During the last Northampton City Council meeting on Feb. 5, the chambers were packed with members of the public eager to weigh in on the proposed Northampton Business Improvement District (BID). As with the previous Council meeting, a majority of the councilors' time that night would be spent on the receiving end of an extended "public comment period."
Noting the heightened interest in the topic, Councilor David Narkewicz recommended they extend the amount of time people get to talk by a couple minutes, and the other councilors passed the motion. Mayor Higgins said she would leave the timing up to the speakers, but asked that they keep their comments concise. Those who had not gotten a chance to speak at the previous meeting could go first.
And then she read the first name from the sign-up list, and the public were off.
Mostly, the mayor and her Council sat quietly with serious, contemplative expressions on their faces. When lead BID proponent Dan Yacuzzo began by saying how offended he had been by Attorney Alan Scheinman's comments at the last meeting, the mayor interrupted and asked that he refrain from making the debate personal. Otherwise she was stoic, only occasionally breaking into the rants, tirades, pleas and terse position statements to ask whether they were within the time limit.
"How are we doing for time?" she'd ask politely, and most wound their arguments up quickly.
"Very well, thank you," one young man responded. His initially beleaguered argument had, after six or seven minutes of wandering, only just found its stride. The mayor was forced to be more explicit.
Other than that, though, for more than two hours the Council presented deeply contemplative faces.
Eventually, citing the late hour and other pending Council business, the mayor closed the public comment period, long after she'd said she would. She reminded all that the vote on the BID would not occur until the following meeting, but they were welcome to remain. Councilor Raymond LaBarge wanted to express his views on the matter, but the mayor said their deliberations would take place during the next meeting. Councilor Narkewicz motioned that they keep the option to continue public comment period on the BID issue until next meeting.
No one seconded him immediately, and after an awkward pause, one councilor asked why he'd want to do that. Narkewicz explained that he wanted to allow for voices that might not have been heard and the possibility of new arguments yet to be made, but if there were none, they could simply close it at that time. Someone seconded the motion.
As the public shuffled from the room, the council relaxed their guard. Narkewicz laughed and joked that he'd motioned to keep the public comment period open because he never wanted it to end. The Council laughed at the absurdity of that notion.
"Ha! What level of hell would that be?" the mayor said.
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Politics have died in America, and in its place politeness rules.
On the local level, this has led to the end of representational government. Elections are lightly contested and no longer about differences in ideology or conflicting plans for the future. Rather, they are about who will manage the status quo most effectively. Local committees are all variations on a theme—the same faces meeting in different locations. Instead of debate and dialog, we have public comment sessions where elected officials extend every courtesy to their constituents—except respecting what they have to say or actually engaging with them.
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"Legislation is the art of compromise, consensus building, and that's what we did," Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said on February 11, explaining why he negotiated terms with Republican senators who had threatened to filibuster the proposed economic stimulus package. Never mind that the filibuster was little more than a bluff: Democrats are only a few seats shy of having the 60 votes required to break a filibuster, should one have occurred.
Rather than fighting a battle they likely could have won and presenting an imperiled nation with something its writers believed was the best possible solution, Reid negotiated terms, made sure the Republicans felt heard, and produced a package that stimulates no one. Even President Obama admitted the worked-over legislation was flawed, and he joked that flaws were unavoidable, it having been created in Washington.
A week earlier, the president commemorated Lincoln's bicentennial with a speech that highlighted the 16th president's ability to repair rifts and heal nations. The president has worked the Lincoln-Obama analogy hard, especially embracing the role of unifier, but sometimes it seems as if Obama's forgotten that before the healing, there had been a Civil War.
Had he heard Harry Reid define the art of legislation as compromise, Lincoln would have been appalled. Though his Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves immediately, and before the war broke out, rather than a radical change, Lincoln had envisioned a gradual move toward freedom, he was unwavering in his commitment to freeing the slaves. Lincoln wanted to treat those he'd defeated with dignity only after he had gotten his way.
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Politeness is no substitute for politics.
In a polite world, we assume the best about our neighbors and colleagues. We understand implicitly that if someone's so good as to volunteer for public service, disagreeing with what the volunteer is doing is simply rude. "These are good people" is often the defensive rejoinder when local government is questioned. Why would anyone want to hurt their feelings? Power doesn't corrupt, it just adds worry lines to one's complexion.
A polite world does what it can to make everyone happy and to ensure a minimum of feather-ruffling. It's okay to disagree, as long as it's not done disagreeably. A bank fails? Give them more money. Merrill Lynch spends taxpayers' bailout dollars on million-dollar bonuses for 700 of their employees? Whoops—our bad—better attach some more strings to the money next time…
Whereas once America was known as country of second chances for the disenfranchised, it's gotten to be so that the privileged class get as many chances as they like, regardless of how many times they've failed.
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Prior to letting the public address the City Council, Mayor Higgins handed out a spreadsheet indicating how dire Northampton's fiscal future is. Things are very bad, and soon the city will find out how deeply the state will further cut the budget. Perhaps stimulation from Washington will ease the blow, but other ideas for softening the hard landing are few and far between. Her Sustainability Plan didn't come up, as it hasn't got anything in it to sustain Northampton without the steady influx of tax revenue. Instead, there's the BID. Having already negotiated terms with the organizers, she offers up a new way Northampton can get some extra cash. During times like these, who needs a clear vision of who will be in control of the income or what will be done with it?
It's of no concern that the BID can put a lien on properties with owners unable to pay their dues. The lead BID proponents are all people who have worked with the Higgins administration before. If the city treats the BID proponents cordially now, they'll surely return the favor in the future. That's how things work in a polite world.
Unfortunately, the polite world often brushes up against the real one, where taking a stand and believing in something more lasting than an opponent's goodwill are what create a sustainable future.
Politeness has become the most recent refuge of this nation's scoundrels. Before mending fences, we need to let the debate begin. Get polarized. Forget being nice: pick a side and take a stand.
