These People Make Me Crazy.

Last week, one of my patients/clients/customers (whatever you want to call them) deposited into my bank account some money by Zelle.  But the amount didn't make sense.  It seemed like too much, and I wanted to understand for what (how many sessions; and I didn't remember how much I charge her -- what's her discount) she was paying me.  So I sent her a text message.  (Note to Self: You Know You Hate Text Messaging, So Don't Use It!)  That was last week, and I never heard back.  Nothing.

Yesterday, I got into a jam.  Something was going way over time, and my appointment with this same patient was coming up very soon, so I (stupidly) sent her another text message, to ask her if we could delay by an hour.  (E-mail takes longer and is unreliable, and I was on the phone with the other thing, so I couldn't call her.)  She didn't reply, but the logjam on the earlier disaster broke, and I didn't need the delay after all.  I sent yet another text message to say we were back on our original schedule.  I didn't hear back, but I no longer needed to.

Except she did not call (it's all virtual now) on time for her session, and I no longer knew what was going on.  (Except for the very disorganized and unreliable ones, I do not call patients to tell them they have an appointment, or to ask them why they're not there.  I'm their psychiatrist, not their parent.)  The exception I have made was when I had an office outside my home (which I no longer do), and I was there only for them, and if they were late, or not coming (but didn't call to tell me that), then I was sitting around wasting time that I needed to spend somewhere else doing something else.  So then, I would call.  Am I still expecting them soon, or can I leave?

I did finally hear from this patient, five minutes after our appointment time was over.  She would get back to me about the amount of the payment, she had been working outside (in Georgia) and lost track of time -- forgot about the appointment -- and had changed her phone number, but never told me about this.  So I was sending text messages to nowhere.

Anyway, why am I telling you this stupid story?

I've said this in an earlier post, and I'm going to repeat it: during the last week of qualifying for candidacy for the Commission, I sent Judi Hamelburg an e-mail.  I said I wanted to talk to her about something, and I gave her my phone number, which I'm pretty sure she already has anyway.  I did not hear back.  So, if I couldn't get a sense from her that she would make a good Commissioner, which was what I wanted her to reassure me she would, or at least could, then I was going to run.  We needed Tudor out, and I just wanted to know we could get a functional replacement.  If that was Judi, great.  It saves me time and trouble.  If not, then I have to step up.  But no; no word from Judi.  So I completed the process, and I ran.

Several weeks later, the idea of using this blog for an online Meet the Candidates event struck me.  It wouldn't be great, but it was as good as it was going to be.  I reached out to all the other candidates.  Mac and Art were all in.  I got nothing back from the William boys, but I wasn't surprised.  I was, however, surprised that I got nothing back, for a while, from Judi.  The "event" started, and then, I heard from Judi.  She wrote to me privately to say she works ("Some of us work" was how she put it), and she's too busy to be checking blog posts (and responding to her neighbors).  She then made one response, and she dropped out.  I should say that I corrected Judi.  I told her that it's not "some of us" who work.  It's all of us who work.   And I said it's not my job to tell her how to deal with her neighbors, but I suggested she either do the best she can, or enter a comment that she's too busy, and can't find the time to answer questions.

A few days ago, after the election, I wrote to all the "new" Commissioners -- as you know from the "Note To Self..." post -- and I asked all of them to consider giving careful and special attention to the medians.  I probably didn't expect a response from Ginny or Dan, who are disengaged anyway.  I got a response from Mac.  Nothing from Art, from whom I expected some sort of response.  And nothing from Judi.  She doesn't happen to like me?  Fine.  I wrote to her about my Village, our Village, her Village.  And she's now a Commissioner.  I want Judi to "rise to the occasion," as someone else put it.  I don't want strike three.  We've had a number of Commissioners who can't be bothered to respond to their neighbors/constituents.  It's not good.

Last night, we had two Commission meetings.  One was to hire a manager, who will work with Judi, and one of whose bosses Judi will be, and the other was to address a variance request.  It was denied, sent back for reworking, and it will come back, to the Commission of which Judi will be a member.  Judi was absent from both meetings.

We need Judi.  She needs to leave whatever orbit she's in, and get down here.  She has to respond to her neighbors.  She needs to show up.  We need her to make herself adaptive as a functioning part of a Commission.  She has to be a cog in a wheel now.  And if all of that doesn't happen, then we're back to spinning our wheels, and gradually continuing the decline we've been on for four years.

