Slow Down.

There is an ongoing sentiment among some BP residents to lower the speed limit in the Park.  This sentiment comes from two places.

Old time BP residents recall with pride and satisfaction the days when people in two counties knew of BP as the place that told motorists "Don't Even Think About Speeding," and we meant it.  Enforcement was tight.  Now, the perception is that people speed, and no one inhibits them.  So some yearn for the good old days of what they recall as tighter enforcement.

Other BP residents, old and newer, also want to slow the flow of traffic, but they have another reason.  They want traffic impediment, for the expressed (sometimes) reason of making driving through BP so annoying that people will prefer not to do it.  These residents don't want "cut-throughs."  Some of these residents want slower traffic, and some just want less traffic.

This theme-- of traffic slowing-- got some attention at last night's Commission meeting.  Specifically, there was discussion of methods to slow traffic.  These methods included tighter enforcement, as well as installation of "traffic calming" mechanisms and devices.

I put the term traffic calming in quotes for a reason.  The mechanisms used don't really calm traffic.  They slow it.  Drivers whose progress on the roads is slowed by rotaries/roundabouts/traffic circles or various kinds of bumps are not calm.  They are aggravated.  And they are paying more attention to the slowing devices than they are to traffic and pedestrians.  An experiment in one of the Scandinavian countries showed that eliminating most traffic control resulted in fewer accidents, because drivers had to be more attentive and careful at intersections.  They couldn't simply assume that the traffic control devices would control traffic.  They realized they had their own responsibilities to control themselves, and be mindful of others.  Other problems with many of the kinds of traffic control mechanisms discussed last night include that they are traumatic to the vehicles, and they cause damage to suspensions.  And if they slow regular drivers, they also slow drivers of emergency vehicles.

None of this got much discussion last night.  Instead, there was the usual (especially for this Commission) intensity and urgency to do something, whether or not what was proposed was rational or adaptive.

In an attempt to deflect concern, Harvey Bilt told us that we should just lower the speed limit, and that doing so would not cost anything(!).  Harvey said he had researched this carefully, having made what he counted as 35 phone calls on the matter.  Others who also researched it made only one or two phone calls, and what they learned was very different from what Harvey thinks he learned.  For example, we cannot lower the speed limit-- let alone install traffic obstacles-- without the County's permission, and the County requires us to get a traffic study first.  Traffic studies are not at all free.  There's also the cost of the signs announcing the speed limit.  Tracy Truppman says she learned that if we use devices, such as speed cushions, they cost $3000 each.

Funny enough-- or perhaps not so funny-- we got a traffic study back in about 2006 or 2007.  A driver hit two children in the Park, and there was a lot of energy to lower the speed limit.  Curiously, there was no indication at the time that the faulty driver was speeding.  But there was that intensity and urgency at the time, and some simply wanted to bull ahead.  So we got our traffic study.  At the time, the permitted speed limit on all Village streets was 30.  The traffic study showed that few drivers in the Village drove faster than 25.  So we changed the limit to 25, by which action we accomplished nothing.  It did cost us, though.  And now, despite what Harvey Bilt thinks he has reassured himself, we are considering costing ourselves again.  And that's to make of the County a request they might not grant.

The alternative suggested by some, including our new Police Chief, was that we wait to see what the new administration (Manager and Police Chief) accomplish, before we start doing things.  They want to increase enforcement, and they have already begun doing it.  It seems eminently sensible, but we now have a Commission that shoots first, and asks questions later, so there's no real confidence available that the sensible will prevail.

It's not clear that traffic needs to slow down much.  Some residents who don't have speed guns have a sense that people drive too fast.  I walk for exercise, and I have that sense, too.  I sense it especially on Griffing.  Our Police Chief does have a speed gun, and he says most traffic is between 22 and 29 mph.  More than 25 is not legal on any street except 6th Avenue, but up to 29 is not blazing speed.  And the effect of that slightly higher than maximum permitted speed is mitigated for pedestrians by those pedestrians walking against the flow of traffic, so they can see cars coming (at any speed), and step onto the swale or the median.

Sure, drivers should do the right thing.  So should pedestrians.  We should all be careful.  And no one should get hysterical.  We should find solutions to problems, not invent problems, because we're eager to do something.

I think the Chief is right.  He's new at the job, we just welcomed him, and we should see what he can accomplish for us.  He knows to try to slow the traffic down, and we should slow ourselves down.

I Was Wrong, and Harvey Bilt Was Right.

I made a mistake a month or so ago.  The matter of Will Tudor's new pet Boards was presented, and I made the mistake of speaking against them.  I completely disoriented Janey Anderson, who was mindlessly compelled to disagree with whatever I said (either she got this from Bob, or he got it from her), and she spoke in favor of these useless and meaningless Boards.  Well tonight, when the second reading of the Ordinance for the Boards was presented, I didn't bother to say anything.  I see how the bobbleheads act, and there's no point in trying to communicate with them.  They just do whatever they want, regardless of what any of us think.

So this time, since I didn't present a target or a distraction, probably half a dozen of our neighbors, including Janey, arose to speak strongly against the Ordinances.  Janey even remembered that she had spoken in favor of it before, but I don't know if she remembers why she did.  Not tonight, though.  Janey, Bob, the Kuhls, Dan Keys, and I think Chuck Ross all spoke against it.  And they offered a variety of reasons the new Boards were a bad idea.  No one spoke in favor of it.

