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

You Have A Decision To Make. Or You Already Made It.

One person too many mentioned it, and I got curious.  So sue me.  I wanted to see what Milt Hunter was going on...and on, and on, and on, and on...about.  So I went to his blog to read his sputterings.  There were three recent posts, which Milt presented as his synthesis -- no need to ask questions, or even contact the candidates -- as to what the two incumbents (Tudor and Kennedy) and the former Commissioner (I) were about.

I found it not possible to read Milt's whole production about Mac Kennedy.  Suffice it to say that Dr Milton Hunter has applied to Mac a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, presumably based on what he gleaned from Readers' Digest, or wherever he gets his psychiatric knowledge.  I didn't get terribly far into Milt's explication, because it was intellectually faulty from the outset, purely nasty, and WAY too long.

Next, Milt dealt with Will Tudor, of whom he mostly disapproves.  In fact, Milt approves of only two things about Tudor.  One is that he recommended the creation of two new boards, one of which Milt claims to believe has "done some [unrevealed] things for the community."  Presumably, Milt thinks the other one didn't do anything for the community, and the one Milt presumably thinks did "some things for the community" hasn't met since 2019.  The other Tudor feature of which Milt doesn't disapprove is that Tudor knows his place as a Commissioner, in that he doesn't interfere.  But this reads as just the other way of expressing Milt's otherwise complaint that Tudor doesn't do anything, illustrated, for example, by Milt's complaint that Tudor "[turned] a blind eye to Tracy Truppman when she was running roughshod over our Charter and residents."  So it's hard to figure out what Milt thinks of Tudor.  And maybe he telegraphs or summarizes it at the end by suggesting that perhaps we could do worse than Tudor, but the question is whether or not we couldn't do better.  Not a ringing endorsement, but, as Milt himself says, he wishes he had more to say, but "it is what it is."

If most of Milt's unloading was on Mac, I was his second favorite target.  He begins by calling me a "troll," by which he says he refers to the internet, and he soon enough reveals the products of his attempts to "harvest," or mine, or trawl, or troll, this blog for what he tells himself is dirt.  A lot of what Milt produces is like that.  It would take very little attention or time to read what Milt believes are the characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which he thinks characterize Mac Kennedy, and realize whom they vastly better describe.  Likewise, Milt refers to what he calls my "twisted pretzel logic."  (Yes, it's redundant, but he's probably a fan of Steely Dan.  So am I.)  And what he declares as my "comfort in lying and misrepresentations in order to prop up...ambiguous narratives."  I have said before about Milt, and it bears saying again, that he's boxing with his own shadow.  Just to take one tiny example, Milt recalls that once when I ran for Commission I "secured a last place finish, edging out Harvey Bilt by a mere six votes."  This is minor, of course, but if I had more votes than did someone else, then I didn't come in last.  But Milt is dedicated to his non-reality-based narratives, and he tells it the way he likes it told.

Milt spends time on what he apparently likes to think of as my character flaws.  Top of the list?  I don't say the pledge of allegiance.  And Milt invents his own reasons for my refusal.  (No, of course he never asked me.  That might ruin the..."narrative.")

Another story Milt seems to like to tell himself is about my imagined alliances.  He can "remember" "only" one time Roxy Ross and I did not vote in lock step.  Well, I guess it's to Milt's credit that he reveals he's relying on his memory, which I suppose he is indirectly admitting might not be complete.  Milt also tells himself that Mac Kennedy is my "BFF," and he's sure I'm in some sort of cahoots with Mac.  Milt has no way to know about how many things Mac and I disagree, and he clearly doesn't care: "Narrative."

Milt makes three other complaints about me, and I think they're important.  One is that I pushed for higher taxes.  That's just one way of looking at it, but Milt is right.  The other way to look at it is that I wanted the Village better funded, so it could accomplish more.  That perspective doesn't reduce to as captivating a sound bite, but it's actually much more accurate.  Second, Milt complains that I wanted the Village to address our drainage problem.  Milt implies, of course, that the Village doesn't really have a drainage problem, and that the wish to address it is somehow corrupt.  But Milt is right about that.  I did, and do, want the Village to address the drainage problem.  And we're beginning to see a pattern with Milt.  Anything that costs money is something Milt will resist.  The same goes for Milt's other criticism of me, although Milt had to sidestep reality to make the complaint.  He noted my ongoing argument with Dan Keys over median development.  True, I've been arguing with Dan about that for years.  I think with better medians, we have a better Village.  But Milt has constructed a false and straw argument that I ever, once, suggested the Village pay to improve the medians.  I did not.  I said that if P&P would provide a comprehensive median scheme, I suspected that Village residents who have medians in their blocks would themselves pay for the improvements. And maybe others would, too.  No, of course Milt wouldn't, but I didn't necessarily mean Milt.  I meant Village residents who care about the Village.  And about their own surroundings.

