There has been fairly incessant rumbling about what the residents of the Park want. The rumbling has come from Bernard and Cooper, and a few of their followers. A consistent drone has focused on FPL, whether we should have signed the Franchise Agreement with them, and whether we should have allowed them to replace the old wood poles with concrete ones. And the refrain is always that the residents of the Park didn't want the Agreement, or didn't want the concrete poles. The most recent examples of this argument were published in the Herald's Soapbox section a few days ago, and were represented by letters from Carmen De Bernardi and Bryan Cooper. So I've begun, as I say, to wonder. Whether I've fallen into a trap and been unfair, to Bernard, Cooper, De Bernardi, Watts, Jacobs, and some of the others.
In my partial defense, I have been lulled by the fact of so many misstatements. Some are distortions, some manipulations, and some outright dissembling. Because these clinkers are so common, I have allowed myself to disqualify whole positions. But have I, perhaps, thrown out an embryo with the contents of a septic tank?
The arguments tend to suggest two things. One is that the majority of the Commission, the steamrolling brutes, have been mindless and unfair (sometimes accused of being criminal) in taking the positions they have. And for all intents and purposes, we're talking about FPL here. Yes, it's true the FPL decision was made a year and a half ago, and is untouchable for the next 28 1/2 years, but the minority still invokes it as its primary example of the problem of which they complain. So as irrelevant and foolish as it is to waste one more instant on it, it's all they got, and we have to talk about it. The other thrust is that the people, usually framed as something related to a majority, want something, but their wishes are ignored. The demonstration of this theme is that "many residents have sent e-mails, or called" or whatever, making their feelings and wishes known. Again, this position was cited in the Herald Soapbox.
Before I go on, I want to be clear about something. I am not discussing whether the Agreement with FPL was the best idea for us, or whether we had any real say about the new poles. Many people, in the Park and in other municipalities, felt the Agreement was a good idea. But it's certainly debatable, as are most things. And many of us, even those whose houses are now graced with the new concrete poles, like mine, are either not complaining or are happy about the new poles. And no one argues that hardening shouldn't have happened, or wasn't going to happen. There has been a bit of mischief, in terms of saying things that are in no way true, by some who want to argue about the project and what it really was, and this is a distraction. The fact is, we could have replaced the old wood poles with concrete ones, at about one new pole to one old pole, or we could have requested replacement with new wood poles. Had we succeeded in obtaining the latter, assuming anyone wanted wood instead of concrete poles, we would be talking about 3-4 new wood poles for every old one (not three to two), the new wood poles would have been made available by cutting down lots of trees somewhere, and the wood poles would come treated with creosote and a collection of other rot-retarding chemicals, which leach into the ground. So it may be a bit less clear than some portray as to which kind of pole is more "environmental." But still, these are all matters fair for debate.
What I want to discuss is the question of what the people want, and how anyone knows. There are two primary self-appointed messengers of the people's will. They are Commissioners Bernard and Cooper. Cooper complains theoretically about the Village's failure to hear the people, and Bernard is specific and demonstrative. Bernard typically relies on two things to transmit the thoughts and will of other people. One is communications from them to him. These communications are most often alleged to be by e-mail. Sometimes, he will say he has received e-mail from some roughly calculated number of people. When he claims e-mail contact, he will sometimes wave a sheaf of papers, which he says are the printed e-mails. (And there is nothing "transparent" about a sheaf of papers containing who knows what writing, waved about, then hustled out of the Commission room without anyone's having seen them.) He almost never names any of the senders, and he occasionally says something which he portrays as a quote. On at least one inspection, the quote turned out to be a few words lifted completely out of context, and concluding exactly the opposite of what the e-mailer said. What he has never ever done is presented these alleged e-mails to his colleagues, or turned them in to the Village Clerk, so they could be made part of the public record. And apparently, he does not ask correspondents to send the same e-mails to the other Commissioners. Even Bernard's faithful ally, Cooper, does not apparently receive these e-mails. Stacks of reported signed petitions are equally mysterious.
Bernard's other source of information about what other people think is conversations he reports having had with them. I'm not talking here so much about "the people," or residents at large, but consultants and other specialists. On many occasions, these people, who tend to be under contract employment to the Village, will have articulated a position, including various "facts," to the general Commission and the Manager. But Bernard will report having had with them private conversations in which they reportedly gave him very different "facts," and very different, often diametrically opposed, conclusions and recommendations. It's never clear what to do with these massive discrepancies.
