Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Lebensraum
It was not easy to stay for the first three hours of tonight's Commission meeting. I assume there was another hour.
It was once again the Tracy Truppman Show, Starring Tra-cy Trupp--man. This time, there was a bit more of a twist. I think Tracy is perfecting a system for herself.
Tracy couldn't even allow Daphne Campbell to spin out the Daphne Campbell Show without frequently interrupting and trying to have a private conversation with Daphne. Frankly, I suspect this was due to Daphne's too frequent references to her past collaborations with Roxy Ross to make the accomplishments Daphne tells herself she's made. I think Roxy is to Tracy what Barack Obama is to Donald Trump: any traces must be eradicated.
We got through several Resolutions without much extraneous meandering. Then, it was onto the "old business" of driveway and landscaping considerations. Specifically, it was Tracy's considerations. Last month, Roxy introduced a driveway plan. Tracy immediately and unceremoniously ignored it in favor of her own proposal. Tonight, the proposal came back for continued discussion. What initially came back was a combination of Roxy's proposal and the proposal from the Code Review Committee. But Tracy again immediately superimposed her own version. She simply ignored what was on the table. Tracy made clear to her colleagues what she expected of them. But her three stooges were somehow getting excessive minds of their own, as if they were entitled to their own views of things. So Tracy announced that they were moving on to something else, and that they would return to the driveway proposal later. The kids had lost sight of who their daddy is, and Tracy allowed them an opportunity to think about it.
Then, there was the matter of a landscape proposal. On the Agenda, there were two such listings. The first was proposed by Roxy, and the second was proposed by Tracy. Roxy introduced her proposal, and Tracy immediately-- again-- ignored it and simply went on to discuss her own proposal. Just like last month, and again this month, Tracy treated Roxy as if she wasn't there. This was when I remembered I had to go home to, um, I forget why I had to leave to go home. Oh, yeah, to walk my dog.
One of the remaining issues-- a leftover from last month-- was Tracy's alleged concern about how to communicate more fully with BP residents. She gave us yet another demonstration as to what that would look like. The room tonight was unusually empty. At one point in the driveway discussion, Bob Anderson raised his hand. He wanted to say something. Tracy shook her head no.
Tracy did say one funny thing tonight. The Commission was discussing driveway surfaces, and Roxy-- oh, yeah, the beast-- took issue with Tracy's insistence on making asphalt an unacceptable surface. Roxy asked or suggested that it seemed that what Tracy was trying to do was avoid impervious surfaces, to which Tracy agreed, and Roxy pointed out that there is pervious asphalt. So maybe we should ban impervious surfaces, not asphalt. But Tracy again brushed Roxy off, telling her "we're not engineers." Usually, the rank Tracy likes to try to pull is to suggest to everyone that she is, in some sense, an engineer. But I guess when you have to fight the beast, you have to get a bit creative. Or inconsistent. Or you just make stuff up.
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Anyone that knows me knows I'm certainly no Trumpateer. It's sad, very sad that a bully is in charge of this Village. Treating a fellow commissioner with disdain simply because they may think differently or does not follow your directives is completely unacceptable. Fred you're a better man than I, I cannot go to these meetings any more and watch this type of behavior. It's simply to upsetting for me. How people ( a few ) support this person is beyond me! Poor Rox I'm sure she's counting the minutes for her term to end. Let them keep passing more rules so we can ignore those like we ingnore the ones that are already in the books. Smoke and mirrors my friend! We should concentrate all of our efforts on enforcing what we have now, which we don't. Alas it's not about the community it's about the individual like it usually is.
ReplyDeleteArt,
DeleteI apologize if I seemed to be focusing on Donald Trump. I was just using another common and current example to show part of Tracy's dynamic. After she disposed of me, Roxy became her other nemesis. If anything, Tracy and Donald have in common that they can't think beyond themselves personally. One difference is that Tracy is a lot smarter than Donald. But she has no agenda other than herself, so she can't do anything useful with her intelligence.
And it's not that Tracy treats Roxy the way she does, because Roxy disagrees with her. She treats her the way she does, because Roxy is an amazing representative of the Village, and has made very many wonderful accomplishments, and Tracy is no match for her. Hey, if I had substantial feelings of inadequacy, and was prone to jealous raging, I'd be afraid of Roxy, too. She's unbelievable. And you can't compete with her, because you'll lose every time. Tracy is more like Jacobs, and Bernard and Cooper, who just want to obliterate Roxy, because they look really bad, and they think it's Roxy's fault, by comparison. But they, and Tracy and Jenny and Will (and increasingly Harvey), look bad all by themselves, because they have nothing to offer.
One thing we did see last night was an energized Will and a slightly more focused Harvey. Will is on the Commission for only one reason-- to stop the Village from making him have proper parking on his property-- and that was threatened last night. So he came to life. And Harvey has been harping about the possibility that someone might ever make him move the border of his driveway, and he asserted himself about that, too.
It was interesting about a profusion of rules. Tracy sort of addressed that last night. But she was all over the map about it. She wants to complain about rules, but she also wants more of certain kinds of rules. The issue about asphalt was like that. Tracy imperiously declared (she really does think she's a one woman Commission) that we should ban asphalt. Roxy responded to her as I told you, because banning impervious surfaces makes more sense than banning asphalt, if your issue is the one Tracy was trying to effect. So we could have had fewer rules (just ban impervious surfaces, instead of having specific bans for various impervious materials). But because the suggestion came from Roxy, Tracy had to repudiate it.
And as much as she criticizes "micromanaging," she is the great micromanager.
But I think the real problem is that she just thinks everything is or should be about her. So she needs to keep finding ways to make her mark, and put her brand on everything. As you clearly say, it's the mistake that comes from thinking elected office is about the elected official, instead of being about the community. Trump is more specifically self-serving, but both of them think it's all about them.
Fred
PS, Art: It's not that Tracy doesn't like rules. She just wants them to be her rules. For example, during the discussion last night regarding asphalt, when Roxy suggested there is pervious asphalt, Tracy dismissed that option saying she thinks asphalt looks "hideous." So this was a double-duty maneuver. It served to turn away whatever Roxy was saying, and it was also Tracy's way of installing herself as the sole arbiter of what looks nice. She had no more use for P&Z than she did for Roxy, or for anyone who isn't Tracy herself.
DeleteFred