Not only will I not be at the North Miami Beach City Council meeting on Tuesday, August 7, 2012, but I won’t even be in the same hemisphere, thank you very much.  Yeah, Frantzie, I heard that sigh of relief you just breathed.  Don’t get too comfortable.  I’ll still be able to watch you from across the pond.  Trust me, you’re never far from my watchful eye.

Now that L’il Frantzie P’s scheme of ripping off the LETF of $5,000.00 for his invented “Back to School Crime Prevention Program,” has been revealed and aborted, I thought I’d weigh in on the rest of the Agenda items.

Seeing as how I never have the audacity to demand that my elected officials do my bidding, and my bidding only (like some other people), I simply write my opinion and then let the chips fall where they may.  In case anyone isn’t up on their civics lessons, let me remind you that we have a representative form of government.  What that means is that we elect our representatives based on who we feel will best serve our interests.  There is no one perfect person who will grant our every wish.  We will not always agree with every single piece of legislation enacted by our representatives, nor should we expect to.  Even though we all tend to think that we know everything (well, some of us do, anyway), we have to bear in mind that ours is only one voice out of many.

Just because you think you know what’s the best course of action to take, your neighbor just might disagree with you.  Guess what?  His opinion is just as valid as yours.  And, if you don’t like it, tough.  Deal with it.  I do.  Lots of people don’t agree with my opinion.  I don’t lose sleep over it.  In fact, where’s that rat’s ass I could give?  Oh, there it is – on Myron’s head.  No, wait!  That’s a squirrel.  My mistake.

Anyway, like it or not, here’s my opinion on some of the Agenda items.

Resolution No. R2012-28 intends to authorize the City Manager to negotiate a deal with Waste Pro to outsource our garbage pickup.  In my opinion, this is a no-brainer.  You already know how I feel about any government running a business that can be done better, more efficiently and less expensively than a private company.  (See Government Sux. It really does.)  There has been a lot of arguing back and forth over how much money outsourcing our garbage would save the city.  I’ve heard figures mentioned anywhere from two million to three million dollars, give or take a half a mil or so.  The way I see it, savings is savings, even if it’s “just” a million dollars.  With property values down, I’m told the city can expect only about ten million dollars in real estate tax revenue in the next year, so a million or two saved is nothing to sneeze at.  The argument about lost jobs is also ridiculous.  First of all, the City of North Miami Beach isn’t an employment agency (no matter how many jobs Frantz Pierre promises to potential, um, “supporters”).  The good employees will be hired by the private company that gets the bid, which will need additional staff for the extra territory it will serve.  The useless employees won’t get hired, but they probably should have lost their jobs anyway, and would have if it weren’t for union protection.  The other argument about prices going up is, in my opinion, also bogus.  If gas prices and other maintenance costs continue to rise, what makes anyone think the city won’t raise its rates?  Of course it will.

Like it or not, privatization is the future of municipal sanitation.  When most older cities were incorporated, there wasn’t much competition in the garbage industry, and city sanitation didn’t cost a fortune.  Because of astronomical pension liabilities and union demands, and also due to the proliferation of private companies that do an excellent job, it makes absolutely no financial sense for cities to continue on this path of destruction.  Newer cities don’t have this problem since they didn’t have to deal with doing something so stupid as to try to compete with private companies.

I honestly have no idea how most of our council members are going to vote on this issue.  I do know that Frantz Pierre will vote against it and then claim that “Haitian jobs” will be lost if we outsource.  Yeah, that’s really being a great steward of our tax dollars.  Then again, he never claimed to do anything in the best interest of the residents.  The rest of the votes are pretty much up in the air, with the exception of the mayor, who has always stated his goal was to save the city from financial disaster.  He gets it.  Of course, we can count on Phyllis Smith to vote against anything the mayor or Councilwoman Barbara Kramer vote for because she just can’t get over that whole chair thing, and because it’s so freaking obvious by her attitude that she tries to thwart the mayor at every turn.  That green-eyed monster is just so unbecoming!

