You know you're in trouble when your mayor, city councilors and city planner start responding to questions by prattling on about how good they think debate and dissent is for a healthy democracy instead of describing their positions (much less defending them), or even identifying the dissenters' concerns.
Far worse, though, is when, without a voters' mandate, two members of your city council come up with competing legislation on how to better adhere to "best practices."
Why offer up a solution before the problem has been identified and agreed upon?
City councilors Michael Bardsley and David Narkewicz have drafted resolutions responding to the complaint that city hall hasn't done its best to include the public in its decision-making processes. This old complaint recently found a new, strong voice in the public outrage over the city's handling of the downtown Hilton Garden Inn development.
By resolving to have a "best practices" oversight committee, the councilors suggest that the problem needing to be fixed is procedural. A committee watching everyone will ensure that less-than-best practices are discovered and improved.
But while resolutions and oversight committees might force politicians to follow the letter of the law, they can't force them to care what their constituents think. They can't make Northampton's mayor care whether the public she serves has all the facts or not.
The city council's resolution shenanigans only serve to cloud issues that deserve public attention and input. Take, for instance, the rationale for building the hotel. Despite the forums, interviews and debates, many I've spoken to don't understand that the hotel is the first step in a much larger plan.
The mayor and City Planner Wayne Feiden have referred to traffic studies demonstrating that a hotel in the downtown would meet a need and would not go vacant. What wasn't made clear was that these traffic studies had nothing to do with today's Northampton, but were forecasts of what might be—after a conference center and a completely redeveloped Three County Fair Grounds had been built.
That's right: the Hilton's success depends on other, bigger, more expensive developments. Earlier this fall, the city put out a call for architects, developers and consultants to begin researching possible approaches for redeveloping the fair grounds.
If city hall and the City Council were really interested in soliciting the public's feedback, taxpayers would have been consulted before the consultants, and it would have been made clear that the hotel was only the beginning.
Last Thursday night, city councilor Marianne LaBarge offered an addendum to the Council's compromise resolution. Her addendum removed language that barred sitting city councilors from being on the best practices oversight committee. Now it's possible that the oversight committee could actually be made up of the people whose practices were supposedly being monitored.
City Hall's resolution reminds me of college students trying to deal with a dorm mate who won't do her own dishes. Rather than hurting her feelings with direct confrontation, the students draft rules that the whole dorm must follow, hoping the one offender will get the point. If Northampton is going to enjoy transparency in government and public involvement before the next election, instead of crafting half-baked resolutions, someone may need to take a stand and speak truth to power.