Harvey Bilt, in reviewing his experiences with Commissions, talked about Commissions that don't listen to non-Commission residents of the Village.  And he was right.  Sometimes, they don't.  Harvey and the bobbleheads gave us a good dose of it tonight.  They completely ignored a collection of their neighbors, in favor of no one, and they passed the Ordinances everyone who expressed an opinion asked them not to pass.  Jenny Johnson-Sardella made some reference to positions she took when she was running for Commission.  She didn't seem to remember the bit about listening to neighbors.  Neither did Will Tudor.  And neither did Tracy Truppman, who was talking about something else later when she mentioned "complete disregard."  Yup, that's what it was: complete disregard for neighbors and the neighborhood.  Harvey sure was right about Commissioners who don't listen.  Well, four out of the five didn't listen.  Or maybe they did listen, but they just didn't care.  It was actually somewhat comical, in a twisted and pathetic kind of way.  Poor Roxy Ross.  On the short end of two more 4-1s.

"I" Have an Idea. I Think I Can Save Us a Lot of Tax Money.

I admit I didn't just think this up myself.  I took the idea from a number of Village residents.  Here's my current synthesis.

For a tiny and limited municipality, we have a noteworthy amount of overhead.  And our ad valorem tax rate is high to accommodate our needs, since we have no other real way of raising revenue.  And most of the non ad valorem revenue comes from us, too, in the form of user fees and utility charges.  Very many of us complain about all of this.  I think our real complaint is about the taxes, and if everything we did was free, we wouldn't be complaining about it.  That's what I think. If someone thinks I'm wrong, I hope they will correct me.

So the question is, could we have what we have, and not have to pay for it?  And I think there are some who think we could.  Here are some examples:

One current Commissioner pressed us into appointing a group of residents who will plumb the outside world, to see if we can get someone else to pay for us by granting us money.  And the resident group who will supposedly do this will do it for free.  They'll donate their time.  Another current Commissioner--actually our Mayor-- has suggested that some other imagined Village residents will also complete grant applications for us for free.  Unfortunately, one of our past Commissioners offered to do this for us, then reneged.  Our current Mayor claims expertise in this area, but she would never do it, either.  So I'm not sure this will ever happen, but the theory is that if it did, it wouldn't cost us anything.

Another of our current Commissioners sponsors a yearly gardening event on some public tract in the Village, and she calls it an MLK Day of Service.  Some of us help, and we do it for free.  Not only do we not get paid, we actually pay the Village!

Another resident a few years ago offered to donate to the Village a lawn mower.  There was a condition for the donation, though, and the condition was not met, so the neighbor did not donate the mower.

A year or two before that, a Commissioner-- the Mayor then-- offered to donate his own money to pay for a tiny public copying center at the recreation center.  I'm not sure that ever happened, but the offer was made.

Another resident, who happens to be a gun enthusiast, told me he thought we had, and paid for, too many police, and we could really contribute to our own security, literally by arming ourselves.  I suppose we would have to patrol, too, but we already have CrimeWatch, so maybe it would only be a short additional step to being organized vigilantes.

So here's what I'm thinking.  We could pretty much eliminate all of our expenses simply by doing for ourselves.  One neighbor will donate a lawn mower.  The condition was that we do our own solid waste collection, which would require us to buy at least one garbage truck.  Let's say we do that, too, and we can do it either with donations, or maybe we have to tax ourselves just a little bit.  Richard Ederr's son once spent a year as a Village employee, picking up garbage with our other hired guys.  But Richard's son got paid.  We can do this for ourselves with volunteer shifts, so we simply save the whole expense.  (Except the cost of the truck, maintenance, licensing, gas, and other possibly minor incidentals.)

We can get rid of the Manager and almost all Village employees.  Instead of volunteering to clean up one little patch of public land one morning per year, we have shifts to maintain all the public tracts all year.  By the way, we would need a Charter change for this, so that's an expense, too, but it's only one time, and it's not that much money.  We're already OK with blatantly miserable-looking medians and unrepaired streets, so what do we care if it stays that way?  We can just keep saving the money.

We already have two Village residents who volunteer at Village Hall and the recreation center, and they're both retired.  So we get more residents like that, and switch those two to full time.  Cha-ching.

Raise your hand, if you think we spend just too much money for our recreation function, and it serves people who don't even live here.  Exactly, just what I was thinking.  So we dump the whole business, and save ourselves the dough.

Our current Commission has hit on the brilliant idea of using more "reserve" ($1 per year, possibly negotiable) police officers (this is one of the great things about our new Commission: they think of the things that never before occurred to anyone).  So let's do that, supplement with ourselves on a real volunteer basis (not beating the Village out of $1 per year), go back to donated cruisers, instead of paying to lease new and reliable ones, and become truly hands on.  We have some firearm experts in the Village, and we can run our own training program.  In fact (oh, I did think of this myself), we can even train outsiders, and we can charge them for the training.  Cha-cha-ching!

And by the way, guess who gets in really good physical condition doing all the yard work, and chasing thieves.  Our new "tax" rate?  What taxes?  You're welcome.

Local Treats and Treasures.

I love gems.  And I love them even better when they're local.  Recently, I discovered two local gems.

At a MOCA art opening a couple of months ago, there was food service, as is typical of MOCA art openings.  One of the items was popsicles.  These were unique popsicles, with very unusual flavors.  And they were amazingly good.  I don't generally care for popsicles.  They're sweet and standardized.  Not these popsicles.  They didn't taste overly sweet at all, and they were a frozen version of gourmet dessert.

The person behind these popsicles is Megan Danko.  Her popsicle store, Ladyfingrs (no, I did not forget to type an e), is on 6th Avenue, just above 123rd St, on the east side of the street.  Her sign in the window says Popsicles, and she keeps a little bistro table and chairs outside during business hours.  Her slogan is "Fresh Popsicles Handmade with Love."  Do you think that's a bit too flowery?  You think it's a bit much?  Go taste one of Megan's popsicles.  Then tell me what you think of the slogan.

This is how Ladyfingrs' website describes the birth of this business: "It all began with two girls from fashion school and a love for ice cream. After working in the corporate world for several years, they both decided that bringing their passions together and starting their own business was the way to go. Mariana, already having amazing success with an ice-cream business in Brazil, brought the idea back to Miami to link up with business partner Megan and from that moment, Ladyfingrs was born."

