Oh, Come On, Janey, You Know I'm Just Jerking Your Chain.

Janey, I'm just funning with you.  You and Bob, and a number of other people, are complaining about Tracy/Jenny/Will/Betsy, as if they had disappointed you, but I know fully well that you knew what we were getting.  We all knew.  It was, as I say, obvious.  You didn't support them because you wanted this.  You supported them, because you felt they would be the lesser of two evils, so to speak.  And because you subjected us to this, I hope you were right.  At least, I hope you still think you were right.

We were just coming out of a bad Commission when Tracy/Jenny/Will ran, and many of us felt we had to have "anyone but Fred."  And when we said "anyone," many of us meant "anyone!"  We all knew Tracy Truppman, which was reason enough not to want her on the Commission.  And no one knew Jenny Johnson-Sardella or Will Tudor, and later Betsy Wise, which was reason enough not to want them on the Commission.  So, we were desperate.  We were grasping for "anyone" to save us from another day of Fred.  And another two or four years?!  Unbelievable.  Impossible.  So, we settled.  We had to.

Fred was one of the worst Commissioners we've ever had.  He joined Roxy Ross and David Coviello in depriving us of our Village sanitation workers, and in imposing on us outsiders to take away our refuse.  And the fact that we saved ourselves a lot of money is no consolation.  He sided with them again to force Village residents to have some of their tax money used to renovate the log cabin and build an administration building.  He made us "the worst we could be," which is clearly what he set out to do.  He even said something like that.

And besides, he had a horrible attitude.  He was undiplomatic and impatient.  Not only did he insist that his neighbors be sensible and consistent (and coherent), but as far as I could tell, he didn't have much reverence for Bob Anderson, or Barbara Watts.  And he should have.  Bob was a fixture, and Barbara was hopelessly dizzy.  You have to be deferential to people like that.  Fred should have been.  And I always thought he seemed bored and annoyed to be sitting through four hour meetings that he claimed should have taken less time.

And what might be worse, Fred was unreliable, at least about one thing.  He sat on the Commission for three years, did his damage (which was considerable), and then mercifully told us he wouldn't run for re-election.  At least we would be rid of him.  But no.  He then claimed that he didn't like the choice of people running to replace him, and he said he changed his mind, and ran again anyway.  Well, running was up to him, but it was up to us whether we would allow him back on the Commission.  No, we would not!!  We can only hope he got the message, seemingly evidenced by the fact that he didn't run again next time there was an election.  (And never mind that he was right about the people he didn't want replacing him on the Commission.  He said he didn't intend to run again, and he shouldn't have run again.  It's like he lied.)

But how do we know he won't run again?  Sure, we wouldn't have to elect him, if he did run (if he was that foolish), but now, we might have a new problem.  We thought we had saved ourselves, at least from Fred, by electing the Tracy crew, but it turns out we're not exactly pleased with them, either.  So, now, what do we do?  I think we're all agreed we don't want Fred.  And we seem pretty much to agree we don't want Tracy/Jenny/Will/Betsy.  But what's our choice?  It seems as if Fred got the message, and he wouldn't run again, but what if he did?  What if Tracy/Jenny/Will ran again, and Fred ran against them?  What would we do?  Hold our noses?  And choose which?

We need someone else to run.  Maybe Jared Susi would run.  H Weitz said he was thinking about it.  But someone told me they saw a "For Sale" sign in front of his house.  It doesn't seem to be looking good about Mac Kennedy.  The Kuhls invariably decline.  Someone needs to come forward to save us from the horrors we keep inflicting on ourselves.  And we do this deliberately.  We all knew Fred before he was elected.  What we got was the same guy we all knew.  Same focus, same attitude.  And the same is true of Tracy.  Same Tracy.  We also elected Jenny, Will, and Betsy, none of whom had ever demonstrated the slightest interest in BP.  (Well, Jenny sort of did, for a little while.)  So, surprise: none of them is interested in BP now that they're on the Commission, either.  We seem to know what we're getting, which we keep not liking, and we ask for it anyway.

We need to give this much more careful consideration.