The Best of All Possible Worlds

Tuesday night, at another marathon meeting, the commission considered the pressing issue of finance.  It's dire.  NBV has spent all of the money in the operational reserve. There are two other reserve accounts, one for infrastructure emergencies and one for utility emergencies, but the operational reserve is where money for unanticipated spending such as lawsuits, back pay for wrongfully fired employees, severance packages for retiring employees, moving office, and hiring new interim managers is.   All of it is gone.  From $1.2 million to $0 in 2 years.  

The mayor has been encouraging people to be positive and do things, an odd request since being positive and doing things is what got the city in this fix.  I suspect she means be cheerful and pretend things are going well.   Optimistic assertions contradicted by actual facts are not being positive, they are merely delusional.  When your car runs out of gas, no amount of positive thinking will get it running.  Only petroleum will.   When you are out of cash, you don't need a smile and a cheerful disposition, you need bucks.   

It's this sort of cheerless optimism that led us to this point.  The finance director, Bert Wrains, has brought a new level of transparency to our accounting and it was he who explained that the over spend was the result of the Police and Legal actions.  Specifically:

• The Police Department lost two cases brought by employees who were wrongfully terminated, resulting in paybacks over  $200,000 to the officers fired for political reasons.  
• The Police Department failed to budget for anyone retiring and when one detective did, it cost $108,000 for accumulated vacation time.  (Apparently the detective in question never took a vacation in 12 years.)  
• The Police Department incurred $50,000 in overtime expenses as there are a record number of employees claiming sick leave while keeping one of the reinstated officers at home with full pay but not on duty because the chief doesn't care for him.   
• The Police Department fought these cases against legal advice and against the commission advice, incurring nearly $175,000 in legal bills for cases that were bound to lose.  
• The Police Department is about to settle $25,000 on an officer who sued because his feelings were hurt, but nothing else, when he failed to report a fistfight he was in.   On the postive side and just to show there are no hard feelings, the chief made the complainant "Officer of the Year."    

But when it comes to the police, the commission is blinded by positivity.   It's cringeworthy.  One small example, at Tuesday's meeting, the police chief, without an ounce of shame, told the commission that he was too busy after his two week vacation to review the crime stats, but he hoped they were in their packet.  Well, they were and the commissioners were not too busy to take five minutes and review them.   

Instead of calling the chief out for his complete lack of interest in providing his bosses with even the pretense of work, they fell over each other to compliment the chief that felonies were down by 2 in the last month.  The Chief responded far too modestly that the credit belonged not to him but to the force and the community.  It was far too modest of him as clearly the crime rate falls whenever he takes some of his five week per year vacation time.  

I started out talking about the transparent accounting  and it is so much better than it was.   But the reporting needs to be clearer.  We are not over budget because things happened to us.  We are over budget because decisions have been made, some good, some poor, but we are not the victims of circumstance.   If the reporting were better, the cost overruns for legal would be properly reported as police department expenditures.   With that clear knowledge, we know where to look for savings. 

Tonight, the commission is meeting to discuss capping our tax rate at 9.1, the highest in the history of North Bay Village, nearly double our current rate of 4.772.   The police have asked for an additional $1.2 million and that accounts for the bulk of it.  I can't be at tonight's meeting but I am watching this closely.  

Unless the commission loses their rose colored glasses, the taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.   You can't pay for things with unicorns and happy dust.  It's time to cut off the spigot.  

Kevin Vericker

July 18, 2013

Mario Garcia's blog does a great job of breaking down last night's interim manager meeting.   You should click here to read it in detail.  

The process was wrong.  Commissioner Duvall couldn't be there as the "special" meeting was scheduled while she was in the hospital giving birth.  She wrote about her worries that this was being done hastily saying "Even though this is an interim position wouldn't this have called for interviews from the commission and possibly including other candidates?" and list the questions that were not asked last night.  

Richard Chervony was more blunt stating that the meeting was called hastily to avoid discussion and consideration of the hire.  He sharply criticized the Lim-Kreps for calling the meeting as an emergency, noting there are 4 scheduled meetings already set in July, and wondering aloud if Sunshine had been violated.   

The three other commissioners were defensive on the subject, dismissing Chervony and ignoring Duvall's concerns, with the mayor adding that Chervony would benefit from reading books about positive things.   That was weird. 