I never met or spoke to Mariana, but Megan might be all the heart and soul this business needs.  And here's what they sell: "natural and hand-made ice cream popsicles with ooey-gooey surprises in the middle...sourced from the best chocolates from Italy, the freshest local fruits, and the most unique fillings from all around the globe."  They make their proprietary "Booze Pops, which are famous classic drinks served as a popsicle."  Their range of flavors includes coconut pineapple, lemon basil, passion fruit with condensed milk, strawberry mint, lychee rose water lemonade, mango ginger, chocolate lava (yes, "chocolate fudge gooey filling"), cream 'n' nutella, oreo madness, strawberry and condensed milk, watermelon flavor (sounds tame by comparison, right?), strawberry cheesecake, and dragonfruit blueberry.  Are you still reading this, or have you gone to Megan's place by now?

I know you're going to say $5 is too much to pay for a popsicle, but I think you should try "one" before you make up your mind.  If you love these as much as I do, and you really think $5 each is too much, ask Megan how many you would have to buy-- you know, to keep handy in your freezer, just in case you should ever want another one-- for her to give you the wholesale price.  And for what it's worth, not that I ever care about such things, but Megan is a delightful woman.  The address of the shop is 12327 NE 6th Avenue, and the phone number is 305-970-9252.  Megan's not always there when she's supposed to be, so maybe call first.

Last week, I went to the last installment of this season of musimelange.  I've told you about musimelange, and if you don't go, that's your problem.  It's quite an amazing cultural treat, like nothing you ever attended.  One of the central features is food.  The other central features are music and wine.  The food offering is always different from one musimelange evening to another.  This last time, they featured a bread offering (along with all the other food, the main course of which was extremely unusual tacos), and bread-based desserts.  The reason for this focus was the discovery of Bryan Ford and his wife, Alycia Domma.  They run a brand new bakery called Lesage.  Lesage is so new that they don't even have a storefront yet.  They work out of "shared [commercial baking] space" in Hallandale, and they deliver whatever their patrons choose.  They have two main offerings.  One is bread, which is fundamentally sourdough, and the other is croissants.

I love bread.  That, and tomatoes, are my favorite foods.  And I love sourdough bread.  For the past couple of years, I have bought little else, and I get Zak's bread, which I buy from Marky's gourmet grocery store on 79th Street.  I was completely content with Zak's bread, and I would not have considered getting any other bread, until I encountered Lesage.

Here's what Lesage sells: multiseed sourdough baguette for $3, plantain sourdough loaf for $6.75, papaya almond sourdough loaf for $6.75, multiseed sourdough loaf (the full size one, not the baguette) for $6.75, country white/wheat sourdough loaf for $5.50, croissants for $18 for six, pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants) for $24 for six, and fruit danish for $24 for six.  The sourdough loaves (probably 2-3 pounds)  are at least as good as Zak's-- probably a bit better-- and the croissants are the best I have ever tasted.  Bryan and Alycia, since they do not have a retail outlet, do not bake up a batch of goods to sell over the course of the day.  They custom bake what their customers order in advance.  And they deliver Mondays and Wednesdays.  So you tell them the week before what you want, and you'll get it on Monday or Wednesday.  If you're home, they'll hand it to you, and you can pay them.  If you're not home, they'll leave it for you, and you can pay them later or next time.  If you order on a given week, the prices are what I quoted.  If you commit to regular, predictable deliveries, a month at a time, you get a 10% discount.  And that discount is generous, because the bread is worth every bit of the retail price.  If you're interested, you can go to Bryan's and Alycia's site-- www.lesagebakery.com-- or you can call Bryan at 305-310-1487.  Funny enough, Bryan and Alycia live in Miami Shores, so it's easy for them to serve us on their way home.

Don't make a mistake.  Go see Megan, and give Bryan a call.  If you don't absolutely love what you get from them, I'll buy the unused portion of it from you, for whatever you paid.  And if you do absolutely love what you get from them, you're welcome.

Tracy Truppman Agrees With Me. Up to a Point. Sort Of. Maybe. Oh, Let's Just Wait and See.

Last night's meeting was one of those typically aimless ones that was not actually about anything.  Except we predictably hired Krishan Manners to be our new Manager.  We'll see if he stays on Tracy's good side.  Does Tracy have a good side?  Oh, yeah, it's if everyone does whatever she says.  So we'll see how Krishan "manages."

There really wasn't much else on the agenda.  That's why the meeting flew by in just over two hours.  Two school teachers wanted to use the log cabin for free for some awards dinner or something for their teachers group.  We gave them a hard time about it, until Tracy offered personally to provide free opening and closing of the log cabin, so they wouldn't have to pay.  Our regular charge was $500 per hour, the resident charge (one of the teachers is a BP resident) is $350 per hour, and we eventually reasoned that our only real expense was hiring some member of Village staff to open and close the log cabin.  So, if Tracy would do that, we had no expense (except the cost of electricity, which we agreed was nominal).  And Krishan also offered to be on hand for free.  And Dan Samaria offered to pay something or other.  But it was taken care of by Tracy and Krishan.  The discussion took way longer than it should have, though.  We paid John Hearn for that.

