Who Are These People/Candidates, and What Do They Want?

There are now five people running for Commission, and the election is November 8.  Candidacies were declared no later than August 30.  By the end of the day August 30, six people had declared candidacies, and one has recently dropped out.  Three of the five will be elected.

I said I wouldn't run again.  I said it repeatedly and publicly.  It's a hard job, it's not fun, and it is every bit as thankless as anyone ever said it was.  Unless it's more so.

I had a vision, which was my campaign slogan: "For the Best We Can Be."  It was all I wanted before I was a Commissioner, and I have lived by it ever since.  That vision is what informed every position I took for almost three years.

I knew two of the new candidates reasonably well, and one just a little bit.  I didn't know anything at all about the other two.  The problem for me is that it wasn't clear to me that any of the new candidates shared my vision.  I couldn't be sure any of them represented the "For the Best We Can Be" option.

My feeling is that this option is an important one.  I might even say it's critically important.  On some of the larger issues during this past almost three years, the Commission was split 2:2 without my vote.  You might like the directions we adopted, or you might hate them.  But for me, it was "For The Best We Can Be."  That's what I promised to want, and it's what I think I delivered.

The problem is that I have no idea what the other four candidates want.  I don't know whence they're coming.  To be perfectly frank, if I knew that at least two of the other candidates want what I want, I wouldn't bother to run.  I'd just vote, and campaign, for them.  But I don't know what they want.  As best I can tell, they haven't said.

I'm sure that if asked, each would say he or she wants sensible and sensitive management of the Village, and honest representation of Village residents.  The reason I'm sure of that is that everyone would say that.  Like when you have your medical school interview, and they ask you why you want to be a doctor, and you say "to help people."

One of the candidates recently posted on Nextdoor, and his post was all about himself as a person.  It said nothing about his ambition as a Commissioner, or where he would like to see the Village go.  Chuck Ross and I were talking to another of them a week or so ago, while the three of us were standing around someplace.  Chuck asked him for his opinion about the budget.  The candidate said he would examine it, if it was presented to him, and formulate a response then.  But that's true of all Commissioners.  It says nothing about the approach, or the direction, or the vision, of the prospective Commissioner.

I think there are Commissioners like me.  Two of my Commission colleagues now are like that.  But we have also had Commissioners whose agenda was that they try to represent Village residents who feel victimized by the Village, or by the Manager, or by the Commission.  We've had Commissioners from the "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it any more" school of general discontent and rabble-rousing.  We have had Commissioners whose agenda is that they think our tax rate is too high, and all they want is lower taxes.  We've had Commissioners who resent government, and they want less of it.  We've had Commissioners who were really all about themselves, and they didn't really want anything.  There's no way to tell whence someone is coming-- and we're all coming from somewhere-- unless he or she says.

So I wish the other candidates would tell us what they want.  If they want what I want, they can have my seat.