A Rock and a Hard Place

The first time Dan Samaria ran for Commission, he didn't win.  He worked very hard on his second campaign, and he did well.  He got elected to a four year term.  As best I understood, Dan also availed himself of the advice, counsel, and mentoring of people like the Rosses and the Andersons.  Frankly, Dan was surprisingly steady, unflinching (while under constant attack from Truppman and her posse), and he seemed to keep his eye on the ball.  I was impressed by him.

But then, something happened (it might have been Roxy Ross' agreement to fulfill a term that had been abandoned by someone), and maybe Dan didn't feel he was free to confer with the Rosses (he was free to confer with Chuck, but not with Roxy, once she became a Commission colleague), and he also stopped relying on the Andersons.  His performance on the Commission deteriorated badly, and he just became resistant to what the rest of the Commission, especially Mac Kennedy, wanted.  There were rumors about whose (very bad) advice Dan was then taking, but the result was that he was no longer a credit to the Commission or to the Village.

Judi Hamelburg was never going to be a creditable Commissioner, and she wasn't.  All Judi ever did, and all she does, is complain and cite herself, and how the Village mistreated her decades ago, about any issue (that had nothing to do with her).

So, when Dan and Judi ran for re-election, I didn't favor or vote for either of them.  The remaining choices were not good, because they were people who had lived in the Village a short time and/or never been involved in Village functioning in any way.  There was nothing promising about them, with the pathetically only redeeming feature being that they weren't Dan or Judi.  There were actually four candidates who weren't Dan or Judi, and if it was possible to consider one of them even less promising than the other three, that was the task.  So, I held my nose, and voted for the three who won.

The Commission is now Mac Kennedy, Art Gonzalez, Jonathan Groth, Veronica Amsler, and Veronica Olivera.  Mac does all the work, Art has never shown any interest or activity, and the other three are essentially dead weight.

Our manager, who has always been useless to the Village, is leaving.  Next week.  So, we have to find a new manager.  Advertisements about the imminently open position were posted in early May.  There are various places to post ads like this, and people who want this kind of job have very active antennae to find these openings.  We've typically had more applicants, but this time, we got only 10.  Yesterday, Mac sent out an e-blast about progress thus far.  "At the Tuesday, June 6, Commission meeting, the Commission held its first discussion about candidates for the manager after the June 2 application deadline.  Several Commissioners had not been able to meet/talk to all candidates in which (sic) they were interested based on resumes and other application materials."  Mac goes on from there, but the rest of the blah, blah, blah is not important to this discussion.

I was very pointed with Mac about this, and I asked him if he interviewed, spoke with, or otherwise contacted the 10 applicants, or those who he thought were most promising.  Yes, he did.  Mac communicated about the fact that he completed the assigned task, and the others did not, and in his response to me, about the conversation the Commission had at its meeting, and how his suggestions were received, he used terms like "I was shot down," "I was not happy about that," "I never understand such a casual attitude when it's time to get something done, particularly something of such import," and his "prepared[ness] to discuss all the candidates and take next steps, which is what I thought was the intent of the agenda item."  (I told Mac it seemed unimaginable to me that I would not write a blog post about this, and he did not ask me not to, or not to quote him.)

I suggested to Mac that the rest of the Commission were mutinying against him.  He's capable, knowledgeable, and determined, and they're not.  Mac was either gentlemanly or resistant, and he disagreed with me.  He said he did not think they were mutinying against him.

Have you ever heard of the "Peter Principle?"  If you haven't, it's a management theory that says that in a hierarchy, people are promoted for their good work, and they're promoted to the point that they reach their level of incompetence.  Four of our Commissioners are exemplars of the "Peter Principle," or Mac's wrong, and they really are mutinying against him, because they're embarrassed and jealous.  Either way, the Commission is not doing the Village any good.  It has no vision, no concept of the Village's strengths and weaknesses, no "institutional knowledge," and no way to forge an adaptive path.  It can't, or won't, even follow Mac's lead.

We could have gotten Dan Samaria and/or Judi Hamelburg back, but we got the three people who beat them, plus Art Gonzalez.  If you want to know which is the rock, and which is the hard place, I don't know.