file photo by Boyd Loving
Can we talk about hypocrisy? This just in from Facebook for all to see: Gwenn Hauck preaching civility after she has been heard openly ridiculing and taunting various residents who come to speak up at meetings. She is the biggest most vicious member of the council. Read this posting :
Gwenn Hauck Echoed with sadness, Patricia. There is value in disagreement – but not so viciously. Ridgewood’s greatest joy should be its people and its community. People who condemn others for seeing things differently don’t see that their fighting-style makes our town much less attractive than any park or garage or apartment building…. Ridgewood was renowned for its strong sense of community and the pride that everyone felt just in being part of that! Now, Ridgewood is known as a critical, and severely polarized town that pits people against people and residents against government. In my experience the best solutions are born out of sincere, respectful, disagreements and a modicum of rapport.
This type of behavior is a classic indicator of narcissistic personality disorder. Unfortunately, a lot of people with this condition are drawn into the world of management and politics.
Maybe after the next election she can go back home and insult her Barbie dolls.
Who should be preaching civility in Ridgewood govt?
10:57 no one…we don’t need some idiot trying to tell us we’re not speaking nicely to each other…these clowns are trying to pull a snow job on this town and hope to distract everyone by saying “speak nicely to us”…they’ve been pushing this crap through with their buddies in the dark for years and are now upset that the lights have been turned on…tired of hearing about this civility nonsense…if they want a real discussion then they can do it in a forum that allows two way dialogue, not hiding behind the dais where they get the last word and know the one way “dialogue” will only last for 5 mins at a time…weak!
The terms “civility” and “incivility” must have been focus tested by Saul Alinsky or his acolytes because they are so “all the rage”. We in Ridgewood are also in a 1984/George Orwell “newspeak” mode where public officials engaging in public slander of village residents is justified as civility “enforcement”, and participating in public meetings, and honestly questioning the motivations and actions of public officials, in accordance with their rights as U.S. citizens, constitutes “incivility”.
@11:16. Exactly what you said!! I have been vocal and I do not think uncivil but you know what, we should be mad as hell and if they perceive our disagreement as uncivil then oh well.
It is remarkable how rude Gwenn, Albert, and Paul are. Not just this week, not just this month, not just any current issue. This has been going on for as long as they have been in office. They were wildly inappropriate to Tom Riche, to Bernadette Walsh, to Ken Gabbert, to John Ward, to Susan Knudsen, to Mike Sedon, to Heather Mailander…..and these are just the elected officials and employees to whom their wrath has been directed. Then we have citizens who come to meetings that they lash out at, and indeed THREATEN. What the heck? How in the world do they get away with this?
And then there are the more subtle (well, less subtle than yelling, but still clearly wrong) incivilities, such as:
1. not allowing anyone to ask a question – or staring mutely while questions are asked, promising to answer them at the end, and then never answering them.
2. telling a nervous first-time citizen YOU ONLY HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO SPEAK AND DON’T ASK ANY QUESTIONS, thus making the person feel like they have already done something wrong before they even get to the podium.
3. allowing some residents to speak well after the buzzer goes off, but stopping others in mid-sentence when the 5 minutes is up.
4. talking among themselves when a resident that they do not like is speaking. (such private side-bar conversations, by the way, are a VIOLATION of the open public meetings act)
5. leaving the dais to talk to someone in the audience or in the hallway, thereby indicating to whatever member of the public who is at the podium that their words are not worth listening to.
6. not bothering to reply to the emails of certain residents
7. interrupting speakers they do not like, thus getting the speaker off base and thus cutting into the speaker’s allotted time.
8. texting while on the dais, yes, we see you doing this, thereby breaking their own rules and at the same time indicating that whoever is speaking is not worth listening to.
9. loudly popping open soda cans and eating during meetings. Really? You are up there chewing and slurping when a meeting is going on. Come on, no one on the dais is starving. Hold off on your dining until you are home. Can’t do without food for a few hours? Really
Ms. Hauck employs the word “vicious” because she can’t imagine why anybody would say something negative to or about Daddy’s girl. Maybe it never happened before. Welcome to politics, but please abandon it. It doesn’t suit you at all.
Has she ever spoken anything of substance?
1 PM, point #9: a few hours? If the deliberately overscheduled meetings continue to run from 7:30 or 8 PM into the wee hours of the next morning, with speakers at the lectern saying “Good morning” instead of “Good evening” to general snickers, six-foot hoagies (or Snickers) should be brought in for all to share.