Josh Cohn, My Friend, Our Mayor

After 50 years of involvement in motorsports, I know bad behavior when I see it. Legend has it
that one NASCAR team director reduced a car’s weight and increased its speed by building it
to ⅞ scale — and got away with it by handing the scrutineers a ⅞ scale ruler. That pinnacle of
cheating aside, the automotive world is rife with puffery, sandbagging, influence-buying, and
outright lying.
The conduct of Mayor Josh Cohn and his City Council colleagues is none of those things. These
people have been vilified just for trying to save some trees. Full disclosure: Josh is my friend.
But he’s also my mayor. And he’s the guy who decides what happens to my tax dollars. If I
sensed even the whiff of impropriety about Josh’s conduct, I wouldn’t be defending him. 
I’ll leave it to others to argue about who did what, and why. I want to speak to Josh’s character.
Serving as the mayor of Rye, if done well, is almost a full-time job, but it’s a volunteer position.
Some people become mayor because they want to go further in politics, or because they want the
public’s thanks. Not Josh. He works in a self-effacing way, never seeking credit. Because of this,
people may not know that he’s quietly improved Rye’s finances, municipal management, zoning
and other laws, infrastructure, labor relations, and more. They also may not know that he’s an
honest and honorable person. 
Whatever Josh’s faults, rule-bending is not among them. The idea that he pulled the levers of the
city to benefit himself is preposterous. Even the Board of Ethics admits that before any city
official acted, Josh stated his conflict of interest and recused himself. Why they or anyone else
would ask more than this punctilious approach is beyond me. Yet some do. Critics say the three
City Council members with a history of tree conservation — Carolina Johnson, Julie Souza, and
Ben Stacks — should have acted out-of-character. They say they should have let 40 mature trees
get chopped down without a peep. That’s absurd.
As a result of this absurdity, four blameless volunteer officials have been branded as wrongdoers.
It’s like a modern-day witch hunt. Enough! Let’s come to our senses and thank the mayor and his
colleagues for their dedicated service to the rest of us.