, and that Roxy is really the heart and sole of this Commission.  Which is why it's so pervasively necessary to try to obliterate her.  It was near the end of this soul-crushing discussion that our neighbor had more than enough and left.  Although there was actually not too much left of the meeting.

But there was one moment of comic relief.  Roxy had put on the Agenda a Resolution to name this year's BP delegate to the Florida League of Cities' annual conference in Hollywood.  Well, you know Princess Tracy just had to be the delegate.  She thought it was sort of like which pupil gets to bring the teacher an apple.  Roxy offered to go, as she has always gone, but Tracy repeated-- three times, as the person sitting next to me counted-- that the Mayor (Princess Tracy, herself) should be the one to go and wear the prettiest dress, and have the nicest pigtails.  In fact, Tracy thought the Resolution should be generalized, so that it's always the Mayor who gets to be the voting delegate.  Well, Roxy had had enough.  As she pointed out, she only has a few short months left on the Commission, and she let the Princess have her way.  And Roxy mentioned, just in passing, that there was a stipend available for the delegate, so that half the expenses would be reimbursed.  Tracy did this math in a hurry.  She instantly realized that Roxy was saying the delegate has to pay something to be a delegate.  She handed the honor immediately back to Roxy.  What a devoted representative our Mayor is.

And what a gross waste of time this meeting was.

I Got a Beef With PETA and Mercy For Animals

I have tremendous respect and affection for animals.  I appreciate all of them, the human ones and the non-human ones.  I think all animals should live as nature intended, if nature intends anything.  I don't tell other people how to live, and I don't try to exert power over the ways non-human animals live.

I donate, automatically and every month, to PETA and Mercy For Animals.  I agree with them when they try to confront the mistreatment of animals.  Those two organizations and I diverge over only two issues.  Both organizations are strong advocates of vegan diets for human animals.  I, however, accept that animals eat other animals, and people eat other animals.  I have restricted to a vegan diet in the past, and it was fine, but I decided that I could be ethical and merciful to animals without so restricting.  What I do is try to restrict to eating meat from animals that were treated ethically and mercifully during their lives, and killed humanely.  I don't say PETA and MFA are wrong.  And there have been deeply revered thinkers and philosophers who agreed with them.  I admit I do not exist on the very highest possible ethical plane, when it comes to eating animals.  I accept my own failing, and I hope that the caveat I impose is in some sense good enough.  But I do acknowledge the lapse.

The other area where PETA and MFA and I diverge is about the domestication of animals.  I think it's rank cruelty.  I think it's inexcusable.  I have asked both organizations to adopt as part of their overall mission a crusade against the domestication of animals.  They won't do it.  PETA's position (excuse?) is that the animals people domesticate have been bred so that they are incapable of living without the stewardship of human owners.  What a load...!  Even if you could try to make that argument about Yorkshire terriers and maybe pomeranians, you couldn't really make it about any other animal people domesticate.  And PETA and MFA do advocate against "puppy mills," pet store animals, and, up to a point, breeding in general.  So, up to a point, they get it.  But they won't pull the real trigger.  And if you want to know if I think PETA and MFA members and staff have domesticated animals themselves, yeah, I think they do.  I think they think they love animals, and they love, and show love to, their pets.  At that point, they stop getting it.  It's like the time several months ago that Donald Trump or one of his people said slavery wasn't bad, because the slaves were treated well.  Setting aside that that isn't remotely true, no normal person would have any trouble recognizing what was wrong with slavery, even if the slaves had been treated well.

I was out walking this morning, and I encountered a man with two Siberian huskies.  It was about 8:10.  We had a brief conversation about his two beautiful dogs, and it was he who mentioned how much they don't like the "humidity."  He takes them out early, to avoid it.  (He was a bit late today.  I guess it wasn't convenient for him to take them out earlier.)  I assume that means he walks/relieves them twice a day, before it gets "humid," and after it's not so "humid" any more.  This is the life he, or anyone, thinks dogs want?  Never mind that they get spayed/neutered, "docked," and whatever else people want to do to them.  And sent to "obedience school."  They have to be "trained" to be obedient to whom?  Why?  Large dogs, bred for the life of Siberia (isn't that that place people always say is so cold?), kept in Miami (isn't that that place people always say is so hot?), and cooped up inside all day.  (He also told me-- he told me, like he heard it said!-- that people think these dogs, these Siberian huskies, are supposed to be outside.  Wrong, he said.)  Raise your hand if you allow yourself to urinate twice a day, early in the morning, and after dinner time.  No?  And his parting explanation to me was "It's like with any dog: it depends how you train them."  If you can "train" a large and thick-coated dog to stay inside in a hot environment all day, and urinate twice a day, then it must be OK.  Like if you can "train" a slave to work in the fields all day, and not to run away, then it must be OK. 

