Roosevelt Island Residents Association Censure Motion Against Common Council Member Frank Farance on Agenda For Wednesday's RIRA Meeting - Here's What The Motion Says
As reported in post yesterday, the October 5, 2011 Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA) meeting includes an agenda item to censure former RIRA President and current Planning Committee Chair Frank Farance. According to the Agenda item:
New Business (9:55) X B. Long- Resolution to censure F. FaranceWhat has Mr. Farance done that some members of the Common Council think deserves censure? Here's the explanation from the proposed RIRA Motion:
Motion to censure Common Council member Frank FaranceHere is a copy of Mr. Farance's letter to the Main Street WIRE editor and emails referenced in the resolution. In my opinion, one can disagree with some of the statements made by Mr. Farance in the letter and emails but they are not defamatory. Here's a general definition of defamation.
WHEREAS the RIRA Constitution states that Roosevelt Island residents “want to live together in harmony based on mutual respect and the voluntary sharing of certain responsibilities”, and
WHEREAS it is not in the best interests of the Common Council for deliberations to take place in a hostile and intimidating environment, and
WHEREAS Common Council member Frank Farance has engaged in conduct that is detrimental to the workings and deliberations of the Common Council in the following ways:
1.
Recklessly publicizing defamatory statements that impugn the personal and professional integrity of fellow members of the Common Council by making unfounded accusations of unethical conduct, fraud, and otherwise nefarious self-dealings without any evidence or basis of support for the truth of those accusations.
2.
Maliciously, and with defiant disregard, endangering the professional and public standing of fellow members of the Common Council in their individual and professional communities by recklessly publicizing such defamatory statements.
3.
Openly publicizing defamatory remarks in public forums denigrating the competence of
his fellow Common Council members in their professional lives.
4.
Attempting in his public e-mail communication to intimidate and bully fellow Common
Council members who disagree with him.
5.
Abusing his position as a Common Council Member by recklessly publicizing defamatory
statements and remarks impugning the integrity of non-Common Council members
of Subcommittees by making unfounded accusations of unethical conduct, fraud, and
otherwise nefarious self-dealings without any evidence or basis of support for the truth of said statements.
WHEREAS e-mails that Frank sent on September 25th, 2011, as well as his letter to the editor of the Main Street WIRE on August 27th, 2011 are just a few examples of this type of behavior, which has continued throughout his tenure on the Common Council,
THEREFORE, we hereby condemn the behavior of Frank Farance and censure him for the
above referenced conduct.
The whole idea of censuring Mr. Farance for publicly expressing his views on issues of concern to Roosevelt Island residents is ridiculous. Surely, there must be more important issues for RIRA to be discussing than trying to keep one member quiet. If a fellow RIRA member objects to statements made by Mr. Farance, the solution is not to censure him but to address the issues he raises and correct them, or just ignore him.
UPDATE 11:10 PM - RIRA Communications Chair Vini Fortuna clarifies the meaning of the censure motion.
Could you please update your post to make it clear that the motion it to "censure", not to "censor" Frank? That is being a big source of confusion:UPDATE 10/11: As reported in this comment a few hours after the October RIRA meeting, the Censure Motion against Mr. Farance was approved by the RIRA Common Council by a vote of 12 in favor of the censure motion, 10 against and 4 abstaining.
to censure:
Express severe disapproval of (someone or something), typically in a formal statement
to censor:
Examine (a book, movie, etc.) officially and suppress unacceptable parts of it
People are reading the motion as if it was the second, but it's actually the first, and it's important to make that distinction. The way you presented the whole thing also made it look like the second, and the posting of the big red image of the word "censuré", meaning "censorship" in French was completely inappropriate.
Below is a video of the RIRA Common Council discussing the Censure Motion. Unfortunately, my camera battery ran out of power after approximately 36 minutes of the discussion and not all of the discussion is included in the video including Mr. Farance's response to the motion. About 80% of the discussion is included in the video.
Here's what happened. Some RIRA members in favor of the motion stated that they were personally hurt by, or objected to, what they believe (rightly or wrongly) are unfair and uncalled for communications by Mr. Farance and hoped that this Censure Motion would be a formal demonstration of RIRA's disapproval against Mr. Farance's actions.
Opponents of the resolution thought it unfair to censure Mr. Farance for his strong opinions and one RIRA member compared the motion to an angry mob with a torch directed at Mr. Farance. Another RIRA member questioned whether RIRA even had the authority in its bylaws, constitution or Robert's Rules to censure Mr. Farance.