Will Tudor's ideas were back, this time at actual Village expense. Will wants us to have two new Boards.  He envisions one as a Safety Board or something, and the other as a Grant-Writing Board.  The Safety Board is supposed to be some collection of Village residents who will decide whether we need more lighting, sidewalks, or some other public safety-related feature.  Most likely, these residents will just dream up what seems to them to be safety enhancements, since no one said we had residents who were expert in this area.  And we do have a professional Police Department.  And a professional Manager.  And an amazingly effective CrimeWatch Chairman who has several yearly meetings which are attended by interested Village residents, the Police Department, all or most (until now) of the sitting Commissioners, and invited experts who make presentations.  So really, it's just not clear what this new Board is supposed to do, and on what its imaginings will be based.  And perhaps more to the point, if they do decide we should have more lighting, or sidewalks, or whatever else, which they will then suggest to the actual decision-makers (the Commission), we're limited by our real problem.  In any case, we moved this from Will's good ol' boy, plum common sense, folksy, inclusive wisdom to an Ordinance, which cost us money in legal fees.  The bobble-heads agreed with Will, too.  4-1, they agreed.  Poor Roxy Ross.  She's just spitting into the wind with those four.

Then, Will had us buy ourselves another Ordinance, too.  This one was his handy-dandy Grant-Writing Board.  Some imagined Village residents are going to meet to think of grants for which we can apply.  For, um, something.  I sure hope they're not those pesky matching grants, as almost all are.  We're going to match the grant money with what?  And who, exactly, is going to write these grants?  I reminded our fearless and thoughtless leaders of Bryan Cooper, who ran on a platform that included his offer to write grants for the Village (since he alleged he had lots of experience), but then, he got mad, because some Commission vote didn't go the way he wanted, and he refused to help us at all.  And I reminded Tracy/Will/Jenny/Harvey that Tracy had said at the last meeting that she had written many grants in her life (after my comments, she adjusted many to a few), but that in all the years she's lived here, she's never once offered to help us write a grant.  I neglected to mention the night Barbara Watts asked Candido Sosa-Cruz and me to come to her house to write a grant for something, as if any of the three of us knew how to write a grant.  So, after all these imagined grant inspirations are materialized, I still wanted to know who's actually going to write the grants.  That question remained unanswered.  Roxy Ross pointed out that any Board also makes its little claim on staff time.  But she was on the short side of yet another 4-1.

Tracy did at some point(s) come back to the matter of our real problem.  That's the one she and Jenny and Will agreed was our biggest problem, but which none of them has proposed to address.  Specifically, she reminded us that this year, there is the possibility/likelihood/guarantee that the Florida Legislature will offer a law expanding, yet again, the homestead exemption.  We used to be able to exempt $25K from being part of assessed value, then, it was/is $50K, and now, it may/will go to $75K.  That's value that will not be assessable for taxation purposes, which means assessed valuations will be that much lower, which means that property taxes will be that much lower.  There was some reference to the Village's ad valorem hit being about $200K for the coming year.  If (yeah, right, "if") the voters of Florida agree to have their property taxes reduced, which means a reduction of support for the municipalities.  And Tracy, being a good Commissioner/Mayor, said she hoped Village residents would vote against this expansion of the homestead exemption.

It's a different story-- isn't it-- when you don't just get to sit in the audience and criticize.  When you're actually responsible to do something, supposedly in support of the Village(!), you look at matters like this one a bit differently.  Roxy Ross related a comment once made to her by former Mayor James Reeder, who just died.  Reeder told her that the task in elected office is to "do something.  Just do something."  And Tracy wasn't exactly proposing to "do [anything]."  She was asking her neighbors not to do something.  She was acting as if she was worried about Village finances.  Good for her!  But later, she said in passing that we were maxed out on our millage.  We're not.  We have a little way to go to get to 10 mills, and it would make about $50-60K difference to the Village to go there.  I'm giving Tracy credit for actually knowing very well that we could raise the millage a little, but I'm interpreting that this was her way of saying she didn't have the courage and resolve to go there.  And Tracy owns three other Commissioners.  So if she wants us to increase our taxes, we'll do it.  If she doesn't, we won't.

But that wasn't what Tracy said or suggested.  She doesn't want to raise taxes.  She doesn't want to take that particular heat.  Rather, she'd like us to vote against the expansion of the homestead exemption.  We should do the heavy lifting, so she won't have to.  And won't be conspicuous for failing to do the little bit she could do.

So for a fleeting moment, and with her trying to dodge responsibility for it, Tracy agreed with me that we need to be more committed to our Village, and generous to it and ourselves.  She urged us to do what we can to keep our taxes just a bit higher.  She doesn't want to do what she can, and she'd like us to bail her out.  You got it, Tracy.  I'm voting against the expansion.

Miami Symphony Orchestra: An even Better Deal!

This is MiSO's last concert of the season, and it's this coming Saturday, May 6.  The venue is the Arsht Center, and the concert starts at 6:00.

The title of the concert is "Beethovenmania."  The program is the Leonora Overture No. 3, the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1, and Symphony No. 7.  There's a guest pianist for the Piano Concerto, and the guest pianist is not Beethoven.

I have season tickets, and my cost for a concert is $64 per seat.  The extra special deal for this concert is tickets for $20 per seat.  So that's a really good deal.  There are limited seats (50) at this price, and it's first come, first served.

If you're interested in this MiSO season finale, you can call Beatriz Cosson at 305-275-5666, or you can buy tickets through the website: www.arshtcenter.org.  The promotion code is MISO20.

4-1

There were several votes like that at the Commission meeting last night.  And Roxy Ross was on the very short end of each of them.  I don't think Roxy was having a good time of it, either.  It's not fun being on the short end of 4-1 votes, even when you're right, which Roxy was, each time.

There's an odd phrase to describe being happy about something.  The phrase is "like a pig in shit."  Everyone likes to be happy, but it would be hard to imagine finding it pleasing to be wallowing in shit.  I'm not sure even a pig would like that.  But that's what the four dominant Commissioners were doing, and they didn't seem to recognize for what it was that they were swimming in the stuff.

