Toward the end of 2016, there was what seemed to present itself as a triumvirate, or a slate, of Commission candidates. They were Tracy Truppman, Jenny Johnson-Sardella, and Will Tudor. Tracy had some inconsistent and remote experience on minor Boards, Jenny was on the important Code Compliance Board, and Will had no identifiable presence at all in the Village, except that he happened to live here.
In most settings, these three offered no meaningful agenda. There was the de rigueur pablum about "listening to residents," but no real attention to important Village issues. Whenever an issue came up, as they did in places like Nextdoor, these three were conspicuously absent, and not because no one asked them to chime in.
I said in this blog, on Nextdoor, and verbally that I was very concerned about this slate getting elected. (I had not planned to run again myself, and I only ran anyway to offer myself as protection from this slate.) They would represent an instant majority-- there was every appearance that they were in lock step-- and they had no identifiable agenda. It seemed to me, as I said repeatedly and publicly, that a majority like this, of people most of whom had no relevant experience with Village government, and who had no agenda (didn't want anything, and expressed no vision for the neighborhood), would function in what I considered a predictable way.
I said they would do nothing, because they had nothing in mind to do, and their only available posture would be to criticize and blame other people. I specified that they would blame the prior Commission and the Manager. And that would be their agenda: doing nothing, and blaming other people. I committed myself openly and repeatedly to this suspicion as to what would happen if Truppman, Johnson-Sardella, and Tudor got elected.
Was I close?
Maybe I misspoke. The new Commission majority, functioning in the lock step it appeared they would, did do some things. Some of it was intentional and concerted, and some of it was "unintended consequences."
ReplyDeleteThey immediately, unceremoniously, and without cause fired the new manager the prior Commission, and a more or less unanimous group of Village residents, had just hired. The other accomplishments of the new Commission were perhaps not intentional. Our long time Village attorney quit working for us. And the enthusiasm of Village residents, especially those who attend Commission meetings, has been so eroded that even some of the very long time and faithful attenders don't come to meetings any more.
So although I would still say the Commission majority has no identifiable agenda, it would be wrong to say it didn't accomplish, or "do," anything.
Fred