An interesting swipe Milt thinks he's taking at me is regarding what he tells himself was my failure to recognize any imperfections in the Village manager at the time I was a Commissioner, until, as Milt tells it to himself, "her misconduct slapped [me] in the face, and [I] was forced into action."  No one is perfect.  The then manager wasn't perfect, I'm not perfect, and, if I can be so sacrilegious, Milt isn't perfect.  Nothing was unknown or not recognized.  But we were a team, and we worked together.  What Milt either bizarrely fails to know, or he has somehow forgotten, was that he was the reason I lost confidence in working with the manager.  I came to believe she was unfairly picking on him, and I, as a Commissioner then, couldn't have that.  I had a long talk with Milt about this.  He told me he didn't want my help or support, and he wanted to fight with the manager by himself.  But that wasn't the deal, and it wasn't my job to back away from this.

If it's Milt's idea of decency, I appreciate it.  He quoted me.  He quoted from this blog.  Not, of course, without corrupting what I said, but at least copying the quotes correctly.  I said there were two current Commission candidates whom I could not recommend -- and I clearly gave my reasoning -- and one I strongly recommended Village residents not vote for, also for reasons I made clear.  He concluded that I was "acting as judge and jury here [and] actually having the gall to steer you how to vote."  Which I didn't do, have no way to do, and which was very precisely what Milt himself was going to a tremendous amount of trouble to do.  Just as he did when he did everything to suppress me in 2016, and bring you Tracy, Jenny, and Will.  All of whom he quickly decided were terrible Commissioners.

And Milt ends with his recommendation that I am most deserving of a padded room.  Ah, yes, always the good doctor, Milton Hunter.

The fact is, there are several things Milt said about me -- presented, of course, as indictments, and badly distorted -- with which I don't disagree.  I do want us to do a better job of funding ourselves.  I do want Village improvements, even if they cost money.  Guilty, if you will, as charged.  And even if you took some of Milt's whining and flailing at something like face value, you have a decision to make.  Do you want a better Village, or do you want someone who is mild-mannered?

"I [Don't] Gotta Be Me." I Gotta Be...Everyone.

Yesterday, the Commission candidates, except Will Tudor, to whom Mac Kennedy isn't allowed to send this, got a detailed and extensive recapitulation from Mac about Mac's conversation with a representative of Waste Management (WM), a contractor who collects and hauls waste.  WM has very many contracts in very many municipalities, probably all over the country.  Mac was talking to this representative about what the Village is looking for, or prefers, in services a solid waste contractor would deliver.

To make a long story short, WM declined to bid on the Village's needs, because the strictures were too great and too perilous for the contractor.  According to whatever Mac discussed with the WM rep, there were too many risks, mostly fiscal, and we were too small a client for them to be willing to take this level of risk on.  (Don't fuss with me about the terminal preposition.  I'm not in the mood.)

So, I wrote back to Mac, and to the other openly copied recipients of this e-mail, to say that I thought WM was right, and that it was certainly not in their interest to take this level of risk.  Certainly not with little us.  And more important, and the reason for this post, it's not in our interest to contract with a solid waste removal company, which we then jeopardize by making it either too difficult, impossible, or just not adequately profitable for them to do what we want done.  There's a big picture here, and it includes more than just us.  As I put it to Mac, in a different context, we need them at least as much as they might in theory need us.

I reviewed with Mac some of the problems we have increasingly confronted with WastePro, our current solid waste removal contractor, and how we and they colluded to set them up to experience those problems.  Which have naturally been visited on us.

In 2014, when we outsourced whatever of sanitation wasn't already outsourced, we agreed to contract with WastePro.  I'm not sure I remember exactly correctly, but I think WastePro proposed to charge us the lowest yearly fee.  And they agreed to do the whole solid waste removal task, including the part that was already outsourced to MSV.  They offered to do it in 2-3 days per week, instead of the five days per week we then had someone's (ours or MSV's) trucks on the road.  They agreed to do it by hand, instead of using the state-of-the-art automated container lifters.  Because some of us didn't want automated container lifters.  Because...?  They agreed to go to side yards of BP residents who simply didn't want to bring out their own containers, and they would bring those containers out to the truck to empty them, and return them to the side yards.  And put the lids back on, nice and tidy.

