"We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny." E. B. White
It appears I lost a confrontation today with his Imperial Majesty, Noah Jacobs. The setting of my unceremonious defeat was the Fence Ordinance workshop.
It's hard to believe what a very short time ago it was that Noah introduced himself to the Village, raging, sputtering, and stomping around, until Roxy had to try to deflect or redirect him. His response was to accuse her, which he did repeatedly, of brutally suppressing him, which he generalized to what he wanted to portray as her tendency to suppress the general public. In fact, Noah ran on this platform. He claimed to want the public heard and respected, not muzzled, and certainly not by a brutish and self-possessed Mayor.
Fast forward just a few quick months, and Noah is not only elected to the Commission, but he and two of his colleagues elect him Mayor. Since he has no relevant experience and no knowledge of the Village and its procedures, no one can fault him for being a bit tight. After all, he has no idea what he's doing, and he relies completely on the Manager, the Village Attorney, and even the past Mayor to guide him through meetings. He didn't begin to know the first thing about the Fence Ordinance, having failed completely to familiarize himself with it in any way, and presumably it seemed like a great convenience to him to deflect having to vote on it for a while. Thus, public workshop #2.
The workshop started with Noah's launching into asking questions about the Ordinance. He needed Gage Hartung and Dan Keys to explain it to him. Sometimes his colleagues, mainly Bob Anderson, would have to tell him what our Ordinance is. Sometimes, even the Village Attorney had to explain to him about these kinds of Ordinances in general. The problem with the tutorial he scheduled for himself is that he had convened the Commission, some of the Village staff, the Village Attorney, and several residents to keep him company while he asked Gage and Dan, and anyone else who would read him the Ordinance, to tell him what he never bothered to find out or ask about before. It was beginning to be a bit odd sitting there listening to this. Some of us were commenting to each other about it.
So, I asked for a chance to speak. Noah, who presumably intended to be slightly inclusive, told us that we could have three minutes to say what we had to say. I reminded Noah that he had not made any of the routine efforts to find out about the Ordinance (didn't come to Commission meetings, didn't go to any of the Code Review meetings, didn't familiarize himself with the Attorney's contributions, and didn't attend the other public workshop), and I wanted to know if Noah's asking people to explain the Ordinance to him was what this workshop was really about. That's certainly what it was about so far.
Well, I really didn't get out many sentences before Noah started cutting me off. He finally declared that I was only allowed to ask questions, not make comments. He hadn't established this scheme with his colleagues, and he didn't ask for any consensus; he just seemed to make it up on the spot.
So, I left. I've attended meetings chaired by John Hornbuckle and by Roxy Ross. I've seen each of them challenged, either by residents who were going on and on about something, or even by residents complaining personally about them. And I've seen each of them try to respond to or redirect those residents, generally as respectfully as possible. But I've never seen anything like this. This is a Chair who ignores his colleagues, acts as brutish as possible, and completely suppresses speakers. This was E. B. White's worst nightmare. Tyrannical, indeed. And I understand part of Noah's problem. He has placed himself at a huge disadvantage. He has almost no experience seeing how a Mayor acts, and his most direct experience involved a Mayor having to deal with him, when he was quite out of control. So not much chance for real perspective and insight there.
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