I attended last night’s inaugural meeting of Eric M.’s shareholders’ association.   Roughly 75 people were there at any given time.  About a third of the meeting was devoted to Eric talking about himself.  About half was a discussion of air rights related concerns.  And the remainder (when not getting sidetracked by miscellaneous issues) was about the proposed shareholders’ association itself.

Some observations:

Eric likes alternative facts almost as much as Trump.  Eric is a knowledgeable guy who has put a lot of work into trying to help the coop.  But accuracy and truthfulness are not high priorities in his writing or speaking.  He frequently repeats statements that could generously be referred to as misleading (or less generously as lies).  The anonymous anti-Eric blog “Truth at Seward Park” recently published a fact check of Eric’s latest Gazette flier.  Almost every misleading statement in that fact check was repeated at the meeting.  Various shareholders (including me) attempted to correct the record a few times, but were often shouted down.

Nobody knows what the shareholders’ association is.  There were very mixed messages about the shareholders’ association’s purpose.  Eric spoke at length in vague terms about how it would be a “hyperdemocratic” way for the shareholders to engage in Seward Park politics year-round, where everybody would be welcome.  But he also made it sound like a political party and lobbying group that would try to push the Board toward certain policy goals, the first of which is to strike down any air rights deal.  The biggest cheer of the night was in response to a shareholder’s hope that the association would “stick it to the Board” (as if this were a traditional tenants’ association facing off against a greedy landlord, as opposed to a cooperative owned by the very shareholders sitting in the room).  Meanwhile, for anyone wishing to engage more in coop politics and policy, you are always welcome to submit comments (or complete posts) to the Seward Spark, and the spcomm and LESOnline forums frequently have lively online discussions about coop issues.

There is a dearth of air rights information available.   Many shareholders came to discuss the air rights deal, but the leaders of the meeting did not appear to have prepared anything on the subject other than an anti-sale petition, and were surprisingly unknowledgeable about the terms of the deal and the process of the shareholder vote.  Many valid concerns were raised about shadows and views, sharing open spaces, pollution, garbage collection, etc.  Having researched many of these subjects myself, I stepped in to try to answer as many questions as I could, and appreciate being given the opportunity to do so.  But it is clear that the Board needs to get moving with more complete and authoritative information about the deal and more opportunities for shareholders to get their questions answered.