Well, we didn't look out for WastePro, and they didn't look out for themselves.  They agreed to what was impossible, and over time, they have been increasingly, and increasingly conspicuously, unable to do what we asked them to do, and what they carelessly agreed to do.

We outsourced sanitation, and agreed to hire WastePro, in about the spring of 2014.  I was on the Commission then.  It was before the end of my term, at the end of 2016, that some Village residents were already complaining about garbage, etc, not being picked up at the right time.  First, it was complaints that the pick-ups were extending too late in the day.  Then, it was pick-ups that weren't even occurring on the originally agreed-upon day.  And already, even when I was still on the Commission, I suggested to WastePro that they had made an agreement they couldn't keep, and that they should perhaps add a day, and/or more trucks.  It was more important that the garbage get picked up on the day Village residents expected this to happen than that we name that tune in two or three notes.  WastePro couldn't do it all, and we couldn't have it all.  And for a rock bottom price.

The problem, as I wrote to Mac, was that each part of this dynamic looked out only for itself, and did not apply perspective to realize what this would mean to the larger dynamic.  And it's necessary to do that, if anyone expects a system to work adaptively, and be able to sustain itself.  We didn't know we were asking too much of WastePro.  They're...Pros.  They should have known.  But we found out, and so did they.  And if it was still unclear, WM reminded us that asking for a lowball price, with no built-in CPI, non-automated collection, and other -- I'm sorry to say -- immature foolishness was not doable.  No, they wouldn't even bother to bid on our job.  They didn't need to waste their own time talking to us about champagne tastes and beer budgets.  We had to function as part of a much broader system than just ourselves, and WM concluded we were not, apparently, willing to do it.

Which raises questions about the contractors, which still and again includes WastePro, that are willing to bid for the VBP contract.  We were kidding ourselves.  Are they kidding themselves, too?  If we don't want to continue to complain and be unhappy, we're going to have to look at this much more broadly, and fairly, than we did in 2014.

We are VBP.  But we also have to be, or at least very clearly understand, all the other parts of the system.  We need to speak their language.

We have been at a huge disadvantage since the end of 2016.  We have had a grossly dysfunctional government/Commission, and no (competent) management.  It's possible all of that changes next week.  I hope so.  But what's most important is that we expand our focus from just ourselves (our personal selves, and our little Village selves) to all of the other interconnected parts.  They are interconnected.  And like it or not, we depend on them.  That becomes much clearer to us when something doesn't function right, and it fails us, and we find ourselves complaining and unhappy.

One of My Friends Thinks My Comment Was "Well Said."

Last night (Wednesday), there was a Commission meeting.  It was a "special" meeting (you know how some children are referred to as "special," especially in the context of school?), and there were only two items on the agenda.  Neither of them required much of any discussion.  Which I suppose explains why the meeting only lasted about 2 1/2 hours.

It's entirely fair to say I am disgusted, or perhaps beyond disgusted, with the majority of the current Commission.  They don't want anything, and they don't do anything.  Ginny smiles, is a version of adorable, and contributes nothing.  Dan is in some orbit no one can track.  And Will Tudor fumfers.  (I know I use that word a lot about Will, but it is truly all he does.  Tune in to the past meetings, and watch him.  He sits quietly under his headset, and when he gets called on, and asked if he has anything to add, he first says "no," and then he fumfers for a while.  The "content" of the fumfering is stock phrases, or pieces of them, almost always reiterating things someone else has just said, and he adds absolutely nothing to the discussion.  Check him out.)

To be even more fair, there's the minority of the Commission.  Roxy Ross, "bless her heart," goes on about vitally important things that don't make any difference, because the majority ignore her, and in that context, she wastes time.  And it was her last real meeting anyway.  She'd do better to shrug her shoulders, say "naw, I got nothin,'" or "what difference does it make?  you people are going to do whatever you want anyway," and not waste her time or anyone else's.  And I'm not complaining about Roxy, or sniping at her.  Roxy Ross is one of the best friends I have ever had.  I treasure her.  I just don't like her spitting into the wind, or giving people what they don't deserve, or using up time for what unfortunately turns out to be nothing.

