The Missing Dollar

This is an old joke, and you probably know it.  Three guys walk into a motel and want to take a room together.  They ask the clerk what the room rate is.  He tells them $30, and each man pays $10.  When the motel proprietor returns, he asks if anything happened in his absence, and the clerk says he rented one of the rooms for $30.  The proprietor scolds him, telling him the clerk knows very well the rate is only $25, and he tells the clerk to go return the extra $5.  The clerk has to figure out how to divide five dollars among three people.  So the clerk takes five $1 bills.  He gives one to each guest, and keeps two for himself.  So at this point, each guest had paid $10, but each has received a $1 refund, leaving each having paid $9.  They therefore paid $27 among them.  The clerk has $2 more in his pocket, making a total of $29.  But if $30 were paid at the outset, where is the other dollar?

I think about this joke from time to time, including when I observe some of the workings, and some of the characters, of the Village.  For example, the past Commission was frequently accused of being heartless, unconcerned, certainly unrepresentative, and domineering if a majority of it made a decision that was unsatisfying to, or even at the expense of, one Village resident.  But the complainers and accusers, including some residents on the current Commission, declare themselves and are declared by a past Commissioner to be courageous and visionary when they frustrate the clear and expressed wishes of the entire neighborhood.

Similarly, some Commissioners, or some Commissions, are accused of failing to ask enough questions and to explore enough details about one issue or another.  They are branded careless at best, and driven by nefarious influences at worst.  But the accusers, again past and current Commissioners, try to portray themselves as goal-oriented and appreciative of the big picture when they ignore facts and fail utterly to take into account massive uncertainties, seeming to proceed like a juggernaut in pursuit of some entirely murky, incomprehensible, and unreliable aim.

Or some past and current Commissioners complain bitterly about a gift of public art to the Village and its residents, provided by private donations.  They complain about the art itself and the process of its having been donated.  But those same past and current Commissioners portray themselves as art promoters, and the past donors as selfish and abusive and against public art (I know; huh?), when the current group take public money the taxpayers do not want to spend to pay for art the same taxpayers may not want to have (the Commissioners have been very careful to conceal what art they want to buy with taxpayers' money).

So where is the missing dollar?  It's just a joke, a little trick of logic.  There is no missing dollar.  And where is the advocacy by the majority of the current Commission and one past Commissioner, the championing of the residents, the prudence, the wisdom, the concern for public wishes and public money?  It's a joke, a little semantic trick.  There is no feeling or concern for the Village or its residents, no carefulness or wisdom.  And unlike the joke about the missing dollar, you don't get a smile out of it at the end.