If you "know Judi" -- if you're a friend of hers -- please talk to her.  Reel her in.  Point her in this direction.  We really do need her.

Here Was My Choice for the Title of This Post:

My first thought was "Why Attend the Meeting When You Can Have the Stipend for Free?"  I thought of that title, because Will Tudor, once again, didn't attend the meeting.  Will's term is (mercifully) over, and he is more obvious than ever about not caring about the Village and the issues that affect it.

But that title is really just a punchline, and to use it doesn't require me to talk about any of the things that happened during these two Commission meetings.  (The first meeting was to talk briefly about the contract we want to offer to Mario Diaz to be our new manager, and the second meeting was about a variance.)

My second thought for a title was "The Queen is Retired: Long Serve the...King." There has never been, and there will never be, an elected official like Roxy Ross.  Tonight was her last business meeting.  She has given the Village all she has to give.  She has been intelligent beyond expectation -- seemingly beyond anyone's capacity -- she has been orderly, she has provided an unbelievable depth of perspective about any matter, she has been gentle, she has been compelling, she has been respectful when others were not respectful to her, and she has been relentless in advocating for the Village to be "A Better Place to Be."  (That's her slogan.)  She has raised the level of discourse, when others had the sense to follow her lead.  She's pure class.  And now, she's leaving the Commission.  She has made clear she's not coming back as a Commissioner.

But Mac Kennedy is here.  Boy, is he here.  He fills many parts of the gaping space left by Roxy's departure.  His breadth of consideration, and his incisive perspicacity, are more than impressive.  He's not subtle, and he'll fill a room.  But the quality of his contributions is overwhelming.  He nails every issue in a way that is reminiscent of Roxy Ross.  Like Roxy, there's nothing Mac hasn't thought of.  And also like Roxy, he's a deal-maker.  The variance request wasn't workable, but he encouraged the various parties, including the Village's P&Z board, to go back to various corners of the drawing board, and make some adjustments that could convert this unworkable offering to one that could fit nicely.  He made a couple of specific suggestions for how to fit the square peg into the round hole. It's not his job to solve everyone's problems.  But he likes to do that.  Mac thinks big.  And he thinks of everything.

Last week we sent Mac a message.  We gave him many more votes than we ever before gave any Commission candidate.  We thanked him for the several months he was on the Commission already, and we gave him the most extensive invitation we could to stay as long as he likes.  If we're smart, we'll keep doing that for Mac.  And for ourselves.

Did this meeting last too long?  Of course it did.  But it was a master class, and I'm glad I watched it.

Goodbye, Rox. And thank you.  And thanks, Mac, and welcome.  I assume Art Gonzalez was watching closely.  He was Zoomed in.  I hope he was taking notes.  I didn't see Judi Hamelburg in the audience tonight.

To Be Perfectly Frank, I'm Sick To Death of This.

It's not always the Biscayne Times, but often enough, it is.  A copy was left in my driveway this morning, and yup, they're at it again.  If the recent tag team of writers is Erik Bojnansky and John Dorschner (of former Miami Herald fame), it was JD's turn this time.  It seems no one can think of anything to say about BP without either lapsing into a rehashing of our past police problem, or frankly making that the whole focus.  And this is a problem that was recognized and dealt with, as best we possibly could.  Do we all wish the problem had never happened?  Of course we do.  But we deal with reality, not what-ifs, our fantasy lives, and utopian reveries.

The article was entitled "The Mess Left Behind by Dirty Cops," and the subhead was "Biscayne Park Police Corruption Legacy Lives On."  The main (intended?) point of the article was to talk about how damaging it is to be arrested for something, and the damage is gratuitous and cruel if the arrested person didn't even commit a crime, or there was little or no evidence that s/he did.  No one can disagree with that.

Did we have a bad culture in our police force during the few years in question?  Apparently so, or perhaps no doubt we did.  Dorschner has somehow named a few of most offending officers, but failed to turn up the name of Larry Churchman, who mysteriously has been able to fly under the radar during all of this.

The facts are these: we did wrong; all of us who are not on the police force didn't know we were doing wrong; the matter came to light (mercifully), and has been dealt with in the proper way, including incarceration of some police officers; innocent people have been hurt; we deeply regret all of that; some settlements have been arrived at, as Dorschner has the decency to point out.

