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Shelly’s congrats: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver honored Community Media and its three weekly newspapers, The Villager, Downtown Express and Gay City News, on April 19 with a legislative resolution for our stellar showing in the New York Press Association’s 2004 Better Newspaper Contest, in which The Villager won the Stuart C. Dorman Award for Editorial Excellence and the news group won 26 awards. “This Assembled Body is pleased to have this opportunity to commend Publisher and Editor John Sutter and his small but talented and dedicated staff for producing such high-caliber community newspapers in the heart of New York City,” the resolution states. “Community Media and The Villager, Downtown Express and Gay City News are to be commended for the great variety of articles they present, from those of local interest to those of state and national concern, articles which are always well written and interesting, balanced and fair, always presenting both sides of an issue, and for doing such a fine job of localizing issues for readers.”

Not-so-musical chairs: A look at who was sitting with who at the Greenwich Village Chelsea Chamber of Commerce’s Dinner Dance last week gave a good indication of who’s siding with who in the upcoming Community Board 2 chairperson election. Seated together at a table on one side of the room were Bob Rinaolo, Maria Passannante Derr, Brad Hoylman, Carol Yankay and Arthur Strickler. Sitting somewhere far on the other side of the room were Jim Smith and Aubrey Lees. Rinaolo is reportedly steamed that Smith, the current C.B. 2 chairperson, decided to back Don MacPherson for board chairperson before Rinaolo had decided to drop out of the race.

The mighty Quinn: We hear Councilmember Chris Quinn may make an issue out of it if Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields refuses to reappoint — or delays reappointing — Tobi Bergman and Jo Hamilton to C.B. 2, as Quinn has requested. After all, Quinn is supporting Gifford Miller, not Fields, for mayor, so, the thinking is, she could score some points by embarrassing Fields, who recently removed the two well-known community activists from the board during the run-up to a heated chairperson race.

Politics uber alles: We’re surprised to be told Melissa Sklarz has signed onto the so-called “unity slate” backing Derr — the candidate of the board’s pro-business side — for chairperson. Only a few months ago, Sklarz complained to us, “This is the most corporate the board’s ever been — it’s all business owners and lawyers.” Maybe two politically active lawyers on the board, District Leader Arthur Schwartz and Hoylman, are influencing the decision of Sklarz, president of Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats. Derr’s a lawyer, too.

Wagon ho! In the spirit of “Remember the Alamo,” Jim “Mosaic Man” Power and Noah, two residents of the St. Mark’s Pl. Art Commune, tell us they’re planning to build a “covered wagon” and wheel it over to the Astor Pl. traffic island from which the Cube sculpture, formally known as “The Alamo,” was recently removed for repairs by the Parks Department. “I may even sleep in there!” added Power.

Gets a stage? Chris X. Brodeur thinks he has finally been invited to participate in a Democratic mayoral forum — at the Puffin Room on Broome St. in Soho on May 9 at 6:30 p.m. “It’s going to be juicy. You’re going to see how much the audience hates the Flaccid Four,” Brodeur said of the rest of the field. Sorry, my man, but Carl Rosenstein, the gallery’s owner, said it’s not exactly like that. “I invited him to come,” he said, “not to debate.”

Correction: Vivian Cardia informs us that her late mother, Elsie Cardia, was not, in fact, the sister of Frank Sinatra’s mother, as Scoopy recently reported after being told so by LindaAnn Loschiavo of W. Ninth St. But they were related — Frank’s mother and Elsie’s grandfather were siblings. “My mother and Frank were second cousins,” Cardia explained. “We knew him, but he never ate at the Beatrice Inn. He gave us tickets to see him at Carnegie Hall a few times. We still have the Garaventa family home in Genoa. My mother put a new roof on it and Frank was supposed to visit it one time, but was doing a concert elsewhere in Italy and didn’t make it. It was in all the Italian newspapers.” In her defense, Loschiavo said, “Elsie Cardia was a nonstop talker and details from Elsie often spilled out like very fast-moving spaghetti.”