After the RIRA members, other than Mr. Farance, who wished to speak on this issue did so, it was absolutely clear that Mr. Farance made no defamatory statements or accusations of fraud against anyone as charged in the motion.
Mr. Farance was the last RIRA Common Council Member to speak. He denied his statements were defamatory, said he did not violate any provisions of the RIRA Constitution or bylaws, asserted that the factual charges in the Censure Motion were unsubstantiated and that he is entitled to his opinions even if others disagree with him.
A majority of those RIRA members present did not vote for the Censure resolution. The final vote tally was 12 for Censure, 10 against and 4 abstentions. The Censure motion was approved because it received the most votes.
The Censure motion achieves no consequence against Mr. Farance other than its approval by a very divided RIRA.
Let's hope that now that this issue has been debated and acted upon, RIRA members can learn how to work together for the betterment of Roosevelt Island.
Here's the video. Make up your own mind.
You Tube Video of RIRA Censure Motion
17 comments :
Mr. Long seems to have a personal problem with Mr. Farance. How is this nonsense going to help democracy? A public oficial usually gets censured because he/she broke the law or some such. Nobody ever gets "punished" like this for speaking his or her mind.
We need our own "Occupy something" movement on this island to get this dysfunctional RIRA dissolved. Let's just use the existing community organizations for our local issues. There is the CB8.
I completely agree with you, Rick.
Any idea what "censure" actually means in this case?
This seems way overboard. To so glibly take someone who (depending on perspective) may be contentious and to bridge that into defamatory seems... well, defamatory.
The problem here is not having people with different views in the council. We have plenty of people like that. The problem is how to express and defend your opinions. Frank's approach is always to attack the person directly (instead of the ideas or actions), usually by questioning the other person's competency and undermining their credibility with a ton of arguments that he poses as obvious, but are many times wrong or hypocritical. He pushes people until they snap, and then faults them for snapping. He ignores that everyone in RIRA are volunteers, and consciously paints their lack of time as incompetency. He does not accept opposing views, and creates a hostile environment that actually inhibits, rather than promote the discussion of alternate ideas. And that's not only with RIRA members. Many of you must remember when the Columbia students came to Roosevelt Island to study the transportation issues, and he, as the RIRA president, basically called all of them incompetent for not agreeing with them (http://www.nyc10044.com/wire/2916/wire2916.pdf). As much as you don't agree with someone, you cannot behave like that. Rick is wrong when he says this motion is to censor Frank for publicly expressing his views. This motion is to censor his hostile behavior, not his ideas, and, as a result, promote a healthier environment for discussion in the community.
Should the motion carry, how does RIRA plan to deal with the rabble rouser?
I asked Matt Katz and Mr. Long that question before I published the post. Mr. Katz did not reply and Mr. Long wrote back that the motion speaks for itself and he would have a statement at the RIRA meeting.
Joyce, Rick can correct me if I got this wrong, but I believe he reported about a week ago that he was persona non grata at the meeting Katz and Farance held with Kramer regarding retail space on Main Street. That's precisely the kind of issue I would prefer RIRA not be involved with at all, but I am definitely not cool with them holding private meetings on the matter.
To your other point...
I think people should definitely feel comfortable making demands upon those who claim to represent their interests. It's up to the elected official to decide how to respond to those demands. I feel like this is a concept that Frank seems to understand at a more immediate level than other RIRA members I've interacted with. Your job as a RIRA member is not to argue with me or stand firm against my stance on a given issue but to incorporate and reconcile my opinion with you own. My only role in our partnership is to make sure that you're well aware of what I want you do. At the end of the day, you're the one who volunteered to reflect my attitudes, not the other way around.
in fairness, the assertion that someone is "clueless" is often a substantive argument, and not necessarily ad hominem, since the assertion is essentially that the person lacks knowledge of essential information, and therefore that the speaker's statements have no factual basis. similarly, it's not an ad hominem argument to say "jimi hendrix died of a drug overdose, and thus he would not have been a suitable spokesperson for an anti-drug campaign."
Chris, yes that is correct - I asked to attend the retail meeting and was told by Mr. Katz that he preferred it to be without the press/blog as i reported in this post.
That was not the case when he attacked the Columbia students.
