Ginny O'Halpin and Rafael Ciordia, the Other Two Candidates.

I met with Ginny O'Halpin last week.  Ginny posted a small amount of information about herself on this blog.  I've met Ginny a few times, I like her, and I trust her.  She does not have extensive knowledge about the Village's functioning and its particular problems.  She just feels, as she said in her short post, that somehow, the government here is not working, and since she's gotten over the loss of her husband, and she has time, she thinks she should try to help, or confront whatever is faulty.  As I said, her specific grasp on what is faulty is tenuous.

Ginny told me one story that she found interesting, and illustrative, and I agree with her.  After she submitted her paperwork to declare herself as a candidate, she got a call.  From Rebecca Rodriguez.  The Village attorney.  Rebecca personally called Ginny to give her a helpful heads up.  She pointed out that in her application, Ginny said she owned properties other than the one in which she lives in BP, and Rebecca was advising Ginny to report income from these properties.

So, here are the problems with this helpful little phone call.  First, Ginny didn't say she derives income from these properties, and she doesn't.  One of these properties is in the upper Keys, and the other is somewhere else, and Ginny and her late husband used to use them for vacations.  Why Village attorney Rebecca Rodriguez took it upon herself to assume these were income-generating properties was not stated and was unknown.  Second, even if these had been income-generating properties, and even if Ginny hadn't reported this as a source of income (you have to report sources of income in your application to run for elected office, presumably so it can be determined if there are any possible causes of conflict of interest), Rebecca Rodriguez, the Village attorney, should have been the last person to have called Ginny with a helpful heads up.  Village attorney Rebecca Rodriguez should never even have known about these properties, or the content of Ginny's application.  The Village clerk would have known about and handled that, or she would have brought it to the Village manager.  Ginny told me this story to illustrate one of the problems she wants to confront (or maybe several of them), and it was a pretty good illustration.

I met Rafael Ciordia this week.  Chuck Ross and I intended to talk with him together, and we tried to make arrangements.  But Rafael portrays himself as an almost hopelessly busy guy, and it was not easy to get him to agree on a time and place.  Chuck and I were intent, and we accepted Rafael's offer to meet at Alaska Coffee Roasters at 7:00 AM.  Frankly, Chuck and I had the same thought: that Rafael was offering something he thought we would reject, because it was so inconvenient.

Anyway, Rafael is a ball of enthusiasm.  He's all smiles and some version of happy talk.  He likes slogans, like that you should always ask a busy man to handle a responsibility, because busy men are so intent on getting things done.  Rafael has a lot of slogans like that.  And everything excites and inspires him.  Rafael knows next to nothing about the Village and how it works, and every topic that is raised, and every question that is asked, inspires Rafael to reassure that this is exactly the kind of thing he wants to learn.  (He's much more willing to learn on the job than many other people would be, and than some people would be to "hire" someone whose first mission is to try to figure out what the job is.  But that's Rafael.)

I like Rafael.  He's a delightful person.  He's very outgoing and friendly.  I told him I like him.  I also don't trust Rafael.  I told him that, too.  He's willing to do stupid things, like learning on the job, and he expressly considers it unnecessary to start anywhere near the bottom of the ladder.  He has, at best, tremendous confidence in himself.  That's the careless part.  If Rafael was only careless and didn't have the world's best judgment, I could maybe forgive him for that.  I think Rafael considers himself very smart, and I don't disagree with him.  I do think Rafael gets a bit ahead of himself, since he isn't deterred by finding out how little he knows, and he's an early morning person who is taking on a responsibility part of which occurs at night, and even relatively late at night.  Rafael fell asleep during this week's Commission meeting.  Would Rafael force himself to stay awake if he was on the other side of the Commission desk?  Maybe.  Probably.  But as Chuck Ross said to Rafael and to me, Rafael is doing the equivalent of cramming for an exam.  All of a sudden, Rafael is coming to Commission meetings, and board meetings.  If he can't stay awake when he's cramming and the exam is the next day, it's maybe not looking great.

But that's not my big problem about Rafael (who, by the way, is on the circulation for this blog, and is more than welcome to post a comment).  My big problem is the other reason I don't trust Rafael.  I don't know where Rafael's candidacy came from, and Rafael isn't saying.  I know, and Rafael acknowledges, that he's friends with, or thinks particularly well of, Krishan Manners.  I have no reason to think Rafael would even have known about the Commission or the openings had it not been for Krishan tapping him on the shoulder.  Rafael knows I'm skeptical about this, and in his stated attempt to prove to me at least that it isn't Tracy Truppman seducing him into running, he told me some story about Tracy's having approached him after this week's Commission meeting, to confirm that he was Rafael, as if Tracy wasn't sure who Rafael Ciordia is.  But Tracy is a control freak.  Even if it was Krishan who dug up Rafael, Tracy would have known all about it.  And no doubt have met and spoken at length to Rafael.

Rafael also told me and Chuck his version about how he decided to run for Commission, and why, for example, he didn't start out at some other level of "service" (Rafael likes to say he's inspired to "serve" the Village).  He simply got the calling.  It was simply time.  He didn't get the calling two weeks or two months or two years before Betsy Wise and Jenny Johnson-Sardella resigned, and we declared we had to have a special election, and there were empty board seats.  No, Rafael got the calling only when we suddenly needed two new Commissioners.

And then, it gets slightly worse.  In recent weeks, there's been a lot of talk about a proposed agreement between us and CNM.  The subject was the medians on 121st St.  The bottom line is that the agreement was in some sense terrible for us.  There have been e-mails circulated around about this problem of the terrible proposed agreement.  No one who had a word to say about it thought it was anything but bad.  It came up at this week's Commission meeting.  And important background is that it is alleged that it was either David Hernandez, Krishan Manners, or both of them who hatched this terrible proposed agreement with CNM idea.  The Commission had to decide whether or not to resolve to accept it.  Bizarrely, this hot button, highly scoffed at, proposed agreement that would be dramatically disadvantageous to BP was placed on the consent agenda.  This is supposed to mean it's so obviously acceptable that it doesn't require any discussion.  Who on earth placed it there?  Beats me.  But it was only Dan Samaria who had sense enough to take it off the consent agenda, so it could be discussed.  By the time the discussion was over, not one of the current Commissioners approved of this obviously acceptable (placed on the consent agenda) agreement, and even David Hernandez admitted it had some, um, drawbacks.  But the very next day, in a group e-mail discussion, Rafael was still saying-- and he was apparently by then the only one saying this-- that he liked the proposed agreement.

I don't trust Rafael, because I don't know who is his sponsor, or his client, or whom he represents.  I don't know what he's about, and apart from the slogans and the platitudes, he isn't telling.

As I said, I like Rafael.  I would like to trust him.  I would like to be behind him and his alleged wish to "serve" the Village.  But he's making it impossible to do it.  It's a great deal of song and dance, but no substance.  And he unwaveringly rejects advice like that he should not run for Commission now, but get on a board, learn what he admits he doesn't know, and run in the future.  He's in a big hurry.  Just when Tracy Truppman happens to be desperate for one more stooge.