We Might As Well Get This Conversation Started: The November, 2018 Village Election

As is almost always true, there are three Commission seats being contested this year.  And there are five candidates.  And it may be important to note at the outset that the two seats not being contested are those of Tracy Truppman and Jenny Johnson-Sardella, which really means Tracy has two votes on every issue.  Jenny's tenure has no meaning independent of Tracy.

The five candidates, in alphabetical order, are Manny Espinosa, Dan Samaria, Jared Susi, Will Tudor, and Laura Betsy Wise.  Since I'm writing this blog post, I'll give you my opinion.  If you want to give your own opinions, let me know, and I'll see to it that you can write a blog post here, too.  And you can always comment.

Manny Espinosa has lived in the Park since about 2012.  This was a noteworthy issue when he first ran in 2013, because he had to wait until the last day to qualify, so that he would have lived here exactly one year, which is the requirement.  Manny is a nice guy.  I've met him, and I like him.  He was a corporate accountant, but his candidate application says he's now retired.  Congrats, Manny.  I say Manny ran once before, in 2013.  Chuck Ross says Manny ran twice before.  Until it's clarified otherwise, I think Chuck is wrong.  Manny's issue when he ran was that he had applied for a variance for a fence or something, his application was turned down, and he had a gripe against the Village.  There was no other obvious reason for Manny to have been interested in Village government.  He had never been involved with Village functioning in any way, and he hasn't since.  I have no idea what Manny's current interest is about, except I heard he was again denied a variance for something.  But here's the possibly important thing about Manny.  (And we can never forget the elephant in the room.)  Manny shows no evidence of being connected to anyone else.  In that way, what looks initially like a disadvantage might contain an advantage.  Manny may have no reason to care about Tracy Truppman.  And if Manny or anyone else is not a Tracy stooge, this is of great value to the Village.  On the other hand, if Manny's candidacy is just about getting himself a variance for something, he could theoretically make a deal with the devil.  The problem is that if Tracy gets just one stooge elected, she stays on the throne, and we experience Village death and dysfunction for two more years.  So it's hard to know what to think about Manny and his candidacy.

Dan Samaria has lived in the Village for several years.  I don't know how many.  Fewer than I have, and more than Manny Espinosa has.  Dan's an exterminator.  He's my exterminator.  Dan's a good enough guy.  He's active and dedicated, and he was on the Recreation Board for a few years.  He never lets you forget he's there, but he contributes.  Dan has run before.  It's not clear what this is about for him.  Dan's approach could be described as unsophisticated, and I sometimes think he could be susceptible to "reason" that may not be very reasonable.  And that susceptibility can set Dan up to allow Tracy to run circles around him, even if he didn't start out wanting her to.  I have no idea how she's gotten Jenny, Will Tudor, and Harvey Bilt to check their intellects at the door, but I wouldn't put it past her to be able to have her way with Dan.  If Dan were really independent, what would he want?  What would his initiatives be?  What's his "vision?"  Beats me.  Maybe he'll tell us.

Jared Susi has lived here fewer years than Dan has.  Jared lives with his wife and their son.  Jared is a builder.  I like Jared, and his wife, Nicole.  They're very good and decent people.  They've each demonstrated wonderful devotion to the Village.  Maybe Nicole has even more than Jared has.  Jared was on P&Z until he had to resign to run for Commissioner.  The thing some people hold against Jared is that it was he, and/or his company, that renovated the bathrooms in the recreation center, and there were problems.  I myself never fully understood what was so bad about them, but I think they were fixed.  Anyway, I feel confident that Jared is independent of Tracy, and that's my main concern.  Jared can occasionally be a bit self-possessed, but this means he wants things done right.  (I'm not sure what that bathroom thing was about.)  It's true that he tends to complain about other people, but at least he has the honor and courage of his convictions to run for Commission, so he can do it better.

Will Tudor has, in my opinion, been a disaster.  His head bobbles, he "concurs," and he does nothing for the Village.  He has nothing to say, and nothing to offer.  I still say his only reason for being there is to try to prevent the Village from making him install a driveway on his property, which is the Code (which may well be why Tracy has agreed to minimize Code compliance), and that may also be his reason for running for re-election.  But if that's his theory, then he has to try to be on the Commission, with a sympathetic majority, until he moves out of the Village.  It's a lot easier just to put in the freakin' driveway.  It's a weird thing for Will to swear to uphold the Village Charter (which includes the Codes), while he resists it every day.  But hey, whatever were my reasons not to have voted for Will when he ran two years ago, I have 10 times as many reasons not to vote for him now.

I said Laura Betsy Wise, because that's how she's listed.  I don't know her name.  I don't know her, or anything about her.  Well, someone told me she lives just north next to where the Earhardts used to live, so if that's true, then that's what I know about her.  As far as I know, she has no connection to Village functioning, except that she happens to live here.  That makes her the same as Will Tudor.  Which is why I suspect she's running for the same reason Will did.  I don't know this for a fact, but I'd guess that Tracy scared up Laura, or Betsy, or whatever she calls herself, to give herself one extra chance to preserve her majority.  So since I don't know anything about Laura Betsy, I wouldn't vote for her.  Even if I came to know something about her, from her campaigning, I'd wonder where she's been all this time, and I still wouldn't want to entrust the Village to her.

I have no problem at all voting for Jared.  I'm a little concerned about how susceptible Dan is, but I'm likely to vote for him, too.  Manny is a strange duck as a candidate, but his possible value to the Village is that he might be independent of Tracy, so I might vote for him.  Will is an absolutely, positively not, and Laura Betsy is probably the same, although for slightly different reasons.  What's important for the Village is to elect three people, none of whom are Tracy stooges, so the Village can function adaptively again.  If there are three of these five.

I'm more than happy to be relieved of any unfair conclusions and reservations to which I might have come.  That can happen in a number of ways.  One of them is this: in the past, even when I myself was running for Commission, I offered full and unlimited use of this blog to any other candidates (as it's available that way to anyone anyway).  Harvey Bilt and David Coviello took me up on it.  Any of our current candidates can, too.  All they have to do is tell me they want to post things, and the blog is theirs.  They can make clear who they are, what they want, and what I got wrong.