Re “About My Visit to the City Council”
Comes now an emotionally delicate situation.
It seems likely to cause a measure of clumsiness at next Tuesday’s School Board meeting.
I suggested in a Tuesday commentary that it had been inappropriate of freshman Board member Karlo Silbiger to strike out on his own, as a free agent, and petition the City Council at its Monday night meeting.
Some political observers had feared last autumn that this could be the awkward outcome of his election to the School Board.
They were apprehensive that a scenario like Monday night’s might occur. It only took three months.
City Hall watchers with gray hair asked the following:
How willingly would the always plain-talking Mr. Silbiger fold his wings, lower his head, close his mouth and recede into the background as a team player?
It is humbling to voluntarily take five steps back, to morph from the spotlighted star into an anonymous cast member.
By his own account, the 26-year-old Mr. Silbiger has been outspoken on matters political since he was 11 years old.
A Cataclysmic Role Change
From star to obscurity is a steep plunge.
All of his life, he has operated as an independent voice who can say what he wants, where he wants.
Has he yet come to terms with the notion that role is over? Monday night suggests he has not.
As he member of a team, he is not permitted to be a roaming ambassador.
Untitled, a green rookie, Mr. Silbiger has no standing, no authority to speak out as a School Board delegate.
Here the story starts fading to fuzziness.
Yesterday morning, the day after my scolding appeared, Mr. Silbiger submitted a succinct rebuttal, justifying his free agent appearance before the City Council.
In defending himself, he said: “I made clear that I was speaking to the City Council as an individual.”
Such a distinction is illusory, bordering on impossible.
At the Council meeting, Mr. Silbiger not only did not make clear he was speaking as an individual, he said the opposite.
He said in his introduction:
“Karlo Silbiger, not necessarily representing the School Board, but as a School Board member.”
Obviously, he was not speaking as an individual.
He spoke on two subjects, the possibility of the city taking over the School District’s website, for economic reasons, and the possibility of shifting School Board meetings to City Hall.
Shortly after Mr. Silbiger’s rebuttal appeared, School Board sources — preferring anonymity for obvious reasons — contacted the newspaper and said he was guilty of three gaffes:
• He was not authorized to address the Council on either topic.
• He “misrepresented” the Board position on the website matter. There was no vote, unanimous or otherwise.
• “He certainly was not empowered” to make any financial offer to the city for taking charge of the School District website.
Reviewing Mr. Silbiger’s opening three months on the Board, the aforementioned School Board sources said that he has been “a roving cannon,” “a well-meaning activist who needs, sternly, to learn discipline and self-control, hopefully by the next meeting.”
I understand Mr. Silbiger’s unbridled enthusiasm, his almost unrestrained desire to right longtime wrongs.
He frequently has been praised by this newspaper.
But as the public and private criticisms of his Board member-related activities, by persons who know and like him, pile up, it is clear that he immediately needs to absorb a sturdy dose of introspection.