Is there anyone who hates animals more than a pet owner?  Dogs, cats, birds, fish, or whatever.  It's a terribly cruel way to treat animals.  PETA and MFA should know that better than I do.

I Owe Tracy Truppman an Apology. And So Does Mac Kennedy.

It's a weak excuse, I know: Mac and I are "not the only ones."  Maybe we're the most vocal, or maybe not.  I can name other people who say the same thing.  But I really do know.  It's no excuse.

Mac and I have incessantly accused Tracy of having no vision for the Village.  We've cited what we thought were examples of Tracy's lack of vision.  Tracy won't do this, or she won't do that.  She won't move the Village forward.  And Mac and I, and some others of us, concluded that this is proof that Tracy has no vision.  She refused to have the standard visioning conclave.  See, more proof.

I started complaining about what I thought was Tracy's lack of vision for the Village even before she got elected.  Even when we were running, I pointed out Tracy's refusal to specify any one thing she wanted for the Village.  She did say she was offering finally to "listen to residents," but that turned out not to be true.  And after she won, and commandeered complete personal domination over the Village, she wouldn't advance any agenda at all.  The only partial exception was her claim that policing needed to be improved.  But since that was already under way, it wasn't a real initiative.  So I thought, and Mac thought, and some others of us thought, Tracy had no vision.

But Mac and I were wrong.  Tracy does have a vision.  Her vision isn't to move the Village forward.  It is, if you can forgive the split infinitive, to not move the Village forward.  Tracy's vision is to hold the Village where it is.  Nothing is to be demanded of Village residents and property-owners, except that they shouldn't roll through stop signs, and nothing is to be done to improve, or change in any way, the Village.  If it has faults, or limitations, or failings, they should remain that way.

I'm saying this as if it was purely negative, but I suspect Tracy doesn't think of it that way.  I suspect Tracy thinks the Village is in some sense quaint, and that it is a laid back and homey oasis amid change, progress, and gentrification.  And I think Tracy would say she's protecting Village residents and property-owners who are satisfied with their situations, and the Village as it is, and don't want anything demanded of them.  Or they're not financially disposed to make or even capable of making improvements, or even doing normal maintenance.  Tracy's Biscayne Park is a haven for the unambitious, and the less endowed.

When Mac and I talk with each other about Village properties, we have visions that are different from each other.  My view of the Village is that it is changing, as I accept and expect that it would, and that some of those changes include contemporary looks, and two-story houses.  I like it like that.  To me, it's part of the Village's eclectic theme.  Mac doesn't agree with me.  He likes a more old style or old time Village look.  He thinks properties should be kept up well, as I do, too, and he and I agree that landscaping should be improved, but Mac would otherwise not want the Village and its properties to look more modern.

Tracy goes further than that.  She's satisfied if nothing at all changes.  She does not support stronger Codes, or more Code compliance.  If the Village looks like what someone else would call run down or poorly kept, Tracy has no problem with that.  But that's not the absence of vision.  That is Tracy's vision.

Every month, every property in the Village receives a copy of The  Egret, a publication of the Miami Shores Chamber of Commerce.  Our most recent former Mayor, David Coviello, and the Mayor before him, Roxy Ross, produced without fail a Biscayne Park column, which the Mayor in Biscayne Park is always invited (and desired) to do.  Tracy refuses to produce a column.  I've reminded her about it.  And again, I made the mistake of thinking Tracy was failing to do part of her job as the main spokesperson for Biscayne Park, because she refused to produce the BP column.  But my mistake was thinking the Mayor in Biscayne Park should provide connection to our neighboring municipalities.  Based on my theory, any Mayor who didn't do that was failing to do part of his or her job.  But connecting with neighboring municipalities is not Tracy's wish.  She's much more isolationist.  She doesn't care about Miami Shores, or El Portal, or North Bay Village.  She has no use for them.  Where I think her refusal to produce a column for The Egret is a failure, I suspect Tracy would call it a success.

So I now think I was wrong about Tracy and what I interpreted as lack of vision.  I think Mac was wrong, too.  I think Brad Piper was wrong.  I think any of us who saw stagnation, and thought it represented apathy or disinterest, was wrong.  It's just laissez-faire.  Stagnation and unaddressed decay are not evidence of Tracy's lack of agenda for the Village.  They are her agenda.  And she's been unwavering about executing that agenda.  So I apologize for having misunderstood.

What Makes the World Go 'Round

I attend lots of cultural events.  I subscribe to most of the organizations whose presentations I attend.  I donate, beyond the cost of the subscription, to most of the ones to which I subscribe.  You have to donate.  Ticket sales provide less than half of what cultural/arts organizations need to survive.  Any arts organization that could do no more than fill a performance hall would go out of business.  And if they charged enough for tickets to pay their bills with the gate, no one would buy the tickets.  They'd be too expensive.  It's up to the devoted patrons to make up the difference with donations.  And grants from the Knight Foundation, the County, and other funders are critical.