Harvey Bilt is our newest Commissioner, and he showed himself to be the fourth Tracy Truppman bobble-head doll.  I calculate he's the fourth, because I'm considering Tracy herself to be a Tracy Truppman bobble-head doll.  As someone in the audience last night said, maybe there should be a rule that new Commissioners are not allowed to speak.  They just have to listen.  And learn.  And if that meant that four of them were still silent, and only Roxy Ross was allowed to speak, we'd be far ahead by now.

The four very clearly have no idea what they're doing, or where they're trying to go.  Mostly, they just lurch around like Keystone Kops, unable to form any sort of meaning.  They have conversations that don't need to be had (clearly for no purpose than to hear themselves talk and fall in love with their own reflections), and last night, they specialized in trying to re-invent the wheel, on many occasions.  One discussion was about our new interim Manager, and whether the Commission should empower him to hurry up and hire a new Police Chief, or alternatively it should direct him to delay this hiring.  The "Commission" clearly had not the slightest understanding that Krishan Manners is the (interim) MANAGER.  He wasn't hired to be a secretary, or Tracy's assistant.  (I know, Tracy thinks everyone is hired to be her assistant.  I'd say she'll get over it, but she never has, and now, we've created a monster who will never, ever understand that she's not the center of the universe.)  He's the (interim) Manager.  That means he's the Manager.  And he has all of the responsibilities and prerogatives of the Manager.  Because he is the Manager.  The right to hire a new Police Chief, any time, and any way in the world he wants to do it, is not something the Commission can bestow on him or withhold from him.  And Krishan was graceful enough not to remind them of that fact.

It was both amusing and tragic to watch the four as they circled around the necessity to make decisions.  Jenny and Harvey should be more than familiar with the task, both of them having served on the Code Compliance Board.  But both of them, and Tracy, and the caricature that is Will Tudor, were every bit the deer in the headlights when they had to confront real issues, and conclude something.  I guess Harvey had an inkling that it would be like this, and that's why he ran like hell when I proposed a Meet the Candidates exercise in which he would have to have Commission-like discussions, and form Commission-like conclusions.  The four couldn't begin to do it.  They sputtered, and talked around, and possibly wet their pants.  They wanted delay, "workshops," and anything that would get them out of the hot seat.  But the hot seat is precisely what they asked for when they ran, and not one of the four could handle it.

They hid behind the concept of trying to get their neighbors to make decisions for them.  Tracy, for one, had the dodge that given enough "workshops," for example, "everyone" would agree about driveways, or whatever else.  News flash for ya, Tracy: "everyone" will never agree about anything.  The best you can hope for, if you want to hide from the responsibility to make decisions, is to identify and satisfy some sort of majority of your neighbors.  You can tell yourself that if you can find a majority, then they must be right.  Or at least that it's that many fewer people who will be mad at you.

Jenny Johnson-Sardella had an idea like that, too.  Somewhere in the discussion of choosing a new Manager from the meager list of mostly unimpressive applicants, Jenny said we "want to get it right."  News flash for you, too, Jenny: we already did.  We started out with about 57 applicants last summer, and very many people, including your neighbors, worked very hard to find the right Manager.  It was fine, until Tracy and you and the other bobble-head doll made Sharon Ragoonan's life miserable, and ran her out of here.  Do you know what consensus of how many people you overthrew to create the problem you now think you're going to solve?  And you three (now with a fourth, for extra padding, and to make yourselves imagine that might must, of course, make right) ran on an offer to "listen to [your] neighbors?"  Well, if you were listening, you were demonstrating a breathtaking failure to hear them.

The Agenda last night was actually very short.  It wasn't easy for the bobble-heads to torture it into a 3 3/4 hour meeting.  But that's what they did, bungling around, observing themselves talk and posture, and trying desperately not to make decisions that would 1) maybe be unpopular, and 2) screw up anything else.

Never Assume

I was not able to attend the overflow meeting last Friday, March 10.  I will be at the continuation overflow meeting on Wednesday, March 15.  For someone who promised to shorten meetings, Tracy Truppman seems to make them essentially endless.  In any case, I have begun listening to the recording of that 2 1/2 hour long March 10th slog.  And I found something important in the 40+ minutes of public comment at the top of the meeting.

Several speakers who were in support of the Truppman regime, and even some who weren't necessarily Truppman hounds, not only urged patience with Tracy, and confidence in her, but they also relied on a theory: that elected officials all want the best for their constituencies.  It was presented as a reason not even to criticize the regime, at this early phase.  I had to admit that that's quite an assumption to make.

Frankly, I don't think anyone, or certainly not most people, make assumptions like that.  And the more heated the campaigns, the less blind confidence people have in the commitments of the opposing side.  Just to take a highly visible example, I would say a very large proportion of conservatives did not assume that Hillary Clinton wanted what was best for the country, or even what she thought was best for the country.  And I would say almost no liberals assumed Donald Trump wanted what was best for the country.  Almost no one was agreeing to disagree, on the theory that we're all honest brokers at heart.

Not only do people tend not to make that assumption about "the other side," but it's not rare that people turn out to be right to be skeptical.  So why should we here in BP make the assumption that any elected official wants what's best for the Village, or even probably does?  There are various reasons to want to hold elected office, and not at all all of them are based in honesty, real concern for the whole constituency, or anything like altruism.