The criticism of the process, the rush to move this forward, was unanimous from the public.  Nobody at any point was criticizing the current interim manager nor raising concerns about  the candidate.  Simply, it was concern about rushing the process rather than wait five days for the regular meeting and give all five of the commissioners to properly interview.  Remember this is the same commission that deferred appointing boards because the Vice Mayor was out of town yet on this critical appointment, did it without a full commission.   

It's not good.  Again, read Mario's Blog for the full coverage.  

Kevin Vericker

July 12, 2013  

Maybe This Time...

The Mayor and Vice Mayor are calling a special meeting for Thursday July 11. at 7:30 PM to appoint another "interim" Village Manager.  The search for a permanent one has hit a wall since, seriously, who wants to sacrifice their career in North Bay Village?  

Right now the city is being capably led by the Deputy Village Manager, but once again we are falling into the old pattern of believing the next one is the right one.  

The candidate is Frank Rollason and you can see his impressive resume at this village website.  Mr. Rollason may very well be a good choice to lead the village for a while but his chances of success are slim.   

Don't forget he's hobbled by the same contract that gives our grandstanding, political operative police chief immunity from supervision which has killed the budget, and he will be reporting to the same commission as the others.   And this commission has not shown much leadership.   

Kevin Vericker

July 9, 2013

Village as Saturday June 29

Mario Garcia hosted a meeting for the revived Crime Watch this week and had a strong turnout from Cutlass Avenue.   The Crime Watch is done block by block and kudos to Mario for getting this moving.  You can read more about it at his blog.  Now if the police get involved and support this, it looks like North Bay Village will move forward towards re-establishing a Crime Watch.   North Bay Village used to have Crime Watch but Chief Daniels has a strong antipathy to community involvement  and stopped support several years ago. 

Over at the Facebook group, North Bay Village Residents Speak, Jim Carter posted a good summary of the issues facing North Bay Village and reported on the efforts of TINA, the Treasure Island Neighborhood Association, to bring the quality of life issues to the forefront.   It's best to read the piece in detail at the link above.  The high level summary is:  

• Address the dirty streets on Treasure Island
• Improve the police presence on the island.  Several residents noted cars parked in the wrong direction as a problem.  
• Carter noted the website  https://www.crimereports.com/ which publicizes police activity  in Florida cities.  
• Gating and security cameras are still being discussed.  

Best to read it in detail.  It's good stuff.  Just click on the link above.  

The PTA at Treasure Island Elementary is sponsoring a mural celebrating the school's acceptance to the International Baccalaureate Program.  It will be executed by Arts For Learning under the supervision of teaching artist Carlos Noguera, himself a former TIES student, graduate of DASH, and later Tufts and Harvard.  Carlos is currently teaching art at the Dwight School in Seoul Korea and leading a summer project here.   

Some of my own notes:

Last night, Critical Mass rode about 3000 bikes through North Bay Village.   I love Critical Mass and I love that they take the streets back from automobiles.  I watched and wished I had joined.   

 Paprika Lounge on Treasure Island continues to delight and amaze me.  It's a bright sophisticated space with live entertainment.  I had dinner there last night and the food is outstanding.   

The police chief is taking one of his five weeks of vacation plus comp time that he gets annually so he was unable to attend or send anyone to the Crime Watch meeting.   Also the department claims to be down two officers but that's not true.  They're currently paying one to sit at home and do nothing since the Chief doesn't like him, and Mrs. Chief Michelle Malkin-Daniels (you know he gave his wife a badge, right?) is never assigned any duties.   Our tax dollars go to support the vacations and family issued badges. 

Village Hall is moving over the weekend to 1666 JFK Causeway so that's probably a good thing.  

July 4 there is a City Celebration at Treasure Island Elementary from 1 - 5.   

So I guess that's the main news in review.  

Kevin Vericker

June 29, 2013

Probable Heavy Traffic Tonight

Critical Mass Miami, a bicycling group, will be coming through North Bay Village tonight.  This a big group and last time traffic was stopped for close to a half hour as they made their way along the Causeway.   Since they leave downtown at 7:15, they are probably going to be on the Causeway about 7:45.   More information is here at the Critical Mass link. 