The same is true of other settings.  The reason politicians don't want to have to rely only on public funding is that they want to spend much more money than the public will give them, either governmentally or by limited personal donations.  They rely heavily on the big donors.

One of the invariable features of public or community radio is that it relies on donations from listeners.  And the fund drives always make the point that it is a small proportion of the audience who donate to keep the station in business.

Someone recently told me about an amazing public museum somewhere in Arkansas.  From what I gather, it's a museum of Americana, from the earliest days to now.  The building is fabulous new architecture, and the collection is impressive.  The museum is free to the public.  This project was organized and paid for by Alice Walton (a Walmart heir) and several of her very rich friends.

Bill Gates, with support from Warren Buffett, have pooled a tremendous amount of money to effect public projects (education and otherwise) here and in other countries.

We see more modest versions of that here in BP, too.  We charge ourselves almost the highest ad valorem property tax rate we easily could, because we are a unique, and uniquely limited, community, and we need to support ourselves in unusual ways.  What we charge ourselves isn't enough, and even if we don't, for who knows what reason, decide to charge ourselves more, we make part of it up in other ways.  We charge ourselves non ad valorem fees, too.  We have to, because we need the money.  But even that isn't enough, which limits our ability to be a proper municipality.

One thing we have done, which is like the arts/culture organizations, or political candidates, is relied on the extra efforts, and extra devotion, of some of our neighbors.  We have public sculpture, because some of our neighbors have given of themselves financially to buy it, and donate it to the Village.  We have a Foundation, and it provides what it does, because many more of our neighbors make personal donations.  All of that is what has to happen, because taxes don't cut it, like ticket sales don't cut it.  Sometimes, public policy or vision is lacking.

Very recently, when I was on the Commission, I asked my Commission colleagues for a few things.  I asked them to task the Parks and Parkways Board to give us a unified median plan.  I also asked them to approve renaming the streets in BP, to reflect the old names these streets had, as well as the numerical names they have now.  I was disappointed, and surprised, to have had both requests declined.  To the extent that I could explore the feeling against these two requests, the answer seemed to be that the Village could not afford to improve the medians, or to buy new street signs.  But I wasn't asking for that.  I wasn't asking for money.

My vision was that we-- some BP residents, selected BP residents, many BP residents, maybe most BP residents-- would donate to create these improvements.  The Village recently improved a median in 114th Street.  But the money for the new plantings didn't come from Village coffers.  It came from personal donations.  I live on 119th Street.  There's a median in front of my house.  If there was a plan for what could and should go in that median, I would donate to provide it.  I'm sure a number of my neighbors would, too.

Maybe it's sad to say that many good things wouldn't happen without the extra dedication of a relatively few people, but that's generally true.  And we have those few people living right here in BP.  We have people who are interested and dedicated, and they show over and over how reliable and generous they are.  It's true that many people don't have that kind of vision, but that doesn't stop the people who do.  And it's those kinds of dedicated extra efforts that seem to make the world go 'round.

Can We Buy Back Guns? Should We?

No one disagrees that there's too much gun violence in this country.  No one disagrees that there's too much gun violence in south Florida.  Some people think the answer is that no one should have a gun.  Others think the answer is that many more people should have guns.

What we can all agree about is that too many people who shouldn't have guns do have them.  And they shouldn't have them in part because the use they intend for them is antisocial.

Gun buy-back programs work.  They have worked in Australia, Great Britain, and at least one of the Scandinavian countries.  The result of them is lower rates of gun crime.  Presumably, the theory is that some people who have guns have them for impulsive and marginal reasons, and that given the opportunity, those people would rather have some money than the gun.  That gets the gun out of the least serious and responsible hands, and off the street.  No one can have a problem with that.

We in Biscayne Park have our own problems.  Some of those problems have to do with crime.  Some have to do with our limited fiscal resources.  We do the best we can to confront crime.  We don't do the best we can to improve our fiscal status.  But we do something.

What if we started our own gun buy-back program, and we agreed to pay anyone with a gun some amount of money, and they would give us the gun.  We would then turn the gun over to law enforcement with more fiscal reserves than we have (probably the county), and they would destroy it.

I have no idea what a gun is in any sense worth.  I don't know what we would have to pay someone to get theirs.  What a gun is worth is whatever we would have to pay to get someone to sell it to us.

Should we designate a certain amount of Village money to be used to buy people's guns?  Someone would have to figure out what it would take to get someone to sell us their Saturday night special, or Glock, or AR-15.  What if we started out with a relatively small amount of money?  Let's say we started with $10K.  What would we have to pay someone to get them to give us their Saturday night special?  $50?  $100?  The kinds of people who would sell a Saturday night special to us are the kinds of people who didn't pay much for it.  Maybe they bought it on the street.  Maybe they stole it.  How much would we have to pay for an AR-15?  $500?  $1000?