As a partial aside, it's interesting that Dorschner's research led him to learn that in the past, the Village posted "Don't Even Think About Speeding" signs.  Many people who know nothing else about BP know about, and remember, those signs.  If those signs represented a statement of rigor, and a demand for safe driving, then the problems of which Dorschner writes, again and again and again, represent a grotesque caricature of ovepolicing.  I hope Dorschner won't be pleased to learn that the pendulum has swung the other way, so that what started out described as the righteous indignation of our current police Chief, Luis Cabrera, has also come to include the removal of those "Don't Even Think About Speeding" signs, and what many Village residents experience as underenforcement.  There's a small brigade of current Village residents who want the state to change 6th Avenue from four lanes to two in BP, because drivers drive too fast, and it seems to homeowners too dangerous.  Maybe with a little more enforcement, they wouldn't have to feel so imperiled on their own street.  (And I know perfectly well that BrambleWitch will say the speeding problem preceded Luis Cabrera, which it did.  Almost all of our speeding tickets have always been issued on 6th Avenue.  It's that kind of street.  That's why we need to be most careful and attentive about policing it.)

There are things -- not just one thing -- to talk about regarding BP.  Some are good news about us, and some are examinations of problems.  I'm really sorry, and very annoyed, that the local papers can only ever think of the one thing.  (Do you want to know how many articles the BT published about Tracy Truppman's reign of terror, and the unexplained mindless support she got from her Commission colleagues?  None.)  Are they out of material?  The news certainly isn't slow these days.  The election was Tuesday, today is Saturday, and I still don't know who will be the POTUS on 1/20/21.  Carlos Gimenez just unseated a Democrat for the US House of Representatives, and Donna Shalala just lost her seat.  Any talk about those campaigns (that's what they were when this issue was being planned and put together), and the effects of them locally and in the Biscayne Corridor?  Nope.  Just the dredging up of old and resolved -- as best we can resolve it -- BP news.  Is BP the only municipality in the country, or in Florida, or in south Florida, or in the Biscayne Corridor, that ever had a problem with bad policing?  No.  It's a critically important problem that has much broader implications about race, and about societies and civilization.  Would Dorschner like to tackle a topic that big, and that important?  Apparently not.  It's easier just to reprint resolved misery about BP.  Well, have a nice day, Mr Dorschner.  It's Saturday.  Kick back, relax, and enjoy yourself.

Did I Miscalculate? I Think Not. But Maybe.

On Wednesday morning, November 4, I received an e-mail which included the following: "I hope you realize your candidacy was probably the biggest factor in Will Tudor losing.  And I consider that a huge win for the village."

So I responded as follows (I'm leaving out various things, because they're not my point, and I don't want to identify anyone else who was part of this conversation.  I was not asked to identify them, and I didn't request permission): "I certainly consider that what I did might have helped [the election turn out as it did].  That was a very conscious and deliberate goal.  Whenever I spoke to anyone, and if they asked me what my goals were, I always started out with the necessity of displacing Tudor.  I would then talk about the necessity for real professional management, and that once we had an adaptive Commission, and a proper professional manager, we would be able to address the normal things municipalities have to address...But it was common that I let our neighbors know that the Commission that would most reliably address these things would have a majority of Mac, Art, and me.  The William boys were out of the question...and I didn't trust Judi.

"I'm not sorry I didn't finish in the top three [the writer's other lament].  I'm just mostly relieved Tudor didn't.  I have doubts about Judi, but I hope Mac and Art can bring her around.  And not being a Commissioner saves me a lot of time and trouble...(When I didn't win a seat in 2016, I said I won, and the Village lost.)  But Mac [loves] it...and he's great at it, and Art wants it, and I hope Judi will grow herself up."

I later wrote back to say: "I have to say it did occur to me I was sort of sacrificing myself for Mac and Art, by making myself the badder guy.  I realized some Village residents might listen to me rant about Tudor, decide they couldn't vote for me, but take to heart what I said, and vote for someone else who wasn't Tudor, like the two people I was recommending, apart from myself.  And really, that's very fine with me...I just wanted Tudor out.  I admit I was concerned about, and am still concerned about, Judi, but I'm hoping Mac and Art can get some control of her, if she won't control herself, and make her adaptive for Village/Commission functioning.  I think she could have something to offer, if she could just accept that there's a world outside herself."

The person wrote back to me to say: "Who knows about Judi.  She may actually get up there and rise to the occasion.  I really don't know her at all, but any time I've ever spoken to her...she started every sentence with the word 'I,' which of course is very telling."