Kevin Vericker

June 28, 2013

Treasure Island Neighborhood Association Tonight Trio at 7 PM

This is about more than gates.  The Treasure Island Neighborhood Association has on its agenda:   

• Review of the recent city meeting on gates addressing the incorrect and speculative information that the city presented.  
• A handout of the phone numbers and e-mails of all city officials.  
• A discussion of the state of the streets and the poor maintenance on Treasure Island.  
• The disrepair of the speed bumps
• The bad maintenance at the Tot Lot
• The Video Camera program
• Open topics.  

The meeting is restricted to Treasure Island single family homeowners, no developers or other parties.  

I can't be there because of a schedule conflict tonight but this is a worthwhile meeting.  I'm glad they're expanding the topics.  

A second note.  It looks like the Crab House is closed.  The signs are down and the doors are shuttered.  It has been struggling for a while and it's disheartening to see another North Bay Village landmark fall by the wayside.  

Kevin Vericker

June 26, 2013

Our Leadership Collapsed This Week Too

Imagine how different the Shuckers story would be if Connie Leon-Kreps had said, 

"We are deeply concerned about our inspection processes and will fix them.  

Let's not forget that the story here seems to be that a property owner did not maintain their facility to ensure safety and that is their responsibility.  North Bay Village will work with all our power to inspect  every commercial structure in this city for safety and we remind all property owners that it's their responsibility to ensure their customers' well being.  We will have zero tolerance for unsafe structures."  

But like a bad dream, the Village administration has managed to take the story of the Shuckers collapse and turn it into the story of how the government failed.  And it didn't need to be. 

To all accounts, the deck collapse at Shuckers was the result of s structural failure.  It looks like the owners did not inspect and maintain the deck.  That turned to a tragedy last Thursday.  If this was the result of neglected maintenance, then it's on the owners.  They had a responsibility to ensure the safety of their customers in their establishment.   

That should be it.  End of story.   

So how did the story wind up being "North Bay Village doesn't know nothing about decks."?   The mayor, the police chief, the building manager and the public works manager made it that.  

Less than a day after the collapse, police chief Daniels was grandstanding for the press, ruling out "over capacity and criminal activity" as causes.  When asked what the capacity was, he didn't know.  He didn't know but he felt free to speak on it.  The Herald by the way did not ask the logical question of him, "Are you even in charge of this investigation?"  Daniels is not.  That's with the county making his comments all the more useless. 

The public works manager Rodney Carrero upped the ante by insisting that the inspection report from January included the deck.  He couldn't produce the report but he was sure of it.  No, no it wasn't.  

That was Friday.  Over the weekend I wrote to the commission and administration and begged them to stop the nonsense.  Leadership requires clear facts and information.   

The mayor wrote back a curt email saying the press release had been carefully vetted.  Which was not my point.  It was the village executives making stuff up in the press that worried me.   

Monday, I opened up the Miami Herald online.  The deck had never been inspected but the report was still signed off.  The county clearly stated that the city should have caught the error.   Then I saw that now our buildings manager was talking about "assumptions" he made about the deck inspection.  

Finally, on Monday, we have this press conference, where again the building inspector said "I assumed the  deck inspection had been done."   Well, it hadn't.  Connie Leon-Kreps tops it off in this clip here when she says "[the building manager] is an expert."  When the  reporter asks the logical question, "Would an expert have ignored the deck inspection?", Leon-Kreps stormed away.  

Leon-Kreps then found time to write me an email scolding me for not being positive.  Her logic is that everyone worked really hard over the weekend, which is probably true.  But they didn't work well.  

This is not just a public relations disaster.  It's a leadership failure.  

Chief Daniels grandstands all the time so that was no surprise.  That two employees spoke intemperately to the press was a disappointment but after all of this nonsense, our mayor was the one who should have said "Enough."   And she didn't.

This will harm us.  For years from now, people will remember North Bay Village as an unsafe place with an incompetent government, and they may be right.   Our leaders have done nothing to assure us they understand the problem nor that they are working on a solution.   

In fact, the mayor is already looking for others to blame.  So far, she has blamed the press for their spin and implied that she was only following legal advice.   These are whiny little excuses, neither one of them true.  Our legal advice did not include "say things you don't know, blame others and talk about assumptions."  The administration did that. 

It's probably too late to fix it regarding Shuckers but what can they learn for the next crisis?  If past is prologue, nothing.  

Kevin Vericker

June 19, 2013