When It Rains, It Pours?

What do you think of this sculpture?  It's 6 1/2 feet tall, made of aluminum, and the silver figure turns on the black base.

The sculptor is Steven Zaluski, and he's well-known and well-represented in contemporary American sculpture.  He was in town for Art Basel/Art Miami, and he had this piece with him.  Do you picture this sculpture at the entrance to the Recreation Center, or some place else in the Village?

The piece was priced at $12K.  Steve will sell it, in fact has sold it, to me and Chuck Ross for $6K.  Here's what we'd like to do with it.  We'd like to have any and all Village residents who like this sculpture, and would like the Village to keep it, reimburse us.  We'd like enough reimbursement that each of us would pay a normal share of the total cost.  If every house in the Park, including Chuck's and mine, donated $5, we'd each have paid $5, and the Village keeps the sculpture.  If half the houses donated $10, or a quarter donated $20, or a tenth of us donated $50 per house...

If not many people are interested, or not many people have $5-$50 to donate for public art, then Chuck and I will sell the piece to someone else to get our $6K, or more, back.  Neither of us feels like making a $3000 donation right now.

Let me know, or let Chuck know, that you would like to contribute and what your maximum contribution would be.  Don't give anyone any money yet.  We just want to see if this can work.  If it can, we'll let you know, and then you can pony up.  Part of this project working is that the Commission would agree to accept this piece for the Village, if the piece was offered.  That question will be asked at the January 7 meeting.  If the Commission agrees, Chuck and I will try to arrange that the sculpture will be displayed in front of the recreation center, so we can all "live with it" for about six months, to see if people like it enough to pay for it.

This opportunity is unrelated to the other impending campaign, to acquire the Lueza "Tower of Seasons."  We are also awaiting delivery of Lorenson's "Red Headlong," which I'm told we should expect in January.

Thank You, Dan.

I met Dan Dial when I was campaigning for Commissioner.  I was going door-to-door, and Dan happened to be home.  In fact, he had just arrived home when I got there, and he was unloading groceries from his car.  Dan was receptive, and he even allowed me to put a campaign sign in his yard.  I had never met Dan, and he wanted to know the standard things about me and my campaign.

Dan also allowed me to take his e-mail address.  I can't remember if he and I discussed this blog when we met, but at some point, he permitted me to include him on the list of people to whom I send regular notices of new posts.

I have come not to expect responses from the vast majority of blog readers.  Occasionally, someone posts a comment, and sometimes, someone will reply in writing separately, just to my e-mail address.  But most people either read the posts with interest, or they don't, and I don't hear from them.

Dan has on occasion replied to me privately.  I find this curious, since he and I do not have any relationship other than our one face-to-face meeting.  But I'm pleased to have made the connection, and to get the feedback, and I have come to think of Dan as a nice guy and an interested neighbor.

It would be fair to say I was quite surprised to have heard from Dan on December 7.  On the 6th, I had published a post about how one of Cecilia Lueza's sculptures apparently captivated people, and I indicated that I would consider that sculpture to be the next acquisition target.  Dan wrote to me to ask "How do I contribute to the purchase of the sculpture?"

Wow.  Out of nowhere.  I don't think Dan and I had discussed public art at our one meeting.  If we did, it would certainly not have been the main topic of discussion.  Since I didn't know Dan before, he had not been approached and was not a contributor to the Walker we have or the Lorenson we're awaiting.  He had just read the post, seen the Lueza, presumably liked it (or just liked the idea of public sculpture in BP), read about how easy and inexpensive it can be for us to acquire public art if we all chip in, and offered to participate.  He didn't say how much he had in mind to contribute or ask how much was requested.  The marked generosity was in the unexpected offer, and the willingness to take this kind of role in the Village.

The numbers I used for illustrative purposes in the blog post were $6.75 and $27.  I don't know if one of those was Dan's intention, or if he would contribute $50, or $100.  I told him I wanted to try community-wide contributing before I resorted to hitting up individuals.

