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By Pauline Masson – Pacific citizens want change. I know this from reading the comments readers are posting on my Hometown Matters blog, on I Heart Pacific, Pacific Community Forum and others.
In trying to create a dialogue between the citizens and the board of aldermen, which seems to be what citizens are craving, social media has turned out to be one way to air the citizens’ wishes and worries.
But here’s the thing. The board of aldermen meetings are not the place to do this. These twice a month meetings are prescribed by law – not as community gripe sessions but – for the aldermen to conduct the business of the city.
When citizens want to be heard on a new business coming to town, a new subdivision, a major zone change, a plan to improve all the streets, it’s too late to turn up at a board meeting when the issue comes up for a vote.
Citizens need to get in on these things much earlier.
My friend Bill McLaren – quoting political guru Jim McHugh – said citizens changing the direction of government is like comparing a long string of barges to a speed boat. A speed boat changes direction on a dime but a tugboat pushing a string of barges has to start making his turn a long way back.
And so it goes with city government. Citizens need a vehicle to move their call for change way before the aldermen are ready to vote.
In the not so distant past, we had a mechanism to thread the voices of the citizens into government issues in the form of citizen committees.
The citizen committees worked – with no pay and no real authority – to beautify our parks and public places, preserve our neighborhoods, restore our cemeteries, and compile the history of our families and businesses. When their programs needed help, they had to go to the board of aldermen and make their plea for what they wanted. None of this turned on a dime.
On my first entry into Pacific as a reporter, I spotted a group of ladies, older than I was at time, down on their knees digging into the ground on the island between West Unions and Osage streets in front of McDonalds. I parked and asked them what they were doing. They were the garden club and they were planting flowers. “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “The mayor says we have no money for flowers,” one lady said. It turned out she was the wife of then mayor Bill Wiest.
This was a serious group of ladies. It was their commitment to preserving neighborhoods that prodded the city fathers into creating zoning districts, which led to the need for a city planning and zoning commission and eventually the city’s comprehensive plan. It took several years.
Another of the planters was the late Mary Hoven, who in addition to her garden club work served the city park board. She went to the board of aldermen a dozen times to make a case for additional parking in the city park before the board added parking spaces in the park.
When citizens began to complain about the condition of our cemeteries, then mayor Jill Pigg established a cemetery committee. This group compiled a list of all those buried in the two cemeteries, tracked down their living descendant, and wrote letters asking for donations to restore the cemeteries. They raised enough funds – no taxpayer money – to reset all the fallen stones and repair the broken ones, repair the fences that were in poor repair, create monument signs that identified each cemetery and persuade the city to put up signs on the entry roads directing motorists to the cemeteries.
For thirty years, the city genealogy committee, of which I was a member, clipped news stories and collected diaries and correspondents from families to create a family history archive. Never mind that then mayor Steve Myers kicked me off the committee because I opposed him on a political issue. The alderman recently stripped that committee back to five members and were so rude to the volunteers that several quit. Those remaining are trying to figure out how to influence the future of the history museum and genealogy archive that will be housed in the Red Cedar. Aldermen have take over this project to the tune of a $2.2 million loan achieved by refinancing the city hall loan and cut the committee out of the planning.
My point here is that one of ways that the citizens of our community have in the past presented their voice to city government was through the citizen committees. These were volunteer citizens of all ages, all religions, all races and all interest in hometown boosterism.
I can’t prove this, but it appears that the recent demolition of the city committees started with the city administrator. He sat in on committee meetings and his presence reminded the members who was really in charge.
One by one the process of citizen involvement in city government was removed. The cemetery committee and the beautification committee were dissolved. They are no more. The genealogy committee and park board were reduced to five members each – sending some of their most effective and involved volunteers packing.
For years the citizen committees were the strings of barges moving slowly through the waters of community life. They brought about change at their own pace.
Would the community see better citizen involvement if the new administration turned the citizen committees back over to the citizens?
Just food for thought.
The Board also reinvigorated their Administrative and Operations Committees to make the actual Board of Alderman meetings more time efficient and more likely to follow the published agenda. The agenda is there for the purpose of informing the citizens of matters to be voted on at that particular session. A worthy goal. So why then are most of the actual accomplishments and spending of money found, slipped into, the Reports from Members and Department Heads at the very end. I am not talking about paying Public Works bills and the like but rather” sneaking in pet projects” at the end. these are the things that build great distrust with the tax payers.