That was not the case when he attacked the Communications co-chair when she quickly put together the email groups for the committees, enabling them to talk and set up meeting. It was a great and useful job! Frank claimed that it was disappointing she hadn't consulted the Communications committee first, which really wasn't necessary and would just delay everyone. But he was such a hypocrite! He was doing the exactly same thing behind our backs, without even talking to the chairs.
That was not the case when he questioned Mona's competency for simply suggesting a discussion on the implications of turning Roosevelt Island into a village: "As a Vice President for Barclays Capital (...), why are you proposing such a financially disastrous plan?", or "It doesn't take more than 60 seconds to realize this is a non-starter, so Mona why are you proposing this plan?". Notice that she never actually proposed turning RI into a village! (see emails at http://goo.gl/UMRLX)
Look, those people are not even in the Maple Tree group he has gripes with. It's just the way he is.
I'm not confusing the terms, just looking for clarity on how the censure will be administered.
Vinny, if all this motion aims for is a slap on the wrist, haven't you already achieved that? My guess is that more people read this blog than will ever read any formal statement RIRA issues in the matter. It sounds like a waste of time and energy.
Ok, let's get the record straight here, since Frank has mentioned this "Rage Generator" 7 or 8 times in different places now.
Why does Frank need to bring this up over and over again? Simple: this is one of the many instances where he attempts character assassination.
What he calls "Rage Generator" is actually called "Meme Generator" (memegenerator.net). That's just a popular online tool to generate iconic cartoons. The "Rage Generator" name was made up by him to load a strong negative connotation to my action.
What I've done was to send a cartoon as a reply to one of his mudslinging emails. (if you are curious, here is the image: http://images.memegenerator.net/instances/150x/9217763.jpg . "Troll" is an internet term for bullies in online forums)
What he construes as a "childish" behavior, was actually an attempt to reduce all the attacking emails and general hostility environment. Several people suggested to just ignore him, but that's easier said than done. The intention of the cartoon was to be used as a reply to him whenever he would send mudslinging emails. This way, people attacked would be comforted knowing that at least one more person disagrees with him, reducing the urge to reply. It would also clearly tag the emails and send the message that people should just ignore so we can move one.
Frank's first reply when I sent the icon was "I encourage everyone to look at the link above, which I've saved an electronic copy, so you can see Vini's juvenile behavior." His first instinct was to save an evidence of the action, so he could use it against me in the future (which he did, several times). Now think about it: that's clearly the thinking of a hostile person, that tries to gather as many weapons as possible to destroy their opponents. Frank should at least have the decency of setting the record straight.
As a troll, I resent your negative characterization.
I just read through the e-mail referred to you by the link. I fail to see how exactly he was attacking a person. If I saw "Conversion of RI to village - considerations and challenges" on an agenda wouldn't it be correct to assume that it is being under consideration again? Why else would it be there?
Without fluff and anything he listed all the arguments why even thinking about it again doesn't make any sense. He expected more from Mona, I assume. That's how I read it.
By the way, you didn't really make things better either, Vini. Instead of just explaining (and therefore just ignoring Frank's points and his tone) why something ended up on the agenda you did't do anything else but going into each of the point Frank was making. How is this going to help to tell him (and us) that the village is not consideration again?
Listen, I had a lot of problems how Frank handled the RIRA presidency when it came to PR. I agree that the attack on the Columbia students was way out of line. Now in his current position I believe he is welcome to blow off steam and do a couple of face-palms in reaction to things that have been discussed in the past.
A troll is more than just a bully (check Wikipedia). I think it was out of line and you should've ignored the urge to send out that picture.
I think having Frank, Bill, Vini and Matt sit in a room and work out their problems is a great idea. It's also the way adults should solve their communication problems.
Cheshire is right, withdraw the censure motion and talk your problems out like adults.
I do think that
residents should get more involved however, Urban American are quite aware of
the issue with overall buildings security. I would not suggest that residents
leave their homes 3:am to check lobby doors. However, I would suggest writing
management or attending a group committee meeting with various other reputable
residents groups that have the full attendance & participation from
residents. Since this issue with The Landings being approved to be sub Meterd a
year from now Most resident view buildings associations as "Full of
crap" ! Eventually all RIRA committees /task forces and resident building
associations will be extinct with no further influence or power !!! It's one
thing to try and garner support from your management office ,but these current
resident groups act as if they are tapped by the Governor .......Half of these
so called resident leaders or "presidents" will not even be here 3
years from today ....WATCH!
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