The Lueza will be presented to the Commission on January 7.  If the Commission agrees to accept this piece if it's offered to the Village, I will go about trying to raise the money.  I'll ask the Commission about the possibility of a Village-wide appeal.  But one way or another, I will let Dan know it's time.  It's clear he will make himself available to contribute, and I, as a Village resident, an art-lover, and a Commissioner, will be grateful to him.

And this is not to overlook the others of our neighbors who, like Dan, seem always to make themselves available to help out, or to "contribute."  There is a distinct and growing list of them.  In the name of all of them, thank you, Dan.

Thank You, Jared.

You've heard this ad nauseam.  You've heard it from Ray Atesiano, you've heard it from Chuck Ross, and you've heard it from me.  If you see something that doesn't look right, call the police.

A couple of weeks ago, Jared Susi didn't like what he saw.  Someone was driving oddly, going too slow, looking around, weaving in the street.  So Jared did the right thing.  But first, he did the wrong thing.

Jared approached the driver to ask him what he was doing, and if he had any questions or needed anything.  I'm happy to report that the driver drove away, and did not accost, attack, or shoot Jared.

But Jared still didn't like what he had seen, and he had a sneaking bad feeling about it.  So he called our BP police.  When our police finally tracked the driver to his BP destination, they found a meth lab and a marijuana distribution system inside.  They found money, watches, and two guns.

The police made arrests, and we are now free of two felonious renters.  And their customers or distribution agents.

Now Jared.  Please don't confront people.  You're bigger than I am, but you might not be bigger than mischief-makers.  And if they're intent on making serious mischief, maybe they're carrying guns.  We want to keep you as a neighbor, Jared.  We're not interested simply in remembering you.

Having said that, and scolded you (you do feel scolded, don't you, Jared?), let me express my, and our, gratitude for your keen sense of something that was just not right, and for your quick call to our police.  You hit the nail precisely on the head.

Reasons Why Not

As a doctor, I have many patients who like to look things up on the internet.  One of the favorite topics to explore is medications, and the range of possible side effects.  At least the range according to whoever lists this stuff on the internet, or from the drug companies.  And boy, what a range of possible side effects there always is.  If you look at the list, and you believe it, and you assume that every listed possibility is likely to happen (to you), you would never take any medication, for anything.  It would be an act of self-destructiveness to ingest these toxins.  And I should probably be ashamed of myself for suggesting such treatment.  I must be more sadist than helper.  The result is that it takes me a lot longer to talk people out of misinformation and unnecessarily imposed resistance than it would to make and explain the treatment suggestion.

Similarly, if you take an interest in nutrition, and especially if you take an avid interest, or an overcautious interest, you will quickly discover that there is nothing at all that's guaranteed safe to consume.  Once you subtract all animal products, all foodstuffs grown with fertilizers and pesticides, all GMO foods, and avoid an imbalance of any nutrients, you can no longer eat.  And if you try to eat anyway, someone will tell you of the dangers of processing foods, like by cooking them, and you'll struggle with a raw food diet.  If you get careful enough, you will die of starvation.

I assume you bought the house you inhabit.  You probably own a car, too.  And clothes.  Are there any potential dangers in any of these possessions?  Could any of the components of the structure harm you in any way?  Were they all responsibly and sustainably sourced and processed?  You don't use chemicals and cleaning compounds by any chance, do you?  What about the car?  I hope you won't say it runs on gas.  I hope we don't have to talk about the dangers of petroleum and the industry behind it.  What fibers are in the clothes you wear?  Please say you don't dry clean.

To be honest, I still don't really get why airplanes work.  I know they do, having flown on them many times, and knowing intellectually what the theory of aerodynamics is, but it's so improbable.  Airplanes are so big and heavy.  It doesn't make sense that they should be able to levitate from the ground. and at a taxi speed of less than 100 miles per hour.  There's nothing about this that makes any sense at all, except that it happens as predicted, constantly and invariably.

