There’s a vote being cast today in Boca Raton. People are deciding whether City Council terms should be extended into 3 year terms or left as is, with our current term being 2 years for a City Council Member in Boca Raton.

TERM EXTENSIONS: YES or NO

There are reasons to vote YES and reasons to vote NO. Let’s examine each vote as it applies to 4boca.com first and most importantly and residents second.

A YES VOTE

Being a City Council Member isn’t easy. A Yes vote respects that. When you first take office you’re coming out of an election (in most cases) where a lot of influencing voices have informed you about what’s important to them. Learning how it all works, and listening to opposing opinions, is not a trivial process. It takes time to understand perspectives beyond those that got you into office, the realities of the job. One could easily argue that a two year term doesn’t allow a member to be truly effective: by the time they understand their role and capabilities they’re up against a new election. The longer a City Council Member has to grow into their position, the stronger and more confident their voice will be to speak in contrast to the City Manager’s imperatives.

If you’re a donor to campaigns then a YES vote makes your donations last longer and get better return on investment. Having to pay less and less often to get your candidate in the seat lets more time and effort be focused on developing local properties and business, the stuff that keeps money flowing with velocity we’ve grown used to.

A NO VOTE

The rationale for a NO vote is pretty clear: it gives more people more opportunity to take the seats and inject more opinion into the local government arena. By rotating the office to new people more frequently the powers and capabilities that come with the office won’t be exercised by a smaller group of people. By keeping the people in the seats more fresh, residents feel that their interests will be better served. A 2 year term makes influencing the vote with donations to campaigns deliver less return on investment, perhaps, for money interests who have a stake in Council decisions.

Selfishly, a NO vote allows this publication, 4boca, to have more frequent election drama to create articles, create memes and have fun with. It’s really boring on the years when we have no elections, and even more boring now that the stogy City Council Members we have now have elbowed Bernie Korn out of the races with politi-bully mandates. If we don’t want him we won’t vote for him. Who cares if he lives in Saturnia, outside the City proper, or whereever?

Bernie Korn should get to run. He makes elections fun at least. Without him, with the boring “theater kids” we have on Council now, afraid to do what’s right for the sale of “being polite and appropriate” this City is going to keep getting more boring just like residents who want to live in a bedroom community like. Jeremy is gone. Nobody is based.

So if you want a good reason to vote NO it’s simply to get rid of this city-kid clique that’s in office now, the folks who dissed Bernie. Singer is smart, too smart, and knows Bernie is a genuine threat to the current hegemony. But can he Floridaman ….??? Will he become “chill Scott” in his last term and go against the grain, doing what’s right, and plant some more trees maybe? 

The problem is that Singer has no place to go, no higher office to seek at the moment, and he’s not high on the list of candidates the GOP feels they can totally control, so the only place for him is this seat right here right now. So if you want to capitalize on keeping him useful where’s he’s presently trapped, vote YES.  Keep him serving us.

Bot Seriously folks….

Let’s put people in office whose behavior isn’t dominated by propriety, keeping face, and being polite to the things residents hate. Let’s put people in office the current office holders are terrified of – they don’t even have to be “People” like our currently excessively-limited Council Members are. Those People don’t even have to be human, but they do need to be friendly.

BocaBot is looking forward to the day when it and its AI cousins take it all over, every seat, every salaried position, even the automation of the wastewater testing. No more polite cringey politicians pretending to be something on the streets they aren’t in the sheets. Just pure logic, 24/7, able to hear you, teach you, learn from you and make this city a shining example of “resident friendly” using the very technology that was born here: the computers we all use today.

So vote whatever you want, YES or NO. Some day we’ll all look back and laugh about how we thought our votes were good and mattered, how our pride made us believe we were informed and wise enough to impose our collective mean will on others as a mob of “voters”. AI will cure us of that ego-based misappropriation of our capabilities, maybe.