Life Of Jason

Well, as promised, I gave a second shot at City Council.  Tonight’s report features a snub by Ralph Manley, some extremist activism and a realization.  First, the realization.

If you’re going to a council meeting, pack a sandwich.  Man, these things get long.

Now, before I get into the nuts and bolts, let me refresh those of you joining our broadcast already in progress.  Last time I went to City Council it was my first time.  I came away with these ratings for the Council members:

Great:  Cindy Rushefsky, Doug Burlison, Dan Chiles
Good: Mary Collette
Neutral: Denny Whayne, John Wylie
Poor: Ralph Manley, Gary Deaver
Bad:  Tom Carlson

Now, with an attempt to add a little color to the text, is the new ratings.  Green means they went up, red means they moved down.

SPRINGFIELD CITY COUNCIL RANKINGS WEEK 2 

Great: Doug Burlison
Good: Mary Collette, Cindy Rushefsky
Neutral: Denny Whayne, Gary Deaver, Tom Carlson, John Wylie
Poor: Dan Chiles
Bad:  Ralph Manley

A lot of movement to the list and a surprising tumble for Dan Chiles.  I’ll get to all of it but first…the reason Ralph Manley fell from poor to bad.

I went to the meeting early with the intent of meeting some of the council members.  When I arrived, none of them were in the council chamber so I took a seat along the middle aisle and read the agenda for the night.  After about ten minutes, some council members came in and took their seats (Whayne and Burlison) while Ralph Manley came down and started introducing himself to people sitting and waiting for the meeting to start.  That really impressed me and I was looking forward to when he made his way over to me so I could meet him.

He approached a woman in front of me who was from the Willard School District and introduced himself and made chit-chat.  When he finished with her I expected him to shake my hand and introduce himself but instead he went to a man across the aisle from me and introduced himself.  No big deal…he’d come back over to me when he was done.  Instead, he worked down that side of the aisle and worked his way back up behind me.  He stopped to chat with an elderly man and his wife sitting directly behind me.  Again, you would expect him to introduce himself after talking with them.

Instead, the city clerk grabbed Mr. Manley to have him meet a young man from Wanda Gray elementary who wanted to watch a city council meeting.  (Hey, the kid’s interested in his city.  I dig that.)  So while I was disappointed not to meet the council member that represents the zone I live in I could understand.  Had the situation ended there I wouldn’t have had a bad impression of Mr. Manley.  However, the situation didn’t end there.

Some environmental activists took seats next to me about halfway down the row.  Mr. Manley noticed these people and came to my row.  I thought “now he’ll introduce himself.”  Nope.  Manley starts to make his way into the row and then said “excuse me” when he was halfway past me.  He gave warm greetings to them, a hug to Emily Fox from the Discovery Center and even greeted the activists from Code Pink.  I waited for him to come back down the row and introduce himself to me.  Instead, he went out the other end of the row to talk to other people.

Now, you’ll probably say “why didn’t you introduce yourself to him?”  I could have done so and had I not seen him introducing himself to other people would have likely done so.  Something in my head just said to wait and see if he would introduce himself on his own.  I want to give him the benefit of the doubt that he thought he had introduced himself to me when he was making the rounds the first time and didn’t realize that he had not done it.  Still, I felt snubbed even though I know it wasn’t likely on purpose.  It was still enough to move him down in my Council Rankings.

Now, on to the meeting.

Mayor Carlson moves up because he was not the same guy I saw the first time.  While not overly personable, he was efficent and even when snags ran into the running order of the agenda kept his cool unlike the previous meeting.  (That lends me to think my observation he wasn’t feeling well was correct.)  There was no snapping at audience members nor other council members.  It wasn’t enough to get beyond a neutral feeling but that’s better than the bad he was a few weeks ago.   He also asked some good questions regarding a rezoning to allow the Willard School District to build a new elementary school.

Gary Deaver moved up because he didn’t seem to annoy me quite as much as the first time.  I couldn’t really justify keeping him as poor at the moment.

Cindy Rushefsky moved down only because I felt she was being a little too driving on an issue regarding the police and fire departments.  While I really appreciate the fact she’s taking care of our men and women serving us in the police and fire department, she asked to hold up a vote on rezoning and annexing a land development until we could have a study about the cost of annexation versus the cost to provide police and fire coverage to annexed land over the last two years.   Mrs. Rushefsky said she “didn’t have a problem with this particular development” but that she wanted to see the overall impact.

OK, I get that, Mrs. Rushefsky.  I don’t have a problem with that in and of itself.  However, the developer had waited an additional meeting as once requested and appears to have bent over backwards to get the approval of landowners around him.  Even High Street Baptist Church came in to speak on his behalf and they own a lot of land around this rezoning.  Holding up this man’s development wouldn’t really accomplish what you were hoping to do with the examination of costs to fire and police.   Mrs. Rushefsky did vote for it…after Mary Collette said she didn’t think it would be fair to hold this up…but the fact she asked for the delay made me move her down a little bit.  You could have made your point without calling for the matter to be delayed yet again.