Noah Jacobs, for example, pointed out to the audience that no one would want to be a BP Commissioner for the money.  Money could certainly motivate some people in some places to want elected office, but I agree with Noah that the money is so meager here that it's very highly unlikely that it's the money that's of interest to office-holders.  But... some of our Commissioners have seemed to want every fiscal benefit they could lay their hands on-- some of them have seemed to nickle and dime the Village-- while at the same time, these Commissioners have not wanted to part with any of their money to donate to the Village.  For example, the Village has acquired three public sculptures, and it was three different Commissions that approved these acquisitions.  Some of the Commissioners were the same from one Commission to another, so it wasn't 15 different Commissioners who voted in favor.  And an uncommon Commissioner was opposed.  So maybe 10 different Commissioners voted for the Village to accept the gift of public sculpture.  And each of these sculptures was provided by a relatively small group of Village residents, who pooled money to buy the pieces of art.  But of the maybe 10 different Commissioners who approved these gifts, maybe only four of those Commissioners, or their families, donated.  So the other approximately six Commissioners may not have "made" a lot of money being Commissioners, but they sure didn't give anything back.  (There were several Commissioners I couldn't persuade to give $20 a year to the Foundation!)  Looking just at Noah's case, he received the high Village stipend: $4000 per year for two years.  And he voted in favor of the Village's receiving one of those sculptures.  So did he donate back $500 to contribute to that purchase?  $100?  $50?  $20?  $10?  Nope, not a cent.  Was Noah wrong, even about himself?  Was he in fact in it for the money?  Only Noah could know that.

And money isn't the only thing, apart from actual interest in the constituency, that would motivate someone to want elected office.  Some people like the power.  Or some sense of acclaim, or specialness.  As if it appealed to their personal narcissism.  Some might be padding resumes.  For example, there have been plenty of Commissioners who have served the Village on the Commission, but not on the volunteer Boards.  And most won't attend Commission meetings, either before they became Commissioners, or after they're not Commissioners any more.  It's as if if the meeting wasn't about them, or they didn't have ultimate power, then there's nothing to interest them even in being there.

So no, I wouldn't make the assumption that people who are Commissioners must, necessarily, obviously, automatically, want the best for the Village.  I wouldn't assume that at all.  And anyone who might criticize me for not making that assumption is seriously kidding him- or herself.  Or being disingenuous.  Or not paying much attention.

We can take as a perfect example the matter at hand.  The issue, before anyone tries to shift attention away from it, is the departure of our most recent Manager, and whether Tracy was being honorable or dishonorable about it.  Tracy has made a show of expressing concern over the Village's fiscal situation, and she tries to portray to us her conclusion that Sharon was either irresponsible or dishonest in addressing it.  What Tracy is trying to act out is what is supposed to look like her efforts, based on what she would like us to believe is her wanting the best for the Village.  That's the assumption.  It's the one speakers referenced when they asked that we not criticize Tracy, or when they themselves criticized those of us who did criticize Tracy.

The problem is that what Tracy tried to portray to us wasn't true.  Tracy did not find that Sharon did this, that, or the other thing, which Tracy then determined was faulty.  Tracy was out to get Sharon from the start.  Or just before the start.  Tracy was warning us that Sharon would make a poor Manager before we hired Sharon.  It was when Sharon was one of three finalists that Tracy was calling the then Commissioners (of which I was one), telling us what a mistake it would be to hire Sharon, and that Tracy's preference was someone who had already been dropped from consideration.  Tracy wasn't being fair or careful or protective of the Village when she laid into Sharon, from the moment Tracy took office.  Tracy does not in any way deserve that we should make the positive and politically correct assumption about people in elected office.  Not even close.  And if Tracy did not own and control two other Commissioners, Sharon, and the rest of us, would have ignored her foolish and undermining campaign.  It meant nothing, and would have been seen for what it was, except Tracy has stooges.  And we can't make the nice assumption about them, either.  Because they're not careful or decent or respectful.  They're simply dutiful, and their duty is to Tracy.  Not to the rest of us.

In fact, the reason we can't simply assume that Tracy and her pets have the Village's best interests at heart is that they don't make that assumption about us.  They didn't care about Sharon, they didn't care about the deliberations of the Commission that hired Sharon, and they didn't care about the deep well of positive sentiment of all their neighbors who very much favored Sharon.  I'm on record at the time, and I'll repeat here, that my first choice for the Manager position was not Sharon.  It was Mark Kutney.  But I liked Sharon very much, and when I could hear how Village resident after Village resident extolled the desirability to them of having Sharon as our Manager, I agreed to vote for her.  And it didn't matter if I didn't.  David Coviello, Roxy Ross, and Bob Anderson all preferred Sharon.  So Sharon was our choice, 3-2 or 4-1.  But she was the overwhelming choice of our neighbors in the Commission room audience.

So I heard it.  A number of our neighbors pleaded for the feel-good assumption about Tracy.  And they said it as if it should be the assumption about all elected officials.  It never is, and it isn't in this case.  And Tracy doesn't for an instant deserve that assumption.

If anyone has anything to say about my opinions, the comment opportunity of this blog is the place to say it.  Be honorable, and have courage, if you disagree with me.  Don't run behind my back, accusing me of  "cyber-bullying."  Is all editorializing, or reporting of news, "cyber-bullying?"  I'm stating what I observe and what I think.  You're welcome to do the same.  If you think I'm wrong, say so.  Publicly.  Here.  Have the courage of your convictions.  I do.  And whatever exposure or consequence anyone fears in stating his or her opinion is identical to the exposure and possible consequence I accept in presenting myself here.

You Can Put Your Party Shoes Away.

Oy, what a silly odyssey.  No one planned a Meet the Candidates event for this election, so I planned one.  I had in mind to make it different and more interesting (and illustrative) than the ones we typically do.  It was more unstructured, and it involved actual unrestricted conversations among the candidates.  The conversations were to be about various issues that have been or could be the stuff of Commission Agendas.  Instead of hearing what candidates A, B, and C would say about how they would think through one vague, hypothetical, and overgeneralized issue or another, I wanted them to have the actual conversations, exactly as they would if they were Commissioners.

Here are the Agenda topics I planned:

1)  Annexation.

As you know, our biggest problem is our finances.  Last year, the County Commission refused to hear our application for annexation of an area to our east, just over the track.  We have just gotten word that the reason they wouldn't consider our application is that they thought we were "cherry-picking," and not solving enough of the County's problem with unincorporated areas.  We have been informed that they could look much more favorably on an application from us, if we agree to annex the area we requested last year, and two residential blocks south of there, too, as well as a commitment to continue to annex gradually over the years, until we reach 108th Street.  Do we want to re-apply?

