Not making any excuses for myself, but Tuesday I attended the first Colonial Heights City Council meeting I have been at in a long time. By a long time, I mean in years.
In the past, I had been a bit of a fixture at these meetings, as part of my backup coverage when I worked at another local paper that will go unnamed to protect the innocent. In those days, it was always fun to watch the fracas as the political pugilists would split off to one faction or the other. Isn’t it always one group against another? One group, the majority-the bullies, always seemed to have that “all important” swing vote that would determine the way things would go for whichever municipality they represented.
Sometimes, and I know this is hard to believe coming from such a vaunted democratic area as Virginia, but sometimes the decisions made in this kind of atmosphere aren’t necessarily for the good of the community. Instead, they are for the good of whatever group happens to have the good fortune to have the swing vote or for that matter the majority vote, and therefore get their way. Democracy at its best, right? Majority rule? Might makes right?
At the Colonial Heights City Council meeting Tuesday night, it was interesting to see how some people, who used to wield extraordinary power in the community, have been relegated to a sideline player, a bit actor in the magnum opus of small town politics. Now, who might I be talking about? Perhaps you can guess. Yup, that’s right, the honorable John T. Wood himself. He’s an interesting character and he was in full display Tuesday night.
For one thing, he really, really likes to hear himself talk. The puffery, the grand-standing is just phenomenal; I think, sometimes, Mr. Wood believes he is in St. John’s Church preaching to a group of Patriots and trying to carry the day. It would just be funny, if it weren’t at some level a condemnation of our political system.
On this day, Mr. Wood was decrying his hurt feelings at being left off either of two committees the city commissioned concerning the property at 213 Chesterfield Avenue, the property formerly known as the old Colonial Heights Baptist Church. Mr. Wood pleaded his case. He said that because he wasn’t on either committee, he felt obligated to vote no in both cases. This is like taking your baseball and going home when you can’t be the pitcher. It is childish behavior, and not the kind of behavior one would expect from an elected official. There is something to be said for grace under fire, and something else to be said about the commonweal.
Mayor C. Scott Davis, after the meeting, explained why Mr. Wood was not included in the group of people on the committee. He said that the city staff recommended Mr. Milton Freeland, another City Councilman, who also lived in the neighborhood, and who also happens to be on the Planning Commission and is very familiar with land use planning. In attempting to accommodate Mr. Wood, Mr. Freeland offered to let him take his place on the committee. Mr. Freeland made a substitute motion to allow Mr. Wood to take his place, but Council stuck to its guns and voted against the substitute motion 4-2. They then voted in favor of the original motion.
During the early part of the meeting a local citizen brought up the question about televising the meetings or doing a live broadcast over the Internet. Mayor Davis said he did not favor doing so, because he saw that as being a way in which people would grandstand even more than they do now and the whole process would become politicized. Added to that, he said, was his concern for having any of the council’s session on the Internet, where anything could happen to the video.
Mayor Davis makes some good points, but he misses the biggest point. If people could actually witness the behavior of some of their representatives they might be inclined to think differently at the polls. As a reporter and servant of the people, I personally think anytime the political machinery can get the word out to the public they should take advantage of it. Yes, this could lead to some negative things, but after the first couple months everything would tone down as the council became familiar with the new media.
For me, I am in favor of letting the people see the actions of the members of City Council. We vote for these people; we put them in office, but we rarely take the time to see what they are doing or how they are acting on our behalf. I say televise it or stream it over the Internet, let people get a good look at this product that we vote on year after year. The general public is not as dumb as some might think, and they will recognize the grandstanding, the politicking, and the general demeanor of their elected officials. It’s a double-edged sword really, one may think they are getting their message across by their clever antics, but most people know how to judge the things they see. Let the public have a good look at this bright and shiny City Council.
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