Yes, reality.  Despite all the warnings, medications help more than they harm.  We live long and adequately healthy lives, despite the ongoing assassination attempts perpetrated by the food industry.  Almost none of us are harmed by the vast array of possible allergens and other toxins that surround us all the time.  (We're not going to discuss the petroleum industry.  You won't like where the discussion goes.)  And airplanes take off, cruise, and land precisely as conceptualized.  It's almost creepy how well all the things that have every reason to fail, work.

It's worth keeping reality in mind when some of us can think of every reason, or potential reason, why not.  Why not to consider annexation?  Do you want the long list, or the short list?!  There are so many questions, and so many not yet answered, as about so many things in life.  There are potential flaws, faults, and crises lurking around every corner.  It's unimaginable that any idea is not a terrible one.  You want to know why not?  Ask people with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, or people who won't drive, on the highway or anywhere else.  They'll tell you why not.  Nothing good can come of stepping foot outside your house.  It's dangerous enough staying inside your house.  What with microwaves, televisions, computers, cell phones, and who knows what other enemies.  Look at the list of possible medication side effects.  Listen to the doomsday nutrition mavens.  Let me explain to you why airplanes can't really fly.  Life is fraught.  Every possibility is fraught.  Nothing is safe, and certainly not reliable.  If you pay close enough attention to every imaginable adverse possibility, you will become completely paralyzed.  That's a hell of a way to live.

A Rock and a Hard Place

There's a partial way out of our predicament.  At best, we can't do necessary improvements, but with adjusting, we can stop losing money, if only for now.  And we don't have to raise taxes or annex any other tracts to do it.

We've lost about $1M in reserves since 2001, or about 12 years.  That's an average of just over $80K per year.  Our Manager costs us a little more than that.  And the Assistant to the Manager costs about 50% more.  If we scrap them both, we stop losing money, and we actually build slowly.  And we can even keep our Clerk and all of our other office staff.  I mention this, because this is an idea floated by some BP residents: go back to a time without professional management, or at least get rid of the assistant to the manager.  There may even be some who observed that for about two months, between managers, the Village Clerk was Acting Interim Manager, suggesting to those people that perhaps a Village Clerk has the same capability as a Manager.  And can hold down several responsibilities, and the full time jobs of two people, at the same time and single-handedly.  Yikes.  Those people would have to explain, of course, why we went to such trouble to choose the best Manager we could find from a list of applicants, if it really didn't matter, and just any responsible person could have done it, in her spare time.  I mean, there's nothing wrong with this picture, is there?

I always have the same reaction to suggestions to get rid of things: why were they put there in the first place?  It always feels to me like deciding the chewing gum in the dike doesn't need to be there, or that the loose thread should be pulled out, or that some regulation seems on the surface to be just a problem.

Dan Keys says the suggestion was initially his.  He made his suggestion up to a decade or more ago.  Finally, a Charter Review Committee considered the matter, among other Charter matters, and decided to agree with Dan.  We need professional management.  I don't know of any municipalities that don't have professional managers.  So the Charter Review Committee agreed with Dan, the then Commission agreed with the Charter Review Committee, and the general residents of the Park agreed with the Commission.  The December, 2005, election resulted in universal agreement that we need a manager.  That's equal to concluding that our previous form of management, having lay Commissioners manage professional departments, wasn't working.  It appears there was unanimous agreement about that.

So here's the hard part.  It becomes difficult for us now to try to address our fiscal problem by dismantling a management system upon which we all agreed and which has helped us greatly.  Some have wondered if we could compromise by using professional management, but not paying them very much.  Presumably, our own bosses, clientele, or customers would like it if we would work cheap or free, too, but that doesn't appear to be how it goes.  People who work, and who do a good job, expect reasonable compensation.  They deserve it, too.