2)  Feral cats.

Residents continue to complain about the populations of feral cats in various parts of the Village.  They want something done.

3)  "Public" Art in BP.

Some residents of the Village appear to be art lovers.  They so much like art that they display it on their front lawns.  Some of these displays are quite conspicuous.  Other BP residents, however, do not appreciate this kind of imposition, and a few of them have lodged complaints.  Our Code is an "inclusive" one, meaning that anything not explicitly included in the Code is not permitted.  Public display of private art is not cited in the Code, and the offended neighbors want these private installations removed.  They consider them Code violations.  The Code Compliance officer is not sure whether this is the proper interpretation of the Code.  Neither is the Code Compliance Board.  They are all now turning to the Commission.

4)  Outsourcing.

The Commission has been receiving what seems like a flood of e-mails.  Some neighbors are complaining about WastePro, and they want you to end the contract, and revive a sanitation program run by the Village, as it was before we outsourced.  Other neighbors (about as many) are preoccupied with Village finances, and they want to outsource more Village functions.  They are aware of a lapse in leadership in the Recreation Department, and of the recent resignation of the Manager, and they consider this to be a perfect time for the Village to outsource many or most of its management functions.

For what it's worth, question 1 was Chuck Ross' idea, question 2 was Barbara Kiers' idea, question 3 was my idea, and question 4 was Roxy Ross' idea.  I was waiting for ideas from a few other people.

I asked the Commission for permission to hold this event in the log cabin, and to excuse me from paying for premises rental (as all Commissions give such permission and excuse such rental for this event) on Tuesday, March 7.  By the end of that day, all three candidates had agreed to the MTC plan for March 16, and the Commission had approved it.  And that's when things began to fall apart.  Or when some candidates began to get very cold feet.

First, it was Harvey Bilt, who wouldn't participate if I was the moderator (which was absolutely the plan).  I could never get Harvey to tell me what problem he was imagining, but I think, as best I could tell, that he thought I was somehow going to ambush him or fool him.  The most specific he would get was to say he objected to my authoring the questions.

Then, it was Dan Samaria, who told me he wouldn't participate unless the questions came from the audience, and told someone else he was worried about what Harvey was worried about.  I should say that I have never been unsupportive of either of them, and I offered, and delivered, help to Dan when he ran against me last fall, and to both of them regarding using this blog to publicize themselves, and appeal to their neighbors.  Harvey even took me up on the latter in 2013, when we opposed each other.  But now, both were in terrified mode and could not participate in any event that involved me.

Mac Kennedy was game from the outset.

I had a lot of back and forth with the three of them (not much with Mac, though) in the past week.  I couldn't get Harvey or Dan to flinch from their refusals to participate, and I decided their participation was vastly more important than was my fully controlling the event.  So I reached out to three people to moderate.  Drew Dillworth and Richard Ederr couldn't, and John Hornbuckle could.  So there it was.  And I made two other modifications to the original plan.  One was that I sought questions from neighbors other than myself (although I had reached out in advance anyway), and the other was that I gave the candidates the questions in advance.  And I told them that only one of the four was mine.  The only concession I would not make was to turn the event from a conversation among mock Commissioners into the stilted system we always use, where each candidate in turn has the same number of minutes to respond to the same questions.  It was essential to me that we try a different system.  It was to be an experiment.  It was to be fun.

But no, no matter what I did, I could not assuage Harvey.  As it turns out, I couldn't assuage Dan, either.  I took away every complaint, concern, or element of paranoia they had, except one, and they would not budge from their terror of this event.  And I have to say, I was very provocative with them.  I told them, and so did Mac, that it was wrong of them to try to control this event, and to try to minimize discomfort for themselves.   The thing they were afraid of is precisely the characterization of being a Commissioner.  Mac told them to "man up," and to "grow a pair," and I supported the challenge.  But no, they were not going to waver at all.

So Mac dropped out of the race altogether.  He wanted no part of such behavior.  I couldn't blame him.  I told him so.  I told him that the most he could accomplish was to be part of a 3-2 minority in which Tracy Truppman and her puppets would simply steamroll him and Roxy Ross.  So what was the point?  No one would listen to him anyway.  And it's not that I agree with every leaning Mac has or position he takes.  It's just that I think he's open-minded, reasonable, fair, and has the interests of the Village at heart.  If he's coming from the right place, I would trust his conclusions, even if I don't agree with all of them.

Does it make any difference whether Dan wins, or Harvey does?  No, not at all.  It seems to make a difference to Tracy, though.  She's been out campaigning with Harvey.  What does she want with him, though?  Is she afraid she's losing complete control over Jenny and/or Will?  Maybe.  I don't know the content of all the colluding that's very clearly going on among the three of them outside of Commission meetings, and I haven't seen the faintest suggestion of independence from either of them in meetings, but maybe Tracy knows what she's doing, or at least what she has to worry about.

So don't bother to come to the Meet the Candidates event on Thursday evening.  There's no event to attend.  But I'm told (not by our fearless candidates) that they're having their own event on Sunday.  I don't know the place or time.  But it doesn't matter.  I'm not voting anyway.  We're getting a new Commissioner on 3/28.  It'll either be Dan or Harvey.  You decide which one it is, if it matters to you more than it matters to me.

Not Junk Mail

I owe an apology for last night.  I lost control of myself, and I said things I should not have said.   And I do apologize.

The audience gallery of the log cabin Commission room was SRO.  It was pretty clear what the crowd was about: item 12.a, the Manager's evaluation.  We've been talking about and anticipating it for at least a month, and last night was to be the night.  ("...to be...?")