And that was most of our e-exchange on 11/4.  At night on 11/4, there was a pathetic Commission attempt to interview two of what turned out to be the remaining three manager candidates.  On 11/5, there was another Commission gathering to interview the last of the three who hadn't dropped out yet.  And on 11/6, there was another meeting.  It wasn't clear to me what this meeting was supposedly for, but I didn't Zoom in.  I did, however, hear from my correspondent:

"So I just watched Judi at her first Commission meeting.  Art and Mac have their work cut out for them.  She was a total wackjob."

And I responded: "I know she is.  I told Mac and Art this wasn't going to be easy."  And the doubt and ambivalence began to creep in.  I added "I'm sorry I let you and the Village down."  I added "I wonder how many Village voters are going to say 'oops,' as they did after they elected Truppman, et al."

The perfectly fair question is whether I should say "oops," for being willing to be the bad guy, with the bad attitude, and not being Mr Sunshine, like Mac is, or the non-threatening gentleman who provides only reassurance and an image of steadiness, like Art.  The fact is that if anyone asked me what's Art's platform for the Village, I have not the slightest idea.  I just think he's solid and sensible, and he'll address matters in a logical and adaptive way that will keep focus on good functioning.  That's what we need now.  That, and Mac's boundless vision and energy, and intention to take a great neighborhood, and make it greater, and greater.  Mac is looking for imperfections, so he can perfect them.  Art will join him.

The gamble I took was to put myself on a suicide mission to keep Tudor off the Commission.  I would try to take him out, and I might take myself out with him.  And if that happened, then Judi was going to get in, which she did.  And we would all have to hope for the best, the best being that Judi would knock off her standard entirely personalized material, so she can focus on that part of the Village that exists outside her house.

Maybe I made a mistake.  Maybe I should have trusted the process, and my neighbors, and myself, and thought that if I was nothing but positive, as Mac was, then it/I would win the day.  And there were people along the way who told me that.  One of our neighbors, who reads this blog, said that it seemed to him that posts had changed in the several weeks before the election, and they were less informative, thought-provoking, and stimulating, and had become more biting, and about me.  I wasn't aware of that happening, but maybe it did.  As I said to my recent correspondent -- and I said the same things to Mac and Art -- I thought Judi could be made workable, focused, and adaptive.  I'd certainly like to think last night's reported performance is in the "too soon to tell" category.  Very soon, there will be a meeting, and a variance request will be on the agenda.  Someone wants to build something closer to the property line than the Codes permit.  If Judi is an inaugurated and seated Commissioner when that matter comes up, I hope she'll realize, or someone will be effective in telling her, that no one cares about the construction project she herself had 20 years ago, and the trouble she was given.  That's what we always get from Judi.  But she needs to think outside herself now.  It's not about her any more.  It's about the people with the shed, or the pool, or the Village's drainage project, or 6th Avenue (which is relatively far from where Judi lives), or whatever.  The VBP Commission is not the Judi show.  She needs to figure that out, and really understand it.

And if I made myself sufficiently unpalatable to have engineered this, then I apologize.  I hope Judi will settle down.  I hope she's just a bit full of herself right now, but after enough boring meetings with enough agenda items that are not about her, she'll realize what the task is.  I hope so.  I rely on her to figure this out.  We all do.

"Note to Self." (Well, Letter to Commission)

This letter was sent by e-mail, and the title was "Please Consider Our Medians.  They Should Be Our Treasure."

Heartfelt congratulations to the three of you who were just elected.  I'm very hopeful for a functioning Commission with a positive vision for the Village.

I really hope you will use part of your time to begin significant action regarding our medians.  What I have in mind is this: You would begin by tasking P&P to formulate a comprehensive (not just trees) scheme for the Village's medians.   The alternative is to have a landscape architecture company do this, but that's expensive.  I think our own dedicated neighbors can do it, and would be in the context of their commitment to the P&P board.

The scheme would involve choices of what plantings would go best in which medians, or more simply, a unified plan for all the Village's medians.  We have lots of trees, but we have no "understory."  There are no low trees or bushes, and the ground cover is a mix of poorly maintained grass, weeds, and raw dirt.  This is not a pleasure for Village residents, and it doesn't look good.  Also, the expanses of unworthy ground cover between trees not only doesn't inhibit people from driving across the medians, but it practically invites them.  So I hope that you will task P&P to devise and present a plan.

