We Had to Pinch Ourselves.

Not one.  Not two.  But three meetings tonight.

The first one was about our fearless Commission's decision to replace 80 years' worth of Code Compliance Boards with a magistrate.  The stated reason to do this wasn't what you would call real.  It was more theoretical.  Well, Will Tudor's explanation was theoretical.  Will's idea was that we had somehow always been doing this wrong, and Will, who isn't an attorney, decided the right way to have a Code Compliance Board was to have an attorney magistrate, who would, according to Will's imaginings, have the right kind of experience or qualification or something, and whose expertise would shield the Village from the liability under which we simply must have been laboring all this time.  And Village attorney Rebecca Rodriguez reassured Will, and Tracy "Big Mama" Truppman, that she could not ethically allow the Village to have a Code Compliance function that wasn't staffed by an attorney.  Ah, those attorneys.  They do look out for each other's incomes.

Apparently, according to Will, we're skating on very thin ice with our Code Compliance Boards composed of people who are not what Will would call experts, even though they know the Village and the Codes backwards and forwards.  And the jeopardy we create for ourselves, according to Will, is that we could get sued.  Gary Kuhl reviewed for Will our history of getting sued, because of bad Code Compliance Board decisions.  The score so far is zero.  We've never been sued.  Suing a Code Compliance Board is not provided for by law.  But a dissatisfied Village resident could appeal a bad Code Compliance Board decision to the District Court.  That hasn't happened, either.  I did mention that Will's concern wasn't what you would call real.

So, the gang busied itself figuring out which Code functions would be assigned to the magistrate (essentially all of them), and which to a newly constituted Code Compliance Board made of Village residents lovingly selected by Tracy Truppman.  It was an exciting (oh, no it wasn't; but it had lots of inaudible mumbling in it) discussion that somehow, amazingly, resulted in Tracy's triaging Code functions exactly as she wanted to.  Dan Samaria was poised to protest, but apparently, it wasn't too hard for Tracy to hypnotize him with suggestions like "I think we should assign items 1-5, 7, and 8-13 to the magistrate.  What do you think, Vice Mayor and Commissioner Tudor?"  And those boys were just as good as girls for Big Mama.  Which was a good thing, because there were no other girls there, apart from Big Mama.  And Rebecca girl.  And Rosanne "Madame Clerk" Prado.

But the problem was that in public comment, every person who spoke complained about this scheme.  Everyone thought it was wrong.  And botched.  No one thought it should happen.  In part, it was because the Commission was reduced to Big Mama, Dan Samaria, and Willy Boy Tudor.  Betsy Wise has resigned, and Jenny Johnson-Sardella has apparently stopped coming to meetings.  And what's left of the Commission is under investigation by the county Ethics Commission.  It was a hell of a "quorum," which Willy Boy reminded us it still was.  And the discussion in which the three mouseketeers engaged made clear they had no experience with what our Code Compliance Board does, and has been doing over the course of many decades, and no idea how it works.  No idea at all.  So, every person who spoke pleaded with the Commission not to go forward with this ill-conceived scheme.  But it seemed Big Mama was on a mission.  Mac Kennedy didn't use this term-- although he described it perfectly-- but Big Mama has weaponized the Code Compliance function to punish her critics, and she can control the function better if it's one person she personally hires, instead of five of her neighbors.  So, the three agreed.

Meeting #2 was a Resolution to set a date for the election to replace Betsy Wise.  Yes, of course we have to do that, because Betsy lasted less than one year before she resigned.  But there was another pressing matter.  Jenny Johnson-Sardella has now missed four of 10 Commission meetings, and at least two workshops, this year.  She failed to show up tonight, too.  Her name was called, and she was noted absent.  It was clear she had not called in to say something prevented her from attending.  She's just stopped coming.  So again, every non-Commissioner Village resident who spoke during public comment pointed this out, and how Jenny has gotten e-mails from some of us, letting her know she should resign, and most important, that it is the Commission's responsibility to discuss this matter, and either get Jenny to resign, or remove her from office.   And it's time-sensitive, too.  We're about to spend $16K on an election to replace Betsy, and it wouldn't cost us any more, or very little more, to hold elections for both of their seats.  So, we asked the Commission to discuss this matter tonight.  Well, they were so busy talking about meaningless things, like what a shame it was that we have to do this on short notice at a time of year that people's thoughts, and maybe the people themselves, are elsewhere, that they never said one word about the Jenny problem.

Did I wait around to audit tonight's alleged version of the branding workshop adventure?  No, I did not.  There was a rumor that Betsy Wise, whose "baby" this was, was going to make an appearance for this project, but who cared any more?  (Another rumor was that Betsy might have claimed that she resigned, because of either "death threats" or "threats."  Both are preposterous, and either the rumor was false, or Betsy made up a doozy as an excuse to get off this bus.)

You sit there, for hours, and you raise issues, which all of your neighbors echo, and ask questions, and the meeting proceeds as if you never said anything, or weren't even there.  You have to pinch yourself, to see if you're still alive, or maybe you've turned into a ghost, and that's why you're so completely ignored.  It's a hell of a Commission we elected for ourselves.