Letters

Mayor Jesse Warren loses another 4-1 vote, and predictably, some of his cheerleaders write to The Press blaming the trustees, accusing them of acting illegally (despite the presence of a qualified lawyer), and implying that all we need is more Jesse to rid the village of all that ails it.

But hang on …

Weren’t each of the four current trustees handpicked and/or hand-backed by Mr. Warren? Didn’t some vote consistently in lockstep with the mayor for the first couple years? This is exactly the board Mr. Warren wanted. Yet we are supposed to believe that those same trustees have now gone rogue?

I suppose the premature ouster of our police chief and the botched effort to replace him are somehow the fault of the chief himself. Or perhaps the committee to whom the mayor — inappropriately — delegated the search process, abdicating his role until reemerging at the 11th hour to pull the plug.

I guess the lawsuit brought against the mayor and village by his handpicked administrator is a sign that the administrator is a bad person. Ditto the lawsuit brought by his former handpicked assistant.

The first of the mayor’s four handpicked village attorneys, who used to tell me that his only job was to ensure that what the mayor did was legal, stated in his resignation letter to the mayor that “[I]t has become clear that we have a dissimilarity in our approach to the conduct of village government.” Translation: I can no longer work for someone who ignores my advice, flouts the law, and creates liability for both the village and my personal reputation.

And I suppose the fact that Mr. Warren has kept multiple administrative board members in holdover status, abusing the intent of the code regarding staggered appointments and undermining confidence on and in those boards, is somehow the fault of the members themselves. Ditto entire advisory boards whom the mayor failed to reappoint. No mayor in my 33 years as a resident has failed to keep these appointments current.

If all of these failings are somehow merely the result of personal vendettas, why would nearly every official who interacts with the mayor hold one?

Do Mr. Rung and Mr. Horowitz see a pattern here? Ms. Elliston’s letter has it about right: There is blame and shame to go around, but only one common denominator. Some may choose to believe that the problem is “everyone else” in each instance. But the odds of that are vanishingly low. Most village residents have realized that it is much more likely that Mr. Warren is the problem, not the solution.

Rob Coburn

Southampton Village