Don't F With Me, Fellas!

Tuesday, December 13, 2016 was the night that North Bay Village Mayor Crazy Eyes Kreps officially started her sweet, sweet campaign to take revenge against every single man, woman or child who ever, ever questioned her or dared to disagree with her.  She was in rare form as she chaired the dais, starting the evening out by demanding the police chief remove a long time resident from the meeting for talking, losing her place less than 40 minutes into  the meeting, not knowing the procedure for electing a vice mayor and not understanding the process for appointing a new commissioner.

All trivial compared to her bombastic, disorganized, dishonest attacks on the entire village staff, because, Damnit, she will be avenged.  

Okay, so let's talk about the agenda.  

First up was the confirmation of the previously agreed replacement commissioner-at-large.   Douglas Hornsby, a longtime North Bay Island resident (there are no other kind) had been agreed in advance to be the candidate and was predictably selected by a 3-1 vote.   The pro-Hornsby commissioners were Jose Alvarez, Eddie Lim and Crazy Eyes Kreps.   Commissioner Andreana Jackson voted for another candidate, Marvin Wilmoth.  

Wilmoth, a young and dynamic member of the Planning & Zoning Board, a holder of an MBA from Columbia, and someone with a clear vision of how the projects in North Bay Village should be overseen and executed was dismissed by the Council of Elders of North Bay Island because he's black he works in Real Estate Development and because one of the elders decided that the people speaking in his support were "outsiders."   It was definitely because of this and not because he's black and we already have a black commissioner because he doesn't live on North Bay Island.  

Other candidates included Joshua Furman and Jane Blake but Jane Blake dropped out after her husband, former Vice Mayor himself Alvin Blake, got up and enthusiastically endorsed her opponent Joshua Furman.  Nobody on the dais was planning to vote for Furman or (Ms.) Blake, but it was sad to see her thrown under the bus like that by her own husband.  After his disavowal,  Blake meekly approached the dais at the end with the small, dignity saving lie that she was withdrawing because she hadn't been on any committees in a while.   

As part of the deal to support the Mayor's choice, Eddie Lim was supposed to regain the title of Vice Mayor which Mayor Crazy Eyes stripped him of in favor of now former Vice Mayor Jorge Gonzalez who then ran against her.   The Mayor of course didn't understand the procedure to select a Vice Mayor and so it had to be deferred until next Month when rumor has it that she will screw Lim over again.   

With that out the way, the Mayor then spent 45 minutes berating the Village Manager for a budget item to hire project management auditors to make sure that the multimillion dollar projects are being executed on time and budget.  Her reasoning was unclear but her belief in her correctness was unwavering in its resistance to the facts put forward about the legal requirements for funding this work by both the village manager and the village attorney.   They are enemies!  They must not be heard!  

And so the funding died, putting the loans in technical default, with the mayor and a visibly frightened Commissioner Alvarez voting No, while Commissioners Lim and Jackson voted  Yes.   

And the evening went on like this, the Mayor shouting, speaking in non sequiturs and avenging every imaginary slight she has kept bottled up for years.  

She explained to the Police Chief that "some residents" definitely not the voices in her head were worried that his decision to use a repair facility in Miami Beach where he had good experience and who were cheaper than our current situation was actually a ploy to move our police department to Miami Beach.     

She tolerated an audience member shouting out all night while threatening to have people who weren't even there arrested for disrupting the meeting.  

In her biggest failure of the evening, an ordinance proposed to ban the heinous, discredited practice of reparative therapy failed to pass.  Reparative Therapy is a pseudo-psychological practice that proposes to change gay people straight.   It is practiced on adolescents, truly a form of child abuse, and is widely denounced by organizations such as the American Psychological Association, the AMA and really any non bigot who has heard about it.  The Ordinance in question would have banned the practice in North Bay Village.   

But the mayor, who to her credit introduced the ordinance, has frozen out the LGBT community in North Bay Village and never mustered the support required for the village to take a potentially risky stand against this practice.   There was no prework, no discussion of possible ramifications should some deep pocketed organization choose to sue North Bay Village, no discussion of HIPPA and other potential violations and no attempt to engage community support.   So when these uncertainties came before the commission, there were no answers and no compelling reason to vote for the ordinance and it died.   I'm sorry it did but I also know that the two commissioners who voted against the ordinance did so because they did not want to expose the village to risks they did not understand.  

In fact, all 4 then passed a resolution condemning the same odious practice, but that has no legal ramifications.  

And so the evening went until 12:30.   Nothing on the boards, broken promises to "unify" North Bay Village, a badly managed meeting that wasted the time of everyone there, except for the Mayor because she got her revenge.  She got hers.  

Kevin Vericker

December 19, 2016