I spent the last several hours at the city council meeting for Morris, Minnesota, along with a huge mob of other Morris residents. The object of our political activism was a park, Morris’s East Side Park, which is kind of like the Central Park of our small town. It’s only 2 acres, containing a band shell, lots of trees, grass, picnic tables, and in one corner, some playground equipment. It’s a pleasant little place where lots of families play and where one citizen likes to look for spiders.
A local business, Superior Industries and West-Mor, enthusiastically and generously made plans to invest $2 million into turning Eastside Park into a destination park, paving over one bit of it to make a parking lot, building a massive and rather garish child’s playground paved over with poured-in-place rubbery polymer, and chopping down about 16 of the trees. One problem: they didn’t bother to tell us residents until about a month ago, although city council knew about it before we did.
Many of us descended on the council meeting tonight, talking for hours, the overwhelming majority of us presenting objections. We weren’t given enough time to review the proposal, it had been rushed through the council without going through the usual protocols, this was going to change the character of the park, there were other locations that would be more suitable, the location was far too small, etc.
One weird thing is that the proponents of the park were now emphasizing that it was going to be an inclusive park with handicap access. No one is against inclusion, and I failed to see what was particularly inclusive about a climbing structure and swing sets and slides, and they didn’t say what was more inclusive about it than the existing park, but OK.
The arguments didn’t matter. The council had already made up their minds. They ignored the will of the people and voted to approved the plastic monstrosity that will replace the grass and trees in the park.
I shouldn’t have bothered.
Follow the money.
Dear PZ, a number of people in our organization have been battling that sort of ‘corrupt corporate ownership of city hall’, too. One of them had to get people to threaten city government with pitchforks and torches to keep a big herd of cows from being grazed 75 feet from residences (flies, filth, noise, stench, etc.)
And, looking around most of repugnantcant government in all the states here has the same attitude: a corrupt corporation wants something so screw the populace!
Did they say why they want to spend 2 mil on this? Is a housing or shopping or industrial complex planned to accompany it?
Local councils seem the same around the world…
Small town politics at its finest.
Do you ever get the feeling that perhaps just perhaps, regardless of where on the planet you live, “we the people” don’t really have control of our supposedly democratic institutions?
Well, the problem is two fold. 1) the moment an election comes along for those “city” positions the choice ends up being to keep the idiots in there already, or to elect other, often business owners, to the same, and 2) while its often easier to get people to throw them out that it is to convince people to not vote them back in on the national level, all too often apathy and/or short term blindness lead to reelecting them anyway. And, as it repeated time, and time, and time again – these are the people that matter most to do something about, not just because it usually has a much more direct impact (including on how money from the state, or fed, gets spent locally, regardless of what those higher government levels are intentionally screwing up), but some of these idiots will, if they stay in office long enough, run for state and federal offices, hence the needs to throw the f-ers out, and do so with clear emphasis that they are not wanted back, so as to hopefully limit their willingness/ability to run for higher office and screw people over even more.
Sadly, the nature of “local government” is such that you often can’t find out from sources, online or otherwise, which party they belong to, never mind what the F their long term goals, or overall politics are. Just which small spattering of buzz words they are spouting, because its something every one of them, in every party, is babbling about during the current election. Seriously… I hate trying to figure out which local idiot is going to be a problem, now and in the future, because they often literally neither have a record of decisions you can based your decision on, and/or no one has given a damn about keeping track of them, including the politicians themselves, so you can make an informed decision on anything about them. Its so freaking frustrating. And, of course, that just leads into more apathy about even trying to make sure the people elected are not self serving assholes, or fanatics, etc.
Don’t it always seem to go,
that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.
They paved paradise,
and put up a parking lot.
I also tried to get involved in local politics, once, and found it incredibly undemocratic. Council decides what issues to move on, and which way they are going to move. Anything else doesn’t even get a hearing. We had a good cause and a strong and organized coalition representing not just many individuals but dozens of local businesses and nonprofits – worked for months and and months and couldn’t even get a hearing.
The cause btw was “no circuses in the city” and also “no petshops that sold dogs or cats” (which both come from mills). There were 0 businesses that did this at the time, so no existing businesses would have been harmed.
I hate large gifts to organizations for pet projects. There’s always a lot of pressure to accept the gift, bypass the usual decision making process and buy the thing, rather than turning down the money. It just reinforces the rich person’s sense of entitlement.