But the biggest mystery to me is how some residents don’t care about maintaining a well staffed, professional police department, and then turn around and cry that they’ll lose their garbageman.  Sorry, but I just don’t get that.  But that’s for another blog another day.

North Miami Beach isn’t alone in its budget woes.  Many other cities are in just as bad shape or worse than North Miami Beach.  The ones that are still in the black, however, are those cities that outsource just about everything and don’t have to deal with the monstrous pension problem that we have.  Those that do, are contemplating bankruptcy.  San Bernadino just became the third city in California to file for bankruptcy , and others are contemplating doing so.  The main cause of the financial woes is cited as “Pension Liabilities.”  Gee, what a shock.

Moving right along…

Next up is Resolution No. R2012-58, which is to acknowledge “a critical path schedule for the development known as Marina Grande.”  A critical path schedule?  How nice.  What about just building the freaking thing already?  But, no.  This city will continue to destroy any and all future development no matter what.  At this point, it’s totally amazing that any developer even wants to break ground in North Miami Beach with all the bullshit they have to encounter.  It’s literally agonizing watching every single project get shot down, either for fear of a lawsuit by an Eastern Shores resident through his surrogate, Bob Taylor, or having Philippe Derose claim, as he did years ago, that he doesn’t want a condominium project like Marina Grande being built because “his people” can’t afford to buy units there.  I don’t know who “his people” are, but I know “my people” can’t afford half a million dollar condominiums, either.  That doesn’t mean I don’t want rich people who CAN afford them buy SOMEWHERE ELSE!  Somehow, North Miami doesn’t seem to be having problems building developments that Derose’s “people” can’t afford.  What a stupid comment!  Either way, I’m probably wasting my breath.  How much you wanna bet nothing gets built anyway?  Whatever.

Moving right along…

Ordinance No. 2012-15 will designate the Official Municipal Seal of the City of North Miami Beach.  Really?  I thought we already had one.  What am I missing?

Next.

Ordinances No. 2012-16 and 2012-17 have to do with allowing the strip clubs to serve alcohol with naked titties and making the strip clubs wait twelve months after being denied extended hours to ask again.  Frankly, I don’t care.  To me, both of these are such non-issues it’s hard to believe the council will take about three hours discussing them ad nauseam and then probably table them for a future meeting.  What I do know is that I won’t watch that train wreck.  I also know that a no vote on naked boozing will only serve to invite more lawsuits that we can’t afford to pay and that we’ll most likely lose in court.  Wake up, people!  As for the whole extended hour thing, it’s my opinion that bars of any kind don’t need to be open past two or three in the morning.  Who the hell drinks after 2:00 am anyway besides certified alcoholics?  By that time they’re so freaking plastered they probably can’t see titties anyway, so what’s the point?  Can’t they just drink at home and rent porn?  I’m just saying.  If it were up to me, I’d vote yes to naked people and no to extended hours.  But since I don’t have a vote, I’ll shut up now and move along.

Ordinances No. 2012-11, -12 and -13 is just boring crap having to do with site plan reviews, permitted business uses, and the heights of walls and fences.  Go read them for yourselves.  Bottom line, I personally don’t care.  The council will vote yea, nay or whatever, and they’ll spend another three hours discussing them.  Unless they get tabled.

Okay, so there you have the Agenda in a nutshell.  You also have my opinion for what it’s worth.  Whether you agree with me or not, just keep in mind that my opinion is just as valid as yours.  Which means absolutely nothing in the scheme of things.  As long as you have a few people up on that dais who refuse to deal with reality, represent only their own “special interest groups,” or are so consumed with jealousy that they use their vote as a weapon, nothing in North Miami Beach will ever get accomplished.

We will, however, continue to have free entertainment.  Especially if EX-mayor Myron Rosner keeps showing up with his “package.”

Enjoy your meeting.  I’ll be waving at you from the other side of the planet.

Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”