If a program like that worked, maybe we could fund it with more than we have in Village coffers.  Maybe someone would make donations to our gun buy-back fund, to keep it going.

I'd be interested in a BP program like that.  I'd set aside Village money to start one, and see where it goes.

A Dumb Game.

It was a long Commission meeting tonight.  It lasted about two hours.  That doesn't seem long, except there was about 45-60 minutes of material.  No one I consulted was sure where the time went.

A presentation that could have taken a lot of time took almost no time.  The Consent Agenda was reasonably quick.  A few Commissioners commented that they expected a bigger crowd for discussion of the sanitation fee, and some of us in the audience were surprised, too.  But few were there, and there wasn't much to discuss.

The fact is, I was going to call this post "The Sublime, and the Ridiculous," to illustrate the contrast between Roxy Ross and the the four stooges.  It was frankly breathtaking.  Roxy was serious, detailed, exploratory, well organized, and clearly concerned about Village residents.  The rest were bumbling, inept, and ultimately had no meaning.  But I decided to focus on something else.  I wanted to focus on the discussion about the sanitation budget.

At one point, a propos of nothing in particular, Tracy "Big Mama" Truppman was trying to explain the increase in the sanitation charge, and she talked about how the Village was essentially padding the bill, for the sake of general Village finances.  She didn't want anyone to think they were being scammed, but just that this was a way to recover some money for Village staff expenses.  And she wasn't wrong about that.  She was right, and I agree with her.  She was addressing the Village's limited fiscal resources.

But here's the problem.  The Village has for some years now charged Village homeowners a property tax millage of 9.7.  For years, no one has wanted to change this millage.  Apparently, it feels consistent to Commissioners, and maybe to non-Commissioner residents.  It's the same number-- 9.7-- year after year.  But this number of mills-- 9.7-- has no meaning.  It's just a number.  The same number of mills every year is not the same tax to homeowners, and it's not the same revenue to the Village.  It's 9.7 mills, but that millage is applied to property values, which change every year.

Even if property-owners get a homestead exemption, which is what 80% of Village property owners do, the value of their properties can still change every year.  And they do.  If property values go down, as they did in 2008 and 2009, the tax goes down.  If they go up, as they do most years, the tax goes up.  The value in getting a homestead exemption is that if assessed values go up, the assessment on homesteaded properties, for taxation purposes, can only go up by 3%.  So a 9.7 mills taxation one year is a different tax than the same 9.7 mills tax another year.

The reason it's important to remember this is that when someone like Tracy "Big Mama" Truppman talks about fiscal constraints, which she would like her neighbors to know can be slightly ameliorated by a manipulation in the sanitation tax, the fiscal constraint is a self-inflicted problem.  It was Tracy and her stooges who did not increase the ad valorem tax rate above 9.7 mills.  They could have.  Any Commission could.  It's odd and a little grating to hear Tracy complain about fiscal constraints, when she has taken a role in imposing those constraints.  And that idiotic discussion took up a certain amount of time in tonight's meeting.  For one thing, we paid our attorney $165 an hour to listen to Tracy explain to her neighbors why she advocated for charging them an inflated sanitation fee, which was in consequence to deciding not to charge them the taxation rate they should have been paying anyway.  It was, as I said in the title of this post, a "dumb game."

There was one other dumb game during the Commission meeting tonight.  It was about board appointments.  I applied to be on the Public Safety Board, but suddenly, there were seven new applicants-- gee, I wonder how that happened-- so I withdrew my application.  I knew Tracy and the stooges wouldn't appoint me to the Public Safety Board-- they no longer had to, since there were these suddenly interested Village residents-- and I decided to apply to be on the Parks and Parkways Board instead.  It was my impression that that board needed members, and I needed something to do.

But I was wrong.  It turned out P&P already had what was essentially a full complement of members, except that Randy Wagoner's membership had lapsed, and he had to reapply.  Which he did.  So there was only one real opening, and Randy and I both applied.  There was great confusion about the count of which Commissioners voted to seat which one of us-- me and Randy.  The Clerk said twice that three Commissioners chose me for first choice, and two chose Randy.  I thought this was very odd, since it was announced that Roxy Ross, Big Mama, and Will Tudor chose me for a first choice.  Will Tudor gets confused sometimes as to what Big Mama demands that he do, but Big Mama never gets confused.  Why would she have voted for me as a first choice?  After some fumbling around, the vote was re-announced, and this time, Randy got three first place votes, and I got two.  So Randy was back on the Board, as he should have been.  What was funny about this, apart from the long time it took to count the votes, was that I later learned that Big Mama had asked for a recount.  It was as if Big Mama somehow knew in advance how the vote was supposed to come out.  I wonder how she knew.