Part of that plan can be an expansion of the Village's public art program.  This could certainly include things like typical sculptures.  This morning, I was walking by Jorge Marinoni's house, and I noticed a sphere he made.  The basis of it is concrete, and he's decorated it with lots of ceramic tiles, so it looks like a mosaic.  It had interesting designs and color combinations on it.  It struck me immediately that something like that, either sitting on the ground in the medians, or perhaps, more dramatic, elevated on a pole or a pedestal, would add magnificent beauty to the medians.

I know what you're immediately thinking: but it would cost...  Nope, I don't think so.  First of all, if we had a scheme everyone knew about, then Village residents could donate the money to improve their own, or any other, medians.  It's true that PW would have to do the installations, but that's a one time task.  And I would hope that P&P would choose native materials that, once rooted, will not require much or any maintenance, except for occasional pruning (which we already don't do adequately, and I hope you'll see to it that we start a proper maintenance program, too).  Also, some medians already have concrete benches which Jorge made.  They were all funded by the Art Advisory board, the Chairperson of which is Amy Raymond.  She has worked hard and successfully to take up collections, and sell things, to be able to reimburse Jorge for the costs of his materials (he says he has no interest in making a profit from this), and we can continue and expand this approach.

So don't forget about the medians.  They make us unique more than does anything else about the Village, and they're in your hands now.

Fred

What I forgot to add to this was a reference to our longstanding friendly competition among BP homeowners for the best holiday decorations.  Mac Kennedy just expanded that friendly competition by adding recognition for best landscaping, and best Halloween decorations.  I can't see any reason we wouldn't also have a friendly competition for best medians.

The New Math

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.

This Can't All Be Because of Luigi Di raimondo. Can It?

One of the things I can track about this blog is views.  That is, how many times, in a day (a "day" starts at 8:00 PM, and it goes until 8:00 the next night), the day before, in the past month, and since the blog was begun (in 2011), anyone has viewed this blog.

For stretches of time, which can be days or a week or more, there is no new post.  (And when there is a new post, I send out an announcement.  The circulation for those announcements is either about 90 recipients, or it's about 185 recipients, depending on the topic of the post, and what else is going on in the Village -- and how many people I think might be interested.)

When there is no new post, and there hasn't been a new post for at least a day or so, and there is no lingering conversation in the comment section, it is common that there are anywhere from 25 to 50 views per day.  When there is a new post, and depending on whether I send the new post announcement to the smaller circulation or the larger one, there are up to anywhere from 150 or so to 200-300 views.

Two days ago, there were 819 views in one day.  Nothing remotely like that has ever before happened.  Yesterday, there were 482 views.  There are 356 views so far today, and it's now 12:15 PM.

It's a little shocking, and very hard to understand.  The very recent new variable is Luigi Di raimondo, who has entered very many (and frankly somewhat wacky) comments.  He's stimulated some reaction -- initially mostly from me, when I tried to engage him, respond respectfully, and calm him down -- and clearly, he and others have been following these conversations.  But over 1600 views in 2 1/2 days?  Not what I would ever expect.

Of course, there was also a flurry of blog posts -- one a day for almost a week -- in the run-up to the election.  So maybe that relative frenzy caused more people to check more often.  There was a record number of comments to two posts in a row -- a total of 95, which is unheard of -- but that activity was mostly before the past two days.  And much of the commentary came from Luigi.  And got responded to.  Maybe interested, but silent, readers were checking in to see if there were more comments regarding those posts.

So it's a curiosity.  Just a flood of people suddenly looking for information, or opinion, or a cock fight, or something.  I guess that's part of what blogs are for.

A Possible Win For Everyone. Although "Not Your Father's Political Campaign."

Today was election day, and the results are in for the Commission of BP.

I am frankly pleased and proud to say that Mac Kennedy came in first, with far more votes (953) than the second place finisher.  Mac worked very hard on this campaign, he made very many contacts, and gave lots of Village residents a reason to vote for him.  Mac visited essentially every home in BP, and he left a door hanger.  Whenever he spotted anyone, he spoke to them.  There was little more he could have done.

The second place finisher was Art Gonzalez, with 657 votes.  And this is where things begin to be a little odd.  Art is in my opinion very solid, and I believe he has a lot to offer the Village and its Commission.  Art essentially didn't campaign.  I'm told -- I did not ask Art about this -- that he hired some political campaign organization to do things like finding places for him to place signs, of which he had many (although not as many as Mac).  On election day, and even though it was understood that most voters voted by mail or otherwise in advance, Art was essentially not at the polls.  Mac and I were, for about 12 hours.  Art came by for no more than literally a few minutes, said hello to me and Mac, and Judi Hamelburg, who was there off and on, and left.  Although I'm glad Art will be on the Commission, it's a bit of a mystery how he got so much support.