There's another problem with trying to reduce expenses.  It's related to the problem of trying to raise taxes.  We have a fiscal system that is not contained.  Expenses increase faster than revenues do, so in the end, we will lose the race against an unbalanced budget.  We can try to reset our deficit by lowering expenses some, or by increasing ad valorem residential tax revenue some, but expenses will still increase over time faster than revenues do, so it will just take a little longer for us to lose.  And we can't reduce our expenses to nothing, or have vendors and employees pay us, or increase taxes indefinitely, so sooner or later, the "game" will be over.

We're left with two choices.  Either have a neighborhood where property values, and taxes, are so exaggerated that they will forever exceed expenses, like Golden Beach, or take on a commercial component, as all other municipalities, except Golden Beach, do.  We simply have no place else to turn.

The reason I bring this up, again, is that we are about to try to solve some of our functional problems.  And solving our problems is the right thing to do.  To do it, we have to spend money.  But we don't have any.  Right now, that's our biggest problem.

I am not only available, but frankly eager, as always, to be shown the error of my thinking here.  What did I miss?

Not to Be Morbid, or Mercenary, But Before You Go...

I grew up on Miami Beach, and I've spent almost half my life there, off and on.  My parents grew up there, too.  The last time I moved back to south Florida was 2005, and I'm not leaving again.  I thought about moving back to the Beach, but it didn't work out.  House prices were way too high, and the Beach wasn't the same Beach on which I grew up.  It no longer felt like "home," for the first time in my life.  I have no further special feeling for Miami Beach, sad to say.  So someone put me onto Biscayne Park, I loved it, and I'm here to stay.  I feel very devoted to the Park, and I've invested here.  It's more than just the house.  I care about the Park, and I've made it my business to give of myself beyond just paying taxes, to enhance the neighborhood.  Here's a quote from Tony Goldman, a community activist who led the revitalization of Wynwood: "Feed the neighborhood, and it will feed you."  Great, huh?  I love this quote, and the sentiment behind it.

The first person, but not the last person, who made the following suggestion to me was Lee Evett, one of the applicants for the Manager position we filled last month: Get people to remember Biscayne Park in their wills.  This is a very cool idea.  There are people here, and in other communities, whose main "home," and "family," are their community, more than their relatives, of which some people have few or none.  So why not?  Why not leave something of yourself, more than just the memories your neighbors will have of you, to your Village?  After all, your neighbors will move away or die, too.  The Village stays.

And it doesn't have to be as specific or as concrete as part of your estate.  Although there's certainly nothing wrong with including Biscayne Park as a beneficiary in your will.  It could be a contribution to public art that will be here after you've moved away or died.  Or, when we begin log cabin renovations, it could be bricks we'll "sell," or a plaque with your name on it.  You wouldn't like our restored meeting room to be the ________________ Meeting Room or Auditorium?  What about the ________ Family Wing for the addition we'll have to build?  Your name on a plaque outside the Manager's office?  Or the Police Chief's?  Or just a quiet bequest to your Village, the one where you may have lived for several decades?  How about one of the larger medians, which could easily be _____________ Park?  Arthur Griffing's name is on a plaque in the park across 6th Avenue from the log cabin.  Ed Burke's name is on the sign at the central park and recreation center.  And neither of them "gave" the Village anything.

Think it over.  Talk to your family or your tax advisor.  Make an appointment with our Manager, Heidi Shafran.  You'll be very proud of yourself, and your neighbors will be very grateful to you.  And all with very good reason.


Disclaimer: I am not personally authorized to offer or promise anyone anything.  I have a sneaking suspicion, however...  It's certainly worth your inquiring.

Or Maybe We Should All Be Living in Miami Shores

It's true it costs a lot more to live in Miami Shores.  It costs more to buy a house, and more to pay the property tax on that house.  And that's not all that costs more in Miami Shores.

We and the Shores share a system of funding solid waste disposal.  Each of us charges a separate fee, not part of the ad valorem tax bill, to pay for garbage pick-up.  This fund is self-contained, so that no more goes into the fund than it costs to run the service.  And supposedly, whatever it takes to run the service is the basis for calculating the fee.  Supposedly.  The fund doesn't make money, and it doesn't lose money.  Supposedly.

