Boring Sites

Dear Reader,

So where the hell IS everybody? Last week's swearing-in session was attended by only four out of seven members (including the mayor), and this week's first full meeting of the new term also had only four. Joy Austin-Lane and Doug Barry were again absent, leaving Wards 1 and 6 unrepresented for a second week - though at no obvious peril. Bruce Williams, who was away last week, returned for his own personal swearing-in. This time Marc Elrich was missing - though he showed up near the end just in time to watch an online broadcast of a Stockton, California city council meeting.

Yes, the evening was full of such excitements! It’s hard to say what the highlight was. Perhaps it was the discussion of boring sites. That’s “boring” in the sense of a soil sample, but I suspect “boring” was one of the first words used by new council member Colleen Clay when she dragged herself into the house late that night and her partner asked “how was your very first full council meeting, dear?”

Ms. Clay was eager to show her budget watchdog personna. She asked many a sharpish question about how much things would cost, where the money was coming from, and what it was paying for. The answers seemed to mollify her, and she made no bold challenges to any expenditures. Not so for veteran council member Marc Elrich, who lit into Prince George's County for not funding the day laborer pickup site.

Elrich recited the long history of the site, and how much (or little) each county funded it each year. At issue for the council was a request to fund a paid organizer for the site, a person who campaigns, promotes, and explains the site to potential laborers. Marc testily reminded everyone that Prince George's County had dodged out of funding the site, letting Montgomery County and the city assume the costs - despite the fact that the majority of the laborers are from PG County. “We are not a cash cow!” he declared to the chagrined representatives from the laborer site. This sort of apparently ad-libbed speech, marshaling facts and figures, delivered with an articulate, dramatic outrage, is what makes Marc Elrich the council’s best practitioner of the political arts.

The mayor said she agreed with Marc, but she softened the blow to the representatives by saying that the council would postpone final judgment until they saw the proposal.

Collen raised the question of costs more successfully when the elections were reviewed by a panel of three election judges. The judges determinedly missed the point of the review process, they thought they were there to praise, and be praised. They praised the process, they praised the staff, they praised each other. They even praised the community center, calling it “the star in the process.” Though the mayor and council pressed them to identify even little faults or to make suggestions, they insisted that everything had gone swimingly and no, they didn’t see any room for improvement, They only avoided being dragged into the back room for a waterboarding session by admitting that perhaps having two shifts for judges would help.

The election, if you recall, was unusual because it used paper ballots. This was supposed to be not only a blow for democracy, there being no “paper trail” with the alternative electronic voting system, but a cost-saving measure. Under questioning from Colleen, however, it came out that the additional judges, and additional time they needed to hand-count the ballots raised the cost, as did one-time expenses such as ballot boxes (how much does a ballot box cost??).

City Clerk Jessie Carpenter joined the hallaluhuh chorus, praising the judges, though intriguingly quipping “some were better than others”. This amused several in the room, but there was no explanation. Why does our purportedly trasparent government suddenly become opaque when there's a good joke to be told? I protest!

Ms. Matthews made a pitch for an elections board, saying that a board could reach out to groups in the population that don’t normally vote. Ms. Clay failed to ask her how much this would cost.

She didn’t get much of an opportunity to ask about community center costs, either. During City Manager Barbara Matthews report on the CC Mayor Porter eagerly interrupted to point out that $17,000 in cost overruns caused by on contractor’s change-orders were more than offset by compensation owed the city by another contractor. Cut off at the pass!

Costs didn’t come into the discussion about the naming of the new community center, an exercise in absurdity as the council discussed whether to include the word “citizen” in the already overly-long name. They mulled the implied meaning of “citizen” and whether some might find it offensively exclusive. In a perfect demonstration of why it is a bad idea to let a government body name anything, they settled on “The Takoma Park Community Center /Sam Abbott Citizens' Center.” The mayor said this will appear on a sign in front of the building (perhaps she was afraid that if the name were on the building the combined weight of the letters would pull the wall down). It will have to be a BIG sign. Maybe it will be big enough to hide the ugly parking-pit.

It is going to look very silly to have "Center" twice in the name, and since "citizen's center" and "community center" mean viturally the same thing there is no point in having both. I would suggest naming it thusly on two lines, with the top line in smaller letters:
Sam Abbott Memorial
Takoma Park Citizen's Center

Next week, city manager Matthews said, she will have a CC financial report. Perhaps that is what Joy Austin-Lane and Doug Barry are waiting to return for. Or maybe it is for the onsite meeting in preparation for a study for the gym location. This is to determine the boring sites - the spots where soil samples will be taken. “Boring” certainly sums up most of the meeting. It makes you wonder why anyone would run for office.

To give you an idea, the items I’ve described above were the EXCITING parts. They also sat through: Four interviews with prospective committee members. A reading of an ordinance “Re: Contract for Pavilion and Pathway at Toatley Fraser Park." A reading of a budget amendment that would fund tree planting in the spring. And at the END of the evening, when the meeting was already running late, they had a reading of the City Managers financial report.

Who can focus on finances at 10:30 at night? The details rolled by like credits at the end of a big-budget movie -- revenues were down $1.7 million, assistant to the director, operating revenues were up, gaffer, revenues generated by recreation and services were down due to lower participation in day camp and recreation activities, best boy, but there was a $360,000 increase in tax rebates from the county, foley operator, most of that was for the police department, no animals were injured in the making of this financial report, please deposit your litter in the trash container as you exit.

Prior to the financial report, the council enjoyed a sublimely bizzare moment. They all got up from their seats and watched from the floor of the chambers a demonstration of the web streaming application the city is considering buying. This would allow the city to post streaming video of council meetings on its website for public viewing. Stockton, California uses this system, So the council sat in their boring meeting, watching an equally boring meeting of the Stockton city council.

The new website was also unveiled to oohs and ahhs. All I can say is I hope they do a better job of providing streaming council meetings than they do of providing documents in pdf form. A large percentage have something wrong: the document is blank, has too many pages, or in one case, has several pages that contain only the illegible torn corner of one of the original document pages.

So, from boring soil sites to boring web sites, the new council inched its way through its first full meeting. I can’t imagine how they endure years of this kind of tedium and minutia. And they do it all for us citizens (if I can use that term without offense). I don’t know whether to feel grateful, guilty, awed, or amused.

I’ll stick with amused - it makes for a better blog.

- Gilbert