The third place finisher was Judi Hamelburg, with 635 votes.  It was never clear to me what constituted Judi's campaign.  She announced her candidacy, which clearly intrigued all her friends.  She somehow persuaded lots of people to allow her to put her campaign signs in their yards.  (It almost appears linearly that the number of yard signs in the Village correlates with the number of votes.  Pathetic, but seemingly true.)

So, that's our new Commission.  I don't know what to expect from Judi, and I frankly don't have tremendous confidence, but if she turns out to be a good, or good enough, Commissioner, the Village will be able to function, and we'll be OK.  Ginny O'Halpin and Dan Samaria are completely lost.  Mac Kennedy has wonderful qualities -- especially if he can stop trying to prove how good he is all the time -- and I expect good things from Art.  The question, then, is whether Judi will be able to recognize and follow Mac's and Art's lead, or whether she'll sink to an aimless and corrosive alliance with Ginny and Dan.  So, let's hope Judi will get hold of herself, or her friends will counsel her, and she'll be able to pay attention to the matters at hand, and participate in adaptive decision-making.

The rest of  the field -- the other three candidates -- don't really matter, but there are some interesting outcomes.  The other incumbent, Will Tudor, got 408 votes.  He, like Art and Judi, did not campaign, and he, also like Art and Judi, had a noteworthy number of yard signs.  (Is that what it's really about?  Are voters so uncritical and disinterested that they would vote for someone simply because they saw a lot of yard signs with that candidate's name on them?  I'm afraid it does appear so.)  And Will is an incumbent.  That fact often carries some weight with voters, even if it's sometimes the only fact they know about a candidate.  But apart from whatever procedure, or negotiation,  resulted in various people (some of whom can't or don't vote, and some of whom might not have been aware that Will's sign was in their yard) allowing Will's sign to exist in their yards, Will did no campaigning.  How this results in 408 votes is frankly beyond me.  And it's also worth noting that apart from the fact that Will is an incumbent, he has contributed absolutely nothing to the Commission or to the Village.  He kept quiet, always flew under the radar, and offered no initiatives.  He provided very reliable support for Tracy Truppman, when she was ravaging the Village, and his alleged fiscal prowess was not reflected in anything he did on the Commission.  He was so uncritical as to be entirely silent while large amounts of money were being wasted.  So again, 408 votes?  Curious.

I  myself received 394 votes.  I was the only candidate who campaigned in the usual sense of the concept.  I knocked on almost every door in the Village, waited long enough for people to answer the door, if they were home and disposed to answer their door, had sometimes extensive conversations with Village residents, and left a campaign flyer, with my home phone number on it, even if no one was home, or if no one answered.  There were many Village residents who told me that I was the only candidate to visit them (which was technically true, if you don't count Mac's very brief stopovers to leave a door hanger to have been a visit), "during COVID," and because of that fact alone, they would vote for me.  It's fair to say that I always asked them also to vote for Mac and Art, whom I considered the other most likely adaptive and productive prospective Commissioners, and perhaps they did.  But I didn't place many yard signs.  (Hmm.)  I perhaps mistakenly -- Mac has told me it was a mistake -- did not consider asking people if I could place a sign in their yards to be a high priority.  And it does, as I have already said, appear that signs=votes.  So maybe I sabotaged my own campaign.  And of course, I do have a personal style that is not necessarily everyone's cup of tea.  So maybe there were a significant number of votes I couldn't have gotten no matter what I did.

What's most curious of all is William Abreu's accomplishment.  He scored 300 votes.  William Abreu is entirely unknown in the Village.  He has no profile as a Village resident, and no relevant experience.  He did no campaigning of any kind.  The number of yard signs with his name on them is zero.   When I was getting ready to leave the polls tonight, shortly before they closed, Mac Kennedy asked me, and Dan Schneiger, how many votes we thought William would get.  Amazingly, Dan and I had essentially the same thought.  Dan thought 16, and I thought 15.  Mac thought 8.  I figured William would get his own and his wife's votes, and maybe a few from very close neighbors.  But 300?  It would be interesting to know who those 300 people are, and to ask each of them what it was about William Abreu and the existence of his name on the ballot, that led them to vote for him for Commissioner of their Village.