And there's Mac Kennedy, whose verbal productions account for a whole meeting's worth of content in themselves.  Mac talks WAY too much.  I've told him that repeatedly.  And it's not that what he says isn't worth saying, or even very important.  Much of it is.  It's just unmodulated.  And it seems self-serving in the sense that it often has a sizable component of reminding everyone else what a terrific and devoted and thoughtful Commissioner Mac is.  Which he absolutely is.  Mac is in most senses a wonderful Commissioner.  He represents very special value to the Village.  Here's what I told Mac several weeks ago, in an unrelated conversation.  If I arrived at the poll to vote on November 3, and I got there just as the poll was closing, and I was the last voter, and the poll worker said that all the votes (except mine) were in and counted, and it was already known that Art Gonzalez came in first, and Judi Hamelburg came in second, and Mac and I were tied -- dead even -- for third, and whoever I voted for would win, I'd vote for Mac.  He's great.  But he simply does not (can not?) rein himself in.  And he should.  He should have a talk with John Hornbuckle, who might be able to help Mac understand that all you have to do is figure out the issue, and decide where you stand on it, so you can vote.  No one needs the whole, seemingly endless, speech, where you demonstrate how smart you are, how much you care, and how there's no detail you haven't thought of.  I already know this about Mac.  That's why I'd vote for him over myself.  It's why I voted for him -- and Art -- already (and I checked the website, and I know my vote has been counted).

Anyway...  Public comment.  This meeting was only going to be pathetic anyway.  There were no other options.  The agenda contained something about the manager search, and something about WastePro.  The thing about WastePro, just to show you how bad things have gotten, is that the majority of this Commission, and the interim so-called manager, have still done absolutely nothing, and last night's proposal was to extend the contract yet again, this time until June.  As for the manager search, and again for a frame of reference, we had 28 applicants.  A special committee of non-Commissioner BP residents chose its 10 favorites.  Of those 10, five have already found other jobs, or withdrawn.  Because the majority of this Commission is inert.  It is paralyzed.  I didn't hook it up to an EEG, so I'm not sure if it's brain dead.  But it might be.  Nothing happens, unless it happens on its own, or a can gets kicked further down the road.  They can't.  They won't.  They don't want to.  They don't care.  They don't know how.  Whatever it is, they just don't do anything, because they don't want anything.  And maybe not wanting anything is either a cover or a consequence of having not the slightest idea what to do or how to do it.

So I pointed all of that out to them, and I suggested they just adjourn last night's meeting, don't even pretend, and let the next Commission, as soon as next week, consider these matters.  If the next Commission tragically includes Will Tudor, then we're dead anyway.  If it includes Judi Hamelburg, or William Abreu (I know, you forgot about him, right?), we're probably still dead.  But there's a chance we can rise from the ashes of the past four years.  So here's hoping.  In any event, nothing was going to happen last night.  Nothing could have happened.  Not with these three.  And I added that Will Tudor should withdraw his candidacy now, and Ginny and Dan should resign now.  We really do need to function, and it's not going to happen with those three.  It probably won't happen with Ginny, Dan, and Judi, either.  And after I made my comment, I walked away from my mobile phone, and the Zoom meeting.  What was the point in staying, and listening?  When I came back, maybe an hour or an hour and a half later, the predictable was happening.  I missed the bit about the manager, so I don't know what they did about that.  Whatever it was, it had no way to be adaptive or purposeful.  They were going on, endlessly, about WastePro.  They discussed matters like agreeing that WastePro garbage trucks should be equipped with brooms, to sweep up crumbs left in the street.  This is the kind of matter that got Commission attention.

And I discovered the text message from one of my friends, who had also been part of the Zoom audience.  

I should add here that Tudor never has anything to say.  He never has had.  I've said before, and I'll say again, that by his emptiness, and willingness to go along with anything, he has enabled every bad thing that has happened to the Village since the end of 2016.  He agreed to all of Tracy's insanity.  He never challenged any of it.  He was fine with Krishan.  He was the only current Commissioner who didn't want to see him go.  And once Krishan was replaced by David Hernandez, who was actually much, much worse, Tudor had no complaints about David.  Tudor signed on to Roseann.  Yesterday, I got an e-mail from Roseann.  It was sent to all the Commission candidates.  It was about how large campaign signs can be, and how close to the street they can be placed.  Now, two months after the campaign started, and a few days before the election.  Now, Roseann wants to send out e-mails about campaign signs.  What Roseann can't be bothered to send e-mails about is candidate financial reports that are due at various intervals.  I hear about those from...Mac Kennedy.  This is nuts.

The only other "funny" thing about Tudor is his alleged "research" into the "numbers" involved in reviving our own sanitation program.  That came up, again, last night.  I'm not going to say the word fumfering again, because I think if I do, you'll explode.  (When I was campaigning door-to-door, one of our neighbors, a Tudor devotee, said Tudor is a "numbers guy."  Yeah?  As evidenced by what?)  Waiting for Tudor and his researches about an in-house sanitation program is like waiting for Trump and his health care plan.  No one should hold their breath.