In fact, just about three years or so ago, some BP Commissioners complained about our solid waste fund, wondering if the "administrative fee" component wasn't excessive.  That's the level of scrutiny, and imagined precision, by which the fund is overseen.

As I said, the Shores has the same system for doing this as we have.  They hire people, they own trucks, and they dump wherever the authorized dumping is.  Assuming everything is about equal, Shores residents should be paying about the same amount for solid waste as BP residents do.  Although one possibility is that the Shores could be taking advantage of "economy of scale," and their residents could be paying less than we do.

Not...even...close.  We pay about $575 per dwelling per year.  Miami Shores residents pay about $130 per year more than that, or around $705 per dwelling per year.  They have the same rules about self-contained funds as we do, so how can they be paying much more?  Their fund isn't allowed to make money.  So where is the extra money going?

There are two answers.  And I'm checking on one of them, to see if it's correct.  The one I'm not sure about is what they pay their employees.  We're not good to the people who work for us.  We should be, because we're grateful to them, and they work hard, but we're not.  It may well be that Miami Shores pays their employees a more decent wage.

But here's the answer of which I am sure.  We have two garbage trucks.  We use them a lot, and we use them for literally heavy lifting.  Your car won't last forever, and garbage trucks have a much shorter life span than our cars do.  Both of our trucks are now in need of last gasp repairs.  Both trucks need to be replaced.  (They cost about $120K each.)  Guess what we never planned for, charged for, or saved for.  So now we need two trucks, and we have no money set aside to pay for them.  When Miami Shores needs repairs and replacements, they'll have them, because they have the wisdom and future-thinking to charge extra every year, so the money will be there when the equipment dies.

So now we scramble.  We can either find a way to assess ourselves enough to buy the two new trucks we need, or we can assess for less than that, for leasing or lease/purchase.  Some people will talk about "outsourcing" garbage pick-up, which will cost us the personal service from the employees we like, but don't pay adequately.  And it will only shift the responsibility from our administration to some private company, which will do what we should have done and what we should do now, what Miami Shores knows to do: charge what the work costs, including repairs and replacement.

I'm glad I chose to live in BP.  I'm glad my arm didn't get twisted into changing that.  And I'm glad to be here now.  I don't ever want to go any place else.  I don't want to live in Miami Shores, and I don't want us to be Miami Shores.  We are who we are.  But we have to live in the real world, and we have to provide for ourselves.  We have to pay for what we want, and for what we get.  That's life everywhere, and it's life in Biscayne Park.

Why I Don't Live in Miami Shores. Why We All Don't Live There.

There's nothing wrong with Miami Shores.  It's a nice Village.  It has a range of areas, some neighborhoods and some commercial, and there are appealing sections in which to own a house.  In fact, some of those sections are frankly upscale.

The fact is, I almost moved to Miami Shores in 2007.  I was planning to get married, and my then fiancee thought it would be more balanced if she and I didn't live in my house, in Biscayne Park, and we didn't live in her house, in the "High Pines" section between Coral Gables and South Miami.  She insisted we consider getting a different house: "our" house.  She wanted to look in Miami Shores.  Which we did.  And decided to stay in "my" house, because house prices in Miami Shores were way too high.  (I felt quite relieved, because I like it here, and I didn't at all want to move.)

And that's why I don't live in Miami Shores.  It's why almost all of us don't live there.  It's too expensive to have there the house each of us has here.  It costs too much to buy it, and the taxes are too high.  Not because the ad valorem rate is higher.  It isn't.  It's slightly lower.  It's because the market values, and the assessed values, are so much higher.

I pay a good deal less in ad valorem property taxes on my house in BP than I would pay on the same house in MSV.  If the BP tax rate was 10 mills, I would still pay much less here than I would for the same house there.