But the fact is, the outcome may be good all around.  For me, the number 1 goal was removing Will Tudor from the Commission.  His was destructive dead weight.  And that goal has been achieved.  Also, I offered myself as a Commissioner, but I'm very busy, and all other things being equal, being a Commissioner is not in itself an important ambition for me.  So, Tudor is out, and I don't have to be a Commissioner.  This may be a win-win situation.  Whether or not it's a win for the Village depends on Judi Hamelburg, and whether or not she can make of herself an adaptive Commissioner.  I hope she can.  We shall all see.

I FOUND MY LIST!!

I had a feeling that list was around here somewhere, and I found it.

We were talking in a recent comment section about public art, and how we acquired it.  Chuck Ross brought up the matter of public sculptures, of which the Village now has three major ones, and some very minor ones along the walkway to the recreation building.

Chuck's assertion was that the projects were mine, and even that I personally paid most of the cost for one of the sculptures.  I admit that the idea was originally mine, but I did not pay most of the cost for any of them.  I, and Chuck, and a few others of us, agreed on what sculptures we thought might go well in the Village, and we took up a collection.  For the first sculpture, I think there were only six donors.  I wasn't sure how many donors there were for the second one, but that was the list I found.  There were 30.  For the last sculpture, for which Chuck might have the list, I think there were about 50 donors.  We didn't cover the whole Village, but we went partially door to door for that one.

Not everyone donated the same amount.  We just asked for donations, and we didn't request a specific amount or donation level.  One person -- I think I was with Chuck, and that he would remember this -- gave us pocket change, which he then increased when his wife scolded him.  Some gave us notes (10s, 20s).  Most gave us checks.  And we asked donors to make the checks to the Village, with a memo of "sculpture," or some other obvious identifier.  No one asked for a receipt, and we didn't offer any.  We were all neighbors, and it was an honor system.

I laid out the money for the first two sculptures.  They are Bilhenry Walker's "Triax Alpha V," which is the smaller metallic-colored one in Griffing Park, and Rob Lorensen's "X's and O's," which is the red one in front of the log cabin.  Chuck laid out the money for Steven Zaluski's "The Ballplayer," which is the larger one in Griffing Park, just on 6th Avenue, not far from the American flag.  Once all the collecting of donations was complete -- or as complete as we thought we could get it to be -- the Village wrote a reimbursement check to whichever of us had laid out the money.  We banked all the cash donations with the Village, too.  If you're skeptical or angry, and you want to accuse me or Chuck of stealing money, there's an opportunity here to do it (maybe we paid much less for a given piece than the donations represented; maybe we just pocketed the occasional cash donation), but we were in fact scrupulously honest, no one cheated anyone, and the fact is that whoever laid out the money got much less reimbursement than they wanted.  Whoever laid out the money made by very far the largest donation.  We just wanted to do it, and we were willing to take the risk, and the loss.  And I don't think either Chuck or I regret it.

Anyway, I kept a list of donors for "X's and O's."  I'm not going to say who donated how much, which, as I said, was not remotely uniform, but I'll tell you who donated anything:

Lynn Fischer, Doug and Felicia Tannehill, Dan Keys, Andrew Olis, Harvey Bilt, Chester Morris, my daughter, Steve and Suzie Taylor, Helga Silva, Dale Blanton and Louie Bowen, David Coviello, Gage Hartung, Audrey Earhardt, Supreme Dorvil, Luca Bronzi, Don Weiss, David and Gloria Wilder, Gary and Barbara Kuhl, someone named Evans, one of the Beltrans (probably Michael, the son, but I don't remember), Linda (I forgot her last name) and Consuelo Moreno, Jose DeArmas, Milagros Gutierrez, Drew Dillworth, Tracy Truppman, Valerie Behet, someone whose last name is Bopadilla, and Chuck (and Rox) and I.

One of our managers -- I forget if it was Ana Garcia or Heidi Siegel -- donated to one of them.  They gave back to us some of the money we paid them.

Some of those people were repeat donors.  Dan Keys and Andrew Olis and Chester Morris and Dale and Louie and Chuck and I donated to all of them.  Some always gave more (hundreds, or thousands, of dollars).  Audrey Earhardt has since died.  Andrew Olis, who donated to all three, has moved away.  So has Supreme Dorvil.

