I'm Not Sure What to Call This One.

Tuesday night, the new Commission met for the first time on record.  There didn't need to be much discussion, but there was some.  Here are my choices as to how to title the report of this meeting.

I  considered calling this post "Thank 'God.'"  If I go with this title, I would say that Roxy Ross asked the new Commission to reaffirm, or reconfirm, a gesture the last few Commissions have honored.  Her suggestion was that a Resolution of Decorum be asserted, so that Commissioners would remember to treat each other, and non-Commission residents, with proper respect.  This gesture was sort of mindless.  It was the type of matter that is routinely passed in regular meetings by Consent: it was obvious, and it did not require any discussion.  But since there was no Consent Agenda Tuesday night, and Roxy wanted special and explicit affirmation, she introduced the matter on its own.  It was on the new Commission's Agenda.

But Roxy didn't get the affirmation she requested.  David Coviello affirmed the concept, but our new majority, the "three-pack," joined together to defeat it.  "Cost" was raised, even though there is no cost.  (Presumably, in time, given enough time, our new Commissioners, who have absolutely no relevant experience with Village matters, will learn the difference between an Ordinance, which has a cost, and Resolution, which doesn't.)  There was expressed concern about "First Amendment rights," even though no one proposed to limit anyone's opportunity to speak.  It was just a reminder to be courteous.

But the other important--critically important-- basis for resistance was that the Resolution was already on the books.  So if this intention has already been established, our "three-pack" argued, and it's already on the books, then it does not require reaffirming.  As a purely personal matter, I consider this fabulous news.  I refuse to say the "Pledge of Allegiance."  There are two reasons I won't say it, but the most glaring and superficial one is that I am a militant atheist, and I am deeply offended that our new Pledge, the one adopted in 1954, had a reference to "god" inserted in it.  This is every kind of wrong.  It violates concepts of the separation of Church and State, and it's unnecessarily provocative, and deeply offensive to me.  If anyone thinks I should say the Pledge of Allegiance, they can restore the one that existed when I was born.  I might say that one.

Since the new Commission regime doesn't want to reaffirm what's already on the books, then it should be easy for them to stop the New "Pledge of Allegiance" nonsense.  It's already been said (I said it in elementary school, and I still remember having said it), and it doesn't need to be said any more.  Just like the Decorum Resolution.  Thank you, new Commission majority.  Thank you, "three-pack."

My other choice for a title is "Dream Interpretation: Manifest Content and Latent Content."  Here's how I would put that one together.  I would talk about so-called manifest dream content, which is the obvious story of the dream.  It's the part you remember and relate to someone else.  The latent content is what the dream really means, and what the conscious symbols unconsciously represent.  So your memory of the dream is that you waited for your friend to meet you at the park, but your friend forgot and didn't show up.  That's the manifest content.  The latent content, which you learn in analyzing this dream with your therapist, is that you haven't gotten over the loss of your father in your childhood, when he went to work, but had a heart attack and died, and you never saw him again.  But you were too young to have been able to understand this, and all you unconsciously continued to feel was that you were abandoned.

So I would still have started this story with Roxy Ross' proposal about the Decorum Resolution, and I would have summarized the "three-pack's" multiple and nonsensical resistances.  I would have suggested that these interactions were manifest content: Roxy proposed something, and three of her colleagues gave her a range of reasons why not.

I would then have looked a bit more deeply into these interactions, and I would have interpreted that Roxy, in proposing something that was not strictly necessary, was asserting her own considerable seniority on the Commission, and she was asking her new colleagues to adopt now accepted conventions.  She was being the big dog, trying to civilize them, and she was reminding them who was the heart and soul of the Commission.  That, I would have said, was Roxy's latent content.  The latent content of the response she got was that her new colleagues, much like the other "three-pack" of Cooper, Watts, and Jacobs, were asserting themselves, too, and rubbing Roxy's nose in the mess they were about to make.  The latent message delivered to Roxy this time could be translated to "siddown and shut up, Ross, or we'll smack you down.  Your wisdom, perspective, and good nature are no longer relevant around here.  Do we understand each other?"  I believe that was the latent message from our new "three-pack."  After all, they had to work a bit hard to come up with really lame and irrational excuses not to do something harmless, that a succession of prior Commissions have done.

There wasn't much else that happened in the meeting.  Mayor Tracy Truppman wants "workshops," so we can closely examine Village residents' thoughts about the functioning of various Village areas, such as the police, recreation, and our Code function.  It will be interesting to find out what Tracy has in mind, and if she cares any more what her neighbors think than she does what Roxy Ross thinks.  And both Tracy and Jenny Johnson-Sardella want to be more closely "in the loop" regarding hirings, like of our new Code Officer.  This hiring is the responsibility of the Manager, not of the Commission, and it's unclear what kind of say the new Commission wants over it.  Tracy herself has been equivocal as to whether she thinks the new Manager was a terrible choice, as she told us just after we hired the new Manager, or whether she thinks the new Manager is a wonderful asset regarding Codes, as she told us when she was trying to get us not to approve the new driveway and swale Ordinance.  Perhaps she'll eventually figure out what she thinks of the new Manager.

And now, immediately former Mayor David Coviello told us he will be resigning from the Commission, because a family situation is causing him to have to move out of BP.

So that was the meeting.  If you have a preference for the title, feel free to comment.