Cheaper than a Movie

Hubby got a call from  a city council member about an upcoming agenda item they thought he’d be interested in and he decided to go to the next meeting and say his bit about the matter during the open comment section. This was last Monday.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I’d never been to a city council meeting before but I had been vaguely following the stories in the local news about our tough new city council president who was cleaning house at the council meetings – in particular during the public comments period. Before he got there, there was no time limit. Public comment time came and anyone and everyone could get up and just go. On and on. And apparently, they did. He initiated two firm policies. 1. There’s a three minute time limit. 2. There are guards to escort you out if you raise a ruckus.

I learned some things, thought about some things and observed some things at my first city council meeting. First, the matter we were there about. Currently, there is no method of redress if an individual or business doesn’t clear their walk of snow. The tenants of a big corner business go bankrupt, the bank repossesses the property, and nobody plows all winter through. Happens all over town because there is no penalty for not plowing. Same with foreclosed homes. Bus stops are not accessible, you’ve got people walking in the streets, and then people in wheelchairs and people like hubby, who use a cane, are just flat out of luck – or down in the street themselves if they can even get there.

So, hubby said his bit about accessibility for persons with disabilities. Another woman got up and talked about falling on a unplowed walk and having permanent knee damage and another woman got up and talked about walking in Saginaw Street with her 6-year-old this winter because the sidewalk was impassable. A man from a landlord’s association got up and said something that made good sense and then a laid-off UAW worker got up and asked the city to employ Lansing’s unemployed doing snow removal next winter. The city employee who initiated the whole thing got up and spoke  about how much it cost in staff time to track down absentee-landlords and what it would cost to recoop that. All good. I was heartily impressed.

Then. Then perfectly reasonable-looking people got up and said some of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard. It’s not nice to make fun of people so I’m not going to go into what they said because I think some of them may have had cognitive difficulties but the city council meeting degenerated to the point that we had to flee the room before I started laughing hysterically. We met other people in the hallway in the same condition – mostly, though, they were irritated and angry. Democracy at it’s best, I think.  I mean, we were complaining beside the chocolate fondue fountain with cut fruit and whole grain bread with spinach dip that some good-hearted citizens had brought to liven up the environment of the meeting. Democracy at it’s best.

Also, two people got home-town hero awards because their neighbor’s baby’s father showed up and tried to take his child against the court custody order. While the baby’s father held two guns on the neighbors the neighbor just stood his ground and talked the guy down until the cops got there. Nobody got hurt. Hometown heros indeed.

And hey, one guy got up and said that Lansing was the home of Malcolm X and there is not one statue or street in this city to memorialize him. I totally agree. I’m on board the Malcolm X street bus. The man then degenerated into talking about something vaguely related to Frederick Douglas, which kind of hurt his Malcolm X case if you ask me, but I’m still on the Malcolm X street bus with him.

I don’t think I’m going back to the city council meeting unless I have something to say myself on a particular matter, but it was interesting. Perhaps sometime I’ll tune in on government TV.