And as I said, even more of your neighbors donated to "The Ballplayer."  That's why the Village now has these public art pieces: because your neighbors wanted to improve the Village, were willing to give their own money in the effort, and because three different Commissions welcomed the idea of public art.

If it had been up to you, perhaps you would have chosen different pieces.  Maybe you can find one that's here, and you don't even particularly like it.  But public art makes the Village a better place, doesn't it?  (Don't you like the mural at the recreation center?  I, and Chuck, and any of us individually, had nothing to do with that.  It was just the result of momentum.)  The fact is that when some of us went door to door to request donations for "The Ballplayer," I remember at least one person who didn't particularly like it.  (I had a photograph of it, and I would show neighbors what it was I was asking them to fund.)  So I said this project was already under way, but if the neighbor liked something else better -- there was mention of something "natural" or "organic," with stones and things like that -- I would be more than delighted to get to work finding and acquiring such a piece, and join the neighbor in making that our next project.  But the neighbor didn't have any further ideas.  It's a lot easier to criticize than it is to have ideas, take responsibility, and create.

But there you have it.  The Village has a small public art program, and those of your neighbors are why.  If you want a more extensive program, that, too, can be made to happen.  I will repeat now what I said at the time.  And for a frame of reference, no single sculpture (or mural) the Village now owns cost more than $6500.  There are about 1200 homes in the Village.  And about 3000 residents.  If each home contributed $5 or $6 per year (I said five dollars or six dollars per household per year; how many servings of Starbucks coffee is that?  Two?), the Village could have a nice new sculpture every year or two.

It's your Village.  It'll be whatever you want it to be.  On the cheap, too, at least for public art.  There's outdoor sculpture that costs more, or a lot more, or vastly more, than we spent.  But it's not necessary.  We did well for not much money.

Hello neighbor,

So many of you have asked me about the flowers on my campaign signs for Biscayne Park Commissioner, I thought I should explain. I’ll cover that in a minute, but first some quick, final election news.

I’m a bit old-school about elections. I feel a genuine patriotism about them, which was steeped into my brain as a kid. I have the fondest memories of election day in my elementary school, when my mom would take my little brother and me by the hand into the booth when she voted. She would let us each click a lever for her, which was a thrill even without completely understanding what was happening. After “we” voted, she sent us into school with some extra change to buy something at the bake sale during recess. Maybe it was the promise of homemade brownies that made elections so exciting then.

Now, even without the bake sale, I still love elections. Nothing makes me feel so genuinely proud to be an American as casting my vote. Wearing my “I Voted!” sticker makes me walk a bit taller all day. This election, for the second time, I also get to see my name on the ballot for Biscayne Park Commissioner, which is a special thrill of its own. I am proud to volunteer my time, skills, and energy to my community, and I am humbled by the support I’ve received the past few months while campaigning. I was also happy to be challenged by so many questions from neighbors who share my concerns about our future.

While I’d be remiss if I didn’t make a final request for your vote, I’m really writing this email to say thanks if you already voted or to encourage you to vote on Tuesday at the Rec Center. Regardless of whether you vote for either of the Williams, Judi, Fred, Art, or me—or whatever combination makes sense to you—please, just vote on Tuesday.

For those concerned about safety, be assured that the village has taken every precaution to make voting easy, fast, and safe. The entire Rec Center and park are closed to all activities except voting, and the building has been sanitized. And, the police will be spending a lot of extra time in the area, too. The only minor annoyance will be the gauntlet of supporters handing out fliers. I don’t know what the other candidates will be doing on Tuesday, but I’ll be at the polls all day … across the street, out of your way.

Now, about those flowers on my yard signs. I’m an avid gardener, and my husband, Dan Schneiger, and I created a butterfly garden out on our street for kids to enjoy during COVID. That’s how we met so many of you this year, which was a lot of fun during a stressful time. In much the same way, those silly plastic flowers on my yard signs are a small way to bring a smile in the final days of a particularly stressful election.

As a small gesture to the community, Dan and I will be passing out Milkweed seeds on Tuesday at the Rec Center. Whether you vote then or you’ve already voted (and regardless of who you vote for), stop by, say hello and pick up seeds for your garden. As we close out a rough year, I think we’d all benefit from enjoying something as simple as a flowering plant that attracts butterflies into our lives and into our “Oasis in the Heart of Miami.”

Cheers to BP 2021!

Mac

MacDonald Kennedy

Candidate for Re-Election as Biscayne Park Commissioner