The Coop Circus

What is it about groups of people in New York banding together in business that naturally leads to corruption? Lack of resources? Fear? Who knows!

Tonight was the yearly Coop (Ko Op) board meeting for my building out here in the wilds of Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. For the unsuspecting, a Coop is a strange real estate entity that is set up for a group of people who live in a building to own the building together. So, no landlord. Ownership. But, you actually own shares in the corporation that owns the building depending on your square footage. And, as is the case in our building, the original person who owned the building (called the sponsor) can retain a certain amount of units, and thus, shares, but is supposed to relinquish them over time to paying customers (our dude has not done this and this makes him wrong.) Lastly, each year, as many people as possible who can attend, do attend the annual meeting for voting new members to be the head of the Coop board. Ours is structured so we vote for five members of the Coop board. The sponsor, who still owns 46% of the building, gets four members. So what hangs in the balance is voting for five members of a nine volunteer member panel that makes all the decisions that affect the well being, both physical and fiscal, of this building that takes up a complete city block.

Tonight, in a basement of a gray stone Methodist church in Jackson Heights, it was like Paris in 1798. Mad men screaming! – Mostly a Russian guy who seemed to be angry in general. “You are criminals! Criminals! Shut your mouth! Shut your mouth!”

A deaf guy who kept yelling, “I can’t hear you! Speak into the mike!”

Accents from all over the globe were furious! They came to this country to be free and to move up the ladder of opportunity. Instead, they were forced to keep quiet, paying medium sized maintenance fees for work that seems to never happen---painting, roofing, repairs. Finally, these people stood up tonight and said, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Five new people were nominated for the five open positions. Three of the old board members were nominated, also --one of them was one of the scary Goombas who interviewed us when we first applied to join the Coop. His big gray curly head and tattoos bobbing above a huge belly that hung over his shorts, makes one think of a Santa Claus summering in New York because he’s just gone mad.

The new members standing up for the open spots are for big change, fiscal responsibility, communication, transparency. The old members of the Coop board always claimed to care about fiscal responsibility and making the building nice and getting the sponsor to relinquish apartments for sale. But, they may have fallen under the spell of the other four members who are from the Sponsor’s end. We’ll never know the real story.

The Coop board member who did appear the worst to me was this horrendous man, and former president of the board, perhaps a Columbian, who announced in his two minute campaign presentation, “What do you think? If you want to get things repaired it costs money. And where do you think the money comes from? It does not piss out of your pockets. You only have problems dropping out of your asshole.”

His tone and choice of diction guaranteed I would not vote for him. Besides, he was the president and didn’t even live on the premises and snagged a foreclosed apartment for his son. Insider animal.

Meanwhile, a luscious, black temptress in a wig and nine inch nails behind the desk, handing out ballots, couldn’t really do her job (my particular ballot was lost and she had to fashion me a new one from a ballot of someone who did not attend)—but she decided, for some reason, that I could possibly be her new boyfriend. I didn’t disagree, but I also didn’t pursue it.

I felt bad for the two Goombas who have been on the board for a while who were being publicly attacked. Is it really their fault that the Coop is allegedly corrupt? Maybe the four sponsor’s Coop board members are just awful thugs and they coerced them into doing their bidding, making contracts with workers that do not work but love money anyway.

Interestingly, one of the four sponsor’s Coop board members, though not present, had his name announced. Let's say Tony Sagliano. That’s the same name as someone I went to elementary school with in the wretched burg of Spring Valley, New York. My neighborhood was one of those 1960’s developments loaded with blue collar Italians and Orthodox Jews from the outer boroughs of New York in pursuit of sylvan happiness. I could not stomach either group and spent five years in isolation playing the guitar, reading my Charlie Brown books and nursing my black mollies that contracted Ick. Of my few forays into socializing, I did spend some time playing records down the street with Tony, “I’m your Venus, I’m your fire, a-your desire.” We listened to records together a couple of times on his portable record player. But he grew sick of me.

Tony was cute with a buster brown haircut, a perfect little body and face. He was an average, disruptive, popular student. The funky teachers of second and third grade couldn’t resist his attractive charm and let him get away with anything. He was a bit of a bully. Cocky. He acted the role of mini-Roman leader. He treated me okay. But one time in summer camp (one summer he went to the same cheap summer camp I went to)—he punched me in the face. I forget why. Maybe I was trying to be fun and cool and instead I was being obnoxious and strange. Anyway, he hit me pretty hard.

Tony Sagliano moved away in the fifth grade. His father got a job with a limousine company that was totally mob? At least that's what my mother said. We went to see their new house. It was quite something for a limo driver---what with the built-in pool in the backyard, the whole place filled with big, new furniture. His mother, Josie, wore blond Doris Day wigs, lots of make-up and smoked Parliaments. We only went to their shag palace one time. I never saw him after that.

I think he’s one of the sponsor Coop board members of my building.

But maybe not. Tony Sagliano is a common name in these parts.

After returning to my apartment, I went into the hallway to empty some trash when Ann from next door caught me mid-dump. She’s been in this country for many years, but still retains her Scottish accent. She reaffirmed her belief that she and many Coop owners maintain: that the current Coop board members are corrupt animals and need to be replaced. That all this work we paid for never got done. That the roof still has problems. And what happened to our three-hundred-thousand dollar reserve? She went on and on. I’ve noticed that Scottish people are very talkative. In Germany, we spent six hours speaking with Scottish folks while drinking gallons of beer at the Hof Brauhaus. They just didn’t shut up. Of course, Cummings is a Scottish name.

This Blog entry has been edited to protect the innocent.