The Committee meetings were to be work sessions, and places for public input. They only allowed public input for three minutes , or as they chose, before any one new what was to be discussed. The rest of the meeting was usually treated as a private work session as in “sit on your hands and keep your mouth shut” unless we agree with you.
Publicizing working ideas and projects in some form or other ahead of time would greatly improve things with the citizens .
Restoring Many if not all of the removed committees and allowing a Board member to listen, suggest and advise but NOT CONTROL the meetings would go a very long way to restore citizen trust and participation in our government.
Listen and lead. Don’t be here to “govern” per Herb. but help, guide , suggest and encourage.
I have been a part of the Park Board for 4 years now. Gratefully nominated (and re-nominated) by then Mayor Myers and approved by the Aldermen. Have things on our board always been perfect? No but we made it work. Differences were resolved and we were all friends at the end of a meeting. Mayor-Elect Filley ran our board efficiently as President and without controversy for the last several years. Our board however was recently cut from 9 to 5 and called “dysfunctional” by members of our City Government. Facts that I spoke about to the BoA and vehemently disagreed with their takes and frankly felt ignored. Another board in this city also has 9 members plus the Board Liaison (who votes on the committee), but that board is “running fine”. Oversight and rule making ability was drastically curtailed for the Park Board for reasons that have never been explained beyond, well, “those were never voted on by the BoA”. We lost good and passionate voices off the boards who brought experiences, life stories, desires and contacts that made our Board and our Parks and other committees all the better.
I serve the citizens on a volunteer basis on the Park Board. I love it. I am not a Pacific native, but feel more at home here than anywhere else I have lived. I am heavily involved in Scouting so Park Board is a natural fit. Nature, green space, activity opportunities, sports, events, tranquility, and everything else our parks offer is a huge asset to our community. We can do more and have so much on our plate. Exciting times, but more hands make the work light.
I don’t disagree that citizen committees are the place to start. I had discussions with a couple of ladies on Facebook who had scary run ins in City Park but felt like they couldn’t do anything about it. I invited them to come before the Park Board and tell their story. They got attention and the PPD has been doing a great job in our parks to help keep incidents like this from happening. Park Superintendent Fowler along with Community Development Director Myers and the crew have been working diligently to fix what needs to be fixed and add elements that are needed.
While it would be hard to say that these womens’ situations and words wouldn’t have had any power in front of the Board of Aldermen, talking to the Park Board definitely got action. Better lighting, more security cameras, ongoing discussions about emergency call boxes, increased police patrols, citizens reporting issues to dispatch, citizens looking out for each other, etc. Voices of concern became action items and commitments to make it better.
I am excited to see what the new Board of Alderman and Mayor will accomplish. The need for citizen committees has increased, not decreased and the committees need more voices not fewer. I hope that some of the recent decisions and cuts get revered. It’s not like the committees cost the city, just the opposite. They bring value. Not everyone has a passion for a new pool or new concession stand, and that’s OK, we still need trails and skateparks, fishing and scenery, ball fields and arena seating. There is place for your voice. Even if you can’t serve on a board or committee, come to them, speak up at the Public Participation time. Bring your ideas, your concerns, anything good, bad or indifferent. Don’t sit silently by when you see a need or have an idea. I may not always agree with you, but I will tell you, as long as I and the people I serve with are seated on the Park Board we will listen and I hope that every other city committee or board will say the same thing.
Ryan made very , very good points. One comment that stood out to me was ” the Board Liaison votes” As an adviser, liaison and guide to the Committees as to the needs of the Board, is it really necessary that that member has a vote. Seems to me that would count as voting twice on an issue or proposal. The liaison would have ample input time before a vote , their vote that might not be representative of the Board of Aldermen as a body, specialty if it is a relatively new idea. I know that a lot of things are refereed to Committee for revue, such as topics from the public input at BoA meetings. The question becomes that of what is normal procedure; Do we go first to the BoA and try to get squeezed in, or do we go to a Board or Committee as first try?
Either way open , both way, communication and trust goes a long way