Why Not to Go to a City-Council Meeting

           You are waiting for me to dive into the pool of partisan politics?  Uh uh.  If you have been reading the community lessons and essays, you have sensed, perhaps concluded, that something might be fundamentally wrong with our democracy, regardless of which bloc of elected officials is in the majority. 

          Which leads to the lesson of this week:  why avoid city-council meetings?  Last week we were talking about the lights of Montebello.  I opined that, to solve the problem of driver-unfriendly and environmentally-unfriendly traffic signals, I would not go to a meeting of our city council. 

          Pourquoi?  Our city council is too busy to do the job.  That simple.  It does not matter what a city councilor promised, it does not matter that your favorite city councilor has his or her heart in the right place.  There are only so many hours in a day and none of us is superhuman.  You recall the rave entitled “Reality Check for High Schoolers”, July 5, 2007?  Parallel situation:  Scarcity of time.  Parallel physiology:  all too human. 

          Does that mean that needed services do not get performed?  That, in fact, is the situation and, again, it does not matter which bloc of city councilors is in the majority. 

          What can we do?  We can pay our city councilors to become full-time councilors.  (They practically are full-time now, with all that demands their attention.  The difference is that we do not pay them to be full-time;  there is a huge difference between their pay and that of a state legislator or member of Congress, who is considered full-time.) 

          You do not want to pay them more?  You fear that your elected friends would not be in the majority on the city council, the opponents on the council would have more time for mischief, and you would have to suffer through four years of baffle and bewilderment?  Well, then, let us enlarge the city council, that is, increase the number of council seats.  Los Angeles has fifteen councilors, Pasadena seven.  What prevents us from enlarging our city council? 

          Nothing.  Nothing at all.  And if, like the whining little boy in a short story by William Saroyan, we still were not satisfied?  There are other solutions once we begin to think outside the box.  Stay tuned. 

If you answer the multiple-choice questions below and e-mail to lessonanswers@mymontebello.com with “Lesson answers” in the subject field, you will be credited toward a “certificate of recognition in community affairs” to be awarded in 2007 by a local nonprofit organization. 

1.   Why not go to our city council to have our traffic signals fixed?

(a)  Our city councilors have no authority to fix traffic signals.

(b)  They are too busy to fix traffic signals quickly. 

2.   What options do we have?

(a) Pay our city council to be full-time.

(b) Find Montebelloans with superhuman strength and support them as candidates for city council.

(c) Enlarge the number of council seats, so that more people be elected and the workload be divided among them. 

August 2, 2007