So I have no complaint about the seemingly unusually high property tax rate in BP.  I wouldn't care if it was higher.  It's a high tax rate, but a low tax.  And I get something very special for the tax I pay.  I get a unique and charming neighborhood, and I get the best police (lowest crime rate for a municipality like this?) in the state.  I get life on a small and friendly scale.  I get genuinely personal service from the people we hire.  I like it.  It's worth paying for.  The fact is, I'd have to pay a lot more, and I'd get less, if I lived in Miami Shores.

Bad Dog Alert

For over a year, there have been dogs prowling in Biscayne Park.  The prior conclusion was that they were coming from a house several blocks from our northwest corner, down West Dixie.  We thought we had identified the home of the owners, who were not locking up their dogs at night.  We thought County and local police had fined the owners and persuaded them to control their dogs.  That's what we thought.

Now, and for the past few months or more, there is a pack of dogs patrolling the Park, and they occasionally find and dispatch an outdoor cat.  I'm not sure we know what dogs these are, and if they're the same ones from last time.

The dogs come out at night, as dogs are wont to do.  Few of us have seen them.  Our police have sometimes tried to track them, but these dogs are hard to corral.  The County's Animal Control division can't or won't help us.  No one is allowed to harm the dogs if the dogs aren't harming any people.

Apparently, someone has tried to set traps for these dogs, but the dogs are reportedly too smart to get themselves trapped.  There's a contraption called a "net gun," but we don't have one.  They cost $500.  The net gun fires a projectile, like a regular gun does, but the projectile is a net, and it traps the dog.

So there are a few things you can do at the moment.  First, if you have pets, keep them inside, especially at night.  Second, if you see anything, grab a camera, so we'll all know what you know, and we can try to identify the dogs.  Third, make sure the BP police have the picture you took.  And call the BP police if you see or hear anything.  After hours, call the non-emergency number, which is 305-476-5423 (4-POLICE).

And the Winning Lueza Sculpture Is...

A number of people who read the "Can I Interest You in a Piece of Public Sculpture" post responded by saying which sculpture they liked best.  It wasn't even typically "my first choice is..." but rather "the one I like is..." or "the one I like best is..."  No one even mentioned a second choice.  So a pretty clear statement.  And almost everyone who responded seemed to like the same one.  In fact, of the two that were very similar, all the respondents seemed to prefer the same example.

It wasn't, as it turns out, the one I like best.  It also wasn't the least expensive one.  Nor was it the most expensive one.  (It was, however, the next to least expensive one.)

People liked the shorter version of Lueza's "Tower of Seasons."

This piece is aluminum, and it's 8 feet tall.  Cecilia says the maintenance is very easy: about twice a year, it gets a soap and water wipe-down.  The thing that looks like a metal bucket at the bottom is the base.

We would have to pay $7500 for this sculpture.  If every house in Biscayne Park contributed, it would come to about $6.75 per house.  How would you feel about paying $6.75 to represent your house, then getting each of your neighbors to donate $6.75 for their houses?  If you don't think you could persuade each and every one of them, would you be willing to commit $10, or $15, for your house, then get the big spenders among your neighbors to do the same?  If only a quarter of BP houses contributed, each of us heros would have to pay a whopping $27.

The alternative is that we find a relative few of your neighbors who would commit $100 or hundreds of dollars, again, and the vast majority of us don't have to pay a thing.  But I have to confess, this is getting a little old for some of your neighbors.

Please let me know.  I'm not asking for money right now, just your sense as to how interested you are in this idea and in this particular piece, and whether you would be willing to donate something to pay for it.  If there's enough resolve, I'll tell Cecilia to hang onto it for us, and then I'll ask you to pledge an amount to which I can hold you.  If I get $7500 worth of commitment, I'll take it to the Commission, and if they agree to accept it, I'll tell you to get out your checkbook.  I'll ask you for that $6.75 you promised to contribute.  Or was it $27?


PS: Another confession: it's actually kind of fun to acquire something new and interesting that we get to look at any time we want, and that could cost each of us next to nothing.  It enhances our Village and our experience of living here.  It also results in a sense of pride and accomplishment.  All for $6.75 or so.