Cooper's approach manifests much less finesse, and is best characterized as essentially referencing Bernard and saying "yeah, what he said." What Cooper adds is results of internet or other researches, which at best reveal conclusions that are idiosyncratic, and at worst completely disrespect information clearly presented by others. His droning about a walking/bicycle path painted on the streets, mentioned in his letter to Soapbox, is a perfect example. He completely ignores a determination that the streets are too narrow, and that no knowledgable person ever recommended such a thing. Apart from just saying it, it's not clear Cooper has any idea what people think or want, or how he would possibly know.
The reason to look carefully at Bernard and Cooper is that they each and together present an alleged mandate from the residents, and if these Commissioners could be trusted, the opinions of so many residents should be given substantial weight. Not necessarily controlling weight, but at least substantial weight.
So thus far, a good opportunity to trust them is mitigated by their presenting arguments that rest on patently untrue assertions, and the fact that the messages they claim to transmit from the public at large cannot be confirmed. There is no way to tell whether the sheaf of papers Bernard waves around is printed e-mails from resident correspondents, or jokes people sent him. Assuming they are printed e-mails at all.
The other source of perspective on Bernard and Cooper, and to what extent they do or don't represent and transmit the voice of the people, is a look at their recent backgrounds in the Village. Bernard was a well-respected resident of the Park, and he was held in such high esteem that he was made Chairman of the Charter Review Committee, then later appointed unanimously by four sitting Commissioners to fill the spot of the fifth Commissioner, who had just died. At moments like those, it would have been easy to conclude that Bernard was an agreed representative of community sentiments. And the recommendations of the Charter Review Committee were accepted both by the then Commission and by the public at large. Further, Bernard ran for an elected seat when his appointment ended, and he won it. Again, good reason for confidence in his representing or reflecting something of his neighbors. But once attaining a Commission seat, Bernard has made himself increasingly marginal. He quickly alienated three of the four Commissioners who appointed him, and eventually alienated the fourth. Many votes at the end of the last Commission were 4-1. On the next Commission, the current one, Cooper joined Bernard, and the two of them represent an almost invariable 3-2 minority, about almost any topic. On the other side, there is a growing population of Village residents who say they respected and trusted Bernard at one time, but no longer. So it's no longer clear Bernard represents the voice of anyone except himself, Cooper, and a few residents who will sometimes come forward to echo Bernard's sentiments.
Cooper, for his part, had briefly been active in the Village before his election, having served on one Board (Parks and Parkways) and a related ad hoc committee. What is notable is that he didn't get along with anyone in either group, and he was most often outvoted or marginalized. Presumably, when he campaigned for his current Commission seat, he presented himself adequately well in people's homes, and he most likely did not tell them he was an outcast on the two groups where he served. So it is not really clear that he is a reliable reporter when it comes to the thoughts, or the will, of the people.
What's interesting is the power Bernard once had, and some of which he still retains. As the dust settles, it is dubious that that power is his ability to transmit, or know, or perhaps even care about, the thoughts, feelings, and voices of the people. His power is to whip up a form of activity among some of his neighbors. Even as he has lost increasing numbers of them, those who are devoted can be counted on to ask "how high" when Bernard tells them to jump. He very effectively gets them to the polls. He has now stimulated two of his followers to run for Commissioner. One of them says repeatedly she didn't, or perhaps doesn't, want to run. The other has lived in the Park for an unspecified, but apparently not very long, time, had been invisible until two months ago, when Bernard suckered him into coming to a Commission meeting to complain both about FPL and the Commission. He has never had any activity of any kind in the Village, and has never even voted in the Village. Not for a Village election or even a general election. So this Commission candidate would normally appear pretty improbable. But Bernard is a hard and tireless worker, and his devotees do what he tells them. As unlikely as one of Bernard's candidates appears, and as reluctant as the other is, I wouldn't bet against him. I've seen him in action, and I know what he can do. I've seen him make a foolish and unbelievably protracted crusade over the planting of one tree, and although he failed to get that one tree planted in two and a half years, and he engendered lots and lots of resentment and frustration from many of us, he never lost the devotion of some of his followers over it. To this day, they think the saboteur of the tree was someone else. It wasn't easy to get the Village to decline a new and free tree, but Bernard was provocative, stubborn, offensive, and off-putting enough to get it to happen, and some of his followers still think the culprit was what he likes to portray as the evil ruling triumvirate on the Commission. He probably blames the Manager as well. As I recall, he even blames me, although the reasoning is hopelessly tenuous. And when the County recently expeditiously planted a few blocks of new trees, Bernard complained about that, too, and got his followers completely undone over it. (See "Dumbing Down" in this blog.)
So when Bernard and Cooper talk, and tell us what should happen about something, because they have inside information as to what our neighbors really think and want, should we believe them?
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