At the outset of the meeting, Tracy Truppman announced that she had just that day received from Sharon Ragoonan Sharon's resignation, effective yesterday.  The room was in admitted "shock," even including Roxy Ross and David Coviello, so they said.  Everyone had come hoping either to ward off Tracy's final killing of the beast she had been wounding, or to egg Tracy on.  It was all over the neighborhood, and on Nextdoor.  People who didn't come to meetings came to that one.  And there was suddenly a breathtaking deflation in the room.  Sharon was gone.  She had left.  It was over.

Many residents asked Tracy why Sharon left, and Tracy insisted, repeatedly, that she didn't know.  Jenny Johnson-Sardella and Will Tudor didn't know, either, but they were fully composed.  They didn't even want to venture guesses as to why Sharon left, because, they both said, it would not be fair to Sharon to talk about her in her absence, when she couldn't defend herself (from what?).  And we wouldn't want to utter on the record things that might lead to the Village's being sued by Sharon.

But if Sharon told Tracy that she was resigning, didn't she say why?  Didn't Tracy even ask?  The stories we were given sounded like no.  Sharon didn't tell, and Tracy didn't ask.  Not curious?  Evidently not.

So, very many of us were left with empty speeches we intended to deliver either in support of Sharon or to express dissatisfaction.  And then, it was time for public comment.  Tracy offered.  No one flinched.  I hadn't been sure if there was anything I would have wanted to say, and my plan was to wait until near the end, to see if there was anything left to say.  But with precious instants of dead air after Tracy's offer for public comment, I decided I should arise.  I would hold a place, while others gathered themselves and their thoughts.

I really didn't know what to say.  I have been furious with Tracy for quite some time, watched her undermine and dismantle Village administration, and torment Sharon.  I like Sharon.  We all do.  She hadn't told me she was leaving, and the whole thing was very sudden.  Funny enough, when Tracy was in a more aggressive form of assault on Sharon, a few weeks ago, Sharon told me she was thinking of simply leaving early every day.  Like what was the point of trying, if Tracy (et. al.-- it doesn't work, unless there's an et. al.) was gunning for her and grinding her down?  But I told Sharon to keep doing the job she was doing.  If Tracy and her posse want Sharon's scalp, make them work for it.  Don't hand it to them.  So she soldiered on.  Until yesterday.  If something happened yesterday, I don't know what it was.  And Tracy isn't talking.

So there I stood, looking at Tracy, filled with anger and frustration, and loss.  And I directed my comments to Tracy.  I reminded her of her lack of involvement with the Village, except when she had her pearls of genius to unload on us.  And her bizarre application for the Manager's job last year.  And how she hounded Sharon, until Sharon couldn't take it any more.  And I told Tracy what adjectives about her occurred to me.  I told her I found her predatory, corrosive, nasty, dishonest, self-involved, full of herself, disgraceful, and disgusting.  I just lost it.  The people who don't like you will always criticize you.  But when your friends tell you you "went too far," and you sort of knew it anyway, well, there isn't much else to say.  Except I'm sorry.  And I am.

Much of the rest of the meeting involved trying to clean up the mess that was just made, and trying to anticipate its future consequences, of which there are several, at least.

And then, there was 12.b.  Roxy Ross had been receiving lots of e-mails from Tracy.  The whole Commission had.  They were rants and screeds about whatever crusade (against Sharon) was occupying Tracy, and she sent them not only to Sharon, but also to all the other Commissioners.  Roxy had an idea that this kind of spilling was a Sunshine violation.  And in the end, it was determined, even by Tracy, that this kind of indiscretion was not a good idea, and not "best practice," but it was not technically a Sunshine violation.  And that's true.  It was not, in itself, a violation.

The Sunshine Law says that members of Boards in Florida cannot discuss Board business except in appropriately arranged meetings.  The meetings have to be announced in advance, open to the public, and minutes have to be kept.  And the definition of a discussion is technical and specific.  It is the mutual sharing of information pertinent to matters on which the Board will vote, or matters which have a reasonable likelihood to come up for a vote.  So if Tracy says something to another Board member (Commissioner), but the other Commissioner doesn't reply, then there was no mutual sharing, and a conversation did not occur.  It was made clear that each of Tracy's e-rants opened with a caveat for the recipient not to reply.

So Roxy was wrong.  There was no Sunshine violation.  But Roxy asked the wrong question.  The question was not whether this sharing was a Sunshine violation, but rather, what was Tracy's goal in sharing at all.  What was Tracy's purpose in informing her Commission colleagues over which coals she was then raking Sharon?  Discussions like that, among Commission colleagues, where real and mutual conversations can occur, is what Commission meetings are for.  So what was Tracy doing?  That was the question.

And there are three possible answers.  First, it's possible that Tracy is in fact completely full of herself, totally uncontained, and cannot do, say, write, or think anything, unless the whole world has to know about it.  Even if it's inappropriate and unnecessary.  That's the least terrible possibility.  The next, somewhat more terrible possibility is that Tracy was using these distributions to telegraph to her colleagues what she was thinking and doing, so they would be ready to back her up later, when there was an actual meeting.  They would know whence she was coming, so they could prepare themselves to agree and support.

And then, there's the most terrible possibility, Sunshine-wise.  That possibility is that the circulation was superfluous, and intended to create e-camouflage.  The possibility is that Tracy and some of her colleagues were already actively colluding, in exactly the way the Sunshine Law proscribes, and the e-mails were intended to create what could later be presented as the basis for how Tracy's colleagues knew what was in Tracy's mind.  You don't have to admit you met privately to discuss something you weren't supposed to discuss, if you can say that only one person communicated, and only one way, and to everyone.

Why Tracy sends out e-mail so unnecessarily and inappropriately?  Who knows?  Like why Sharon abruptly quit, having a good relationship with two Commissioners, and no great difficulty on record with two others?  Who knows?