Union City: don’t let the flyer fool you. These people are actually running for office!

Rafael Román Martel

The mayoral elections in Union City are heating up. The local group of pamphleteers who seek the vote of Union City residents against Mayor Brian Stack are circulating a campaign flyer (printed on Staples’ finest photo paper but ironically promising “no glossy flyers”) merits our attention. After the tactics for which of some of Stack’s opponents were arrested a few weeks ago (allegedly falsifying information and the signature of an elected official), we thought they would switch gears and attempt to stage some sort of legitimate campaign to attract the local vote. Instead they stuck to their bread and butter and delivered another comedy stunt.

Using humor as their main weapon and insulting the intelligence of Union City voters, The Union City Comedy Troupe, lead by chief pamphleteer Frank Scarafile, have outlined their platform for their bid for public office. Since we know that you are tired after working all day and that this kind of political platform could be easily misunderstood, we thought we would simplify the so-called “Vision 4” platform for you:
These are the main things they will do if elected:

1. Establish a Union City Film Commission (the troupe is trying to pass this off as arts education, but we think they just need somebody to upload their videos onto YouTube.)

2. “PARKING PARKING PARKING”: The Troupe will create double parking space in Union City instantaneously by legalizing everybody’s favorite activity: double-parking. Now, instead of being known as “the streets,” roads will be rebranded “resident courtesy zones” where you can abandon your car with impunity. They will also follow through on “parking studies,” presumably at “Mi Abuelo Driving School.”

3. Do you get stressed out knowing that while you sit on your couch munching on Cheetos every weeknight, your mayor is thoughtfully sketching out a plan for a new park or negotiating to bring more benefits into the city? The Troupe is tackling the pesky issue of City Hall simply working too hard head-on with what they call “open government.” In order to identify more with the common citizen, under the Troupe’s administration City Hall will limit its hours to one night a week of operation and bimonthly Saturday night dance parties! Good luck appealing that speeding ticket. In addition to pledging to take it easy on the job (just like regular folks would!), the Troupe is proposing a new bureaucratic entity called the “Department of Constituent Services” which will guarantee that no resident will have any contact with Chief Pamphleteer, your new mayor Frank Scarafile. This policy was determined after a survey of 20 people Scarafile harassed on the street with his infamous hand-scribbled pamphlets unanimously agreed that they would “never want to see that guy again.”

4. Opening City Hall one night a week and twice a month on Saturday nights, the Troupe intends to dedicate themselves to creating “Real Jobs” and “construct costable livings” (Spanish Translation from the flyer). And, of course, they will “Stabilze (sic) Taxes”.

It must be another joke from the Troupe, but who are they? What is really going on?

Let’s see.

As far as we know none of these candidates have any previous experience in public service or local government. Most people in Union City don’t even know who they are. It makes sense, since they seem to have little knowledge of what’s been happening in Union City for the last 10 years.

These are the facts:

Mayor Brian Stack has been serving the community 7 days a week, and, yes, on 16-hour days. Many Union City residents work for our town, in our schools, serving our community because there are no huge industries in this very small town. Brian Stack and his Board of Commissioner work very hard to continue the progress in Union City. And the progress is palpable, visible: just look around this city and you’ll see new construction almost everywhere, brand new schools, a visible police presence, clean streets, cultural events, and job fairs held in our schools that attract companies to our town to hire our residents. Just drive around Union City and you’ll see newly paved streets, street lighting at its best: a better quality of life.

We have a mayor who holds meetings in every district of our city, talks to everyone who attends these meetings, but most importantly, we have a mayor who listens to its constituency.

We have a police chief, Charles Everett, who is polite and accessible, who cares. We have a police captain, Emilio González who, along with Chief Everett and police officers, visits every district holding public meetings with the mayor, listening to concerns and taking action to improve the quality of life for all. Captain González gives his cell phone number in every meeting, and if you call him, he’ll call you back—just like Mayor Stack has done all his public life.

It doesn’t matter how many badly written flyers or empty promises these comics shove into peoples’ hands in their desperate attempt to fool the voters of Union City. They might think people forgot how bad things were ten years ago. Union City will not go back to the time when politics were first and people last, when even Civil War cannons mysteriously got lost from our public parks, when our streets resembled a war zone in terms of potholes, when our parks were abandoned and the education of our children took a second place to the politicking and the partying of local officials.

On May 11, the voters of Union City will strongly respond to the dirty tactics and the ineptitude of The Union City Comedy Troupe— and the Troupe won’t be laughing.