Thursday, November 19, 2009

Election Results for the Board

Here are the winners:

Ed Miltenberger
Takis Karantonis
Greg Mesack
Craig Freer

Congratulations to them and thank you to everyone that ran for the Board.

5 comments:

ObserverCollege said...

I just posted this on yesterday's post but it's better served here:

Agree with Rusty--it was really great to see so many people come out. Thank you to all who work so hard in the Village (and I'm sorry, I liked learning about trees and plants and fixing concrete barriers!). I'm a political junkie so it was interesting to see what went on with the "regular" and "write-in" candidates.

Thank you to Elaine for posting the results, noting the the four candidates on the regular ballot won. Absolutely no surprise there, obviously. There's a reason candidates in political elections go so nuts over WHERE they are listed on the ballot, never mind actually BEING listed. The percentages went something like this (I might be off by a few tenths here or there):

Miltenberger = 26.4% or so
Takis = 25.3%?
Greg = 24.8%?
Freer = 23.5%

Lewis = 18.8%
Nixon = 18.8%
Alger = 17.3%?
Heron = 15.5%

That means that at best, in a two-way comparison Miltenberger only had a 63-37 split over the worst performer, Heron. Greg came in at 61.5 vs. Heron, and a 57/43 split over both Lewis and Nixon. Freer came in at 55.5 vs. Lewis and Nixon.

I have to say I was pretty surprised at that result. Being on the regular ballot is an ENORMOUS advantage, as even with that "alternative" mailing you still get far more of the people sending in proxies to the Village who just say "Oh, whatever, four candidates that's fine". That's going to be particularly true with as many non-residents as we have in the Village now--they're just not going to be paying as close attention and won't be showing up.

Plus, this all happened only very recently, these people coming out of the woodwork to run as write-ins and whatnot and fuss about Florida and Katherine Harris (OK, that didn't happen, but details...).

Given that, to keep even the highest votegetter at under a 65-35 dyadic split from the lowest is unreal. And to think the Board President came in third and couldn't get more than a 57-43 split over two of the alternate candidates is something else.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I have to say I'm really, really surprised it was as close as it was. Will be really interesting to see if this Town Hall happens with the Board, Legum & Norman, Village Counsel etc. etc. happens to try to bring "healing" to the community. Might be fun and would go some ways to showing this "glasnost" some of these people seem to want.

Horsy said...

The alternative candidates have been in the Village for a long time, have a lot of friends here, and you know they went to their friends and had them assign proxies to themselves or friends. So I am not surprised that this is close, but very happy that none of the "rogues" got in. They were running for the wrong reasons and thankfully enough people saw through this. (Notwithstanding the abject behavior of the Election committee throwing out a well-qualified, very well-meaning candidate, on a technicality that would never stand in a US court or other similarly democratic country - just so that candidates could be nominated from the floor)

By the way, anybody can ask questions to the board at any of the board meetings. You just have to show up, stand up and ask. Do we really need to bring them out for another Town Hall - i.e., ask them to give even more of their time. I like this Board; they're serious about the Village, have a diversity of opinion and do a good job. Congrats to all three who got reelected - You deserve it!

Anonymous said...

No need for my Ambien; I'll just re-read the above post before I have to go to bed...

Anonymous said...

The Board has time for "public comment" at the start of the meeting. The Directors don't actually have to answer questions posed to them.

The Board really needs to invite AV Counsel Segan to a meeting and empower him to answer questions. I'm sure the Board works hard, but questions about the relationship with L&N and the liability status in various matters really gets to matters that the AV lawyer rather than an amateur should discuss. The lawyer could then explain exactly what can and can't be discussed and why.

Anonymous said...

RE: "By the way, anybody can ask questions to the board at any of the board meetings. You just have to show up, stand up and ask."

As Jon Stewart would say: not so much. It's called "residents' forum", so you can ask all the questions in the world and the board does not answer. If you're really lucky, your request/question will be added to that evening's agenda, and if you stick around long enough--these things run to 11:30PM and later--you may get your answer. It is NOT a true give-and-take as your comment suggests.