Now, the reason Dan Chiles fell all the way from a great impression to a ranking of poor.  First, he came over and shook hands with the environmental activists sitting next to me without introducing himself to me.  However, he didn’t introduce himself to anyone else so I didn’t really hold that again him.  It did, however, raise my antenna regarding his views on a particular thing…

One of the items on the agenda was a resolution to require Springfield City Government to build only green buildings and to require renovations to meet green standards.  In and of itself, I do not have a problem with making buildings better for the environment.  I’m sure it’s good in the long run.  However, there was nothing in the resolution to say how much this standard would mean in terms of cost and how much that could raise the taxes of the average Springfield citizen.  If we’re talking a significant increase in cost which is passed on to my neighbors and me then I’m not going to be in favor of such a blanket decree.

The activists had their say during comment time asking the measure to be tabled to make it even stronger and to require the city to get LEED certification even though it would be a higher cost.  The restrictions that go into a green building can also drive costs because instead of being able to take the lowest bid from anywhere in the country for materials you have to take material only from a certain range.  You could end up paying significantly more for materials under such a plan.  These activists…all in favor of tabling the resolution to make the restrictions harder…were met with praise from Mr. Chiles who added his own views in line with the activists.  It was straight down the talking points for environmentalists…which is fine and with which I don’t necessarily disagree…but there was no real discussion of the bottom line to the taxpayers of Springfield.

They tabled the resolution so if you are someone who would like to speak against such a plan until they outline how the costs would not significantly increase you should plan to be at the next council meeting or contact the city council members.

Mr. Chiles also grilled the board of City Utilities about whether or not they would agree to meet green building standards with their facilities and also on a conservation plan.  Mr. Chiles talked about a “Citizen’s Task Force” who called for an “aggressive conservation program” to be put in place by City Utilities.  CU spent over a million dollars last year on conservation education plans for the residents of Springfield out of their overall budget which was in the hundreds of millions.  Mr. Chiles said that was less than one percent of the total cost and was that “aggressive” or not.  To this citizen, a million dollars on something like conservation education is a lot of money and seemed aggressive enough to me.  How much more do you want to take out of my pocket for this, Mr. Chiles?  All your comments sounded like to me were “let’s raise rates on people.”

Again, I’m not against doing things to help the environment.  I love Ozark Greenways and other groups dedicated to making the Ozarks environment better for all residents.  I just don’t think we need to rush into things like a green building declaration without some basis to show it’s not going to drive taxes or utility costs unreasonably upward.

Finally, the extremist group Code Pink had a representative there to attempt to create a false sense of panic about invading Iran.  Gary Wilson wanted the city council to draft a resolution demanding that we don’t take military action without congressional approval and made some meandering statements about how Iraq effects Springfield.  He claimed that Greensburg, Kansas and New Orleans and others were suffering because of National Guard members being in Iraq.  The same old tired talking points that the extreme left parrot all the time.   Mr. Wilson was trying to cause an issue where none exists right now in what seemed like an attempt to get more news coverage and media attention.

However, this is where Doug Burlison kept his great rating.  At the end of Mr. Wilson’s comments, Burlison challenged Mr. Wilson to back up his claim that the war cost Springfield $146 million.  Mr. Wilson couldn’t back up his claim other than to say he read it on a web site.  It just showed that Mr. Wilson was reading talking points without an apparent firm grasp of what he was telling the council.

Mr. Wilson kept saying “this is a local issue” when it’s not a local issue.  If we were actually invading Iran, perhaps he would have a point.  As it is now, we have extremists groups like Code Pink claiming we’re going to invade Iran with no solid evidence to back it up.  It’s just a scare tactic intended to inflame hatred against Bush yet again.  While I have no problem with Mr. Wilson exercising his right to go to council and express his views, I also think he was wasting the council’s time on something that is at the moment virtually irrelevant to Springfield.

I didn’t notice that Mr. Wilson had asked for anything in the resolution to thank Springfield area residents for their service.  Why not have a part of the resolution where they praise the Springfield residents who gave their time to serve?  You could claim that you’re actually interested in keeping Springfield residents from going to Iran in the event a war takes place and then perhaps you could sell the local angle to people.  Then it might not look like far-left extremist talking points.

Mr. Wilson said Code Pink was going to be sending letters and calling the council members to push through this resolution.  So if you are opposed to Code Pink’s methods and their resolution you need to contact your council members so that they can see both sides of this debate.

Overall, a long night with not a lot of excitement.  I’m looking forward to the next meeting.