It's an Interesting Question: How Many "I"s Are There in Team? You Think There Are None?

In my opinion, William Abreu, or whoever advises him, set a trap.  It was on Nextdoor.  Mac Kennedy fell into the trap, and Art Gonzalez partially avoided it.  The trap was this: William accused Mac and Art of being in league with me and with each other to form some sort of team or slate that was trying to get itself elected as a bloc to the Commission.  For the purpose of this discussion, I'm going to set aside that William was not remotely correct.  There is, however, a however.  And we'll come to that.

Mac was first to react to William's accusation.  He defended himself by making clear he doesn't campaign, and hasn't formed an alliance or any sort of cooperation agreement, with me or Art or anyone.  And that's true.  There have been formal and informal "slates" of candidates for BP Commission before, but there isn't one now.  Mac happens to be a Commissioner right now, and he has chosen to run for re-election.  In that sense, he's on his own.

Then Art responded to the bait William was dangling.  Art, too, declared his independence from any and all other candidates.  And Art was right, too.  Elsewhere, Art said that he chose to run for Commission at least in part because some Village residents -- presumably friends of his -- suggested he should.  I'm quite sure Art is right about this, because it turns out I happen to be one of those people.  Art was on the Planning and Zoning Board, and he resigned in order to run.  So he's been involved, and those of us who know him like and respect him.  But he's not beholden to anyone, and he, like Mac, has not offered himself as anything like a part of a mutually cooperative team.

It seems to me that in Mac's and Art's efforts to defend themselves from William's accusations, both of them used the word team, as in something of which they are not a part.  And on the surface of it, they're not.  Neither am I.  I have little reason to think any of the six candidates running now is part of a pre-agreed team.  There are three seats to fill, six candidates, and each of us is in some sense running against all of the other five.  The only partial exception to looking at it that way is that three of us will be elected.  Whoever gets elected defeated three people, not five people.  There's no advantage to coming in first instead of second.  There's some advantage to coming in first or second instead of third (the top two vote-getters get four year terms, and the third highest vote-getter gets a two year term).  The huge advantage is coming in first, second, or third instead of fourth, fifth, or sixth.  The last three get nothing.  They lose.

But as people analogize about chess, it's important to think numbers of moves ahead.  Suppose a candidate wins.  That new Commissioner becomes part of a group of five Commissioners.  So what happens then?  It can depend entirely on who are the other four Commissioners.  And the new Commissioner may wind up experiencing a very great stake in who are his or her Commission colleagues.

To take the very recent, and current, examples, if four Commissioners are in very tight league, and Roxy Ross is not only excluded, but demonized, then Roxy Ross will accomplish nothing.  Or, if three Commissioners are in tight league, and Roxy Ross and Mac Kennedy become the minority, then Roxy and Mac will accomplish nothing.  They'll just get persistently outvoted and trampled by what "functions" as a stable majority.  And if the majority don't happen to have any idea what they're doing, and don't want anything, let's say, then the Village will suffer.  Because Roxy, or Roxy and Mac, were not part of a functioning and functional majority.  If Roxy and Mac have a vision for the Village, and want something in the Village's interest, and Dan Samaria is still taking good and adaptive advice, then we have a vision and a competent and professional manager.  If Dan goes the other way, so to speak, as in fact he unexpectedly did, and stops taking good and adaptive advice, and allies himself with Ginny O'Halpin and Will Tudor, then we have no vision, no competent management, and nothing gets done.  We do things like extending, at a higher cost, a WastePro contract that very few people, if anyone, wants any more, because Roxy and Mac are part of a minority.  Because Will Tudor never cared, and never wanted anything, and Ginny O'Halpin also doesn't care or want anything, and Dan has joined them.

To give you one other angle of what this looks like, some bcc'ed group of us recently received from Commissioner and candidate-for-re-election Mac Kennedy a supposedly encouraging statement of what Mac has "accomplished."  Mac's version of accomplishments, as his e-mail stated, is how many items he has gotten sponsored on recent Commission meeting agendas.  The problem becomes that few of those agenda items have been adopted.  Because Mac is part of a minority.  It's a very different Commission, and a very different Village, if Mac is part of a majority.  Or, to put it a slightly different way, if Mac is surrounded and supported by a majority.  Will Tudor wasn't going to change after 3 1/2 years of mind-numbing, while simultaneously infuriating, disinterest and inertia.  But if Ginny and/or Dan had turned out to be functional, instead of what they are, the last 10 months would have been very, very different from what they were.  Of course, none of that was Mac's call.  Not then.

So today, Mac, and Art, will say with fierce pride that they are independent.  They are not in league with anyone, there are no pre-arranged agendas, and they don't have cooperation agreements with each other, or with me, or with anyone.  On the surface, they're absolutely right.  And generally, they should be right about that.  We've all seen way too much of what it looks like when some Commissioners use their seats to do no more than "concur" with one dominant Commissioner/mayor.  Everyone should be independent.  I will say for myself that I had very good working Commission relationships with Roxy Ross and David Coviello.  The three of us commonly formed a majority that accomplished a great deal.  We didn't commit ourselves to each other.  We didn't all always agree.  We just all wanted the same general thing, which was what was best for the Village, and we worked together.  As soon as I was displaced in 2016, and Rox and David were still there, but now as a minority, everything started to unravel, and the Village progressively deteriorated.  That's all it took.  Just one seat shifted.  All progress, competent professional management, decency toward neighbors, e-mails answered, mail responded to, all stopped.

Mac and Art are technically right.  They're independent.  And in most respects, they should be.  We should all be independent.  But they have to be very careful to form preferences, and perhaps try to affect, who is on the Commission with them, if one or both of them win seats.  They will be part of a team.  The question is whether they will be two members of a three person team, or if they'll be the two members of a two person team.  If the two of them win seats, they ought to care very, very much who wins the third seat.  If it's the two of them, for example, and Will Tudor, or seemingly Judi Hamelburg, they'll be sucking the same exhaust Rox did, and Rox and Mac do now.  And never mind how frustrating that will be for them.  It will be an ongoing disaster for the Village.  If it's the two of them and I, then the Village returns to adaptive functioning.