Psst: Where’s the Rehab Joint?
Without fear of contradiction, I can report the patient is growing sicker by the meeting. So are those of us whose weekly task is to lend them an ear and far too fat of a chunk of our personal lives. By the time I get home after autumn meetings of the City Council, Monday Night Football has morphed into Thursday Night Football. The Council members must have been trained in this art by somebody I once was married to. When a fly flits (or even crawls) across the ceiling in Chambers, this should not trigger a 9-minute commentary on the wizardry of insects born in Indonesia, closely followed by matching 10-12-minute contributions from the other four copycats. Council members did not need a mirror on Monday night to understand how absurdly they were overplaying both their hand and their tongue. It’s like an alcoholic parked on a bar stool. Can’t help himself. If they were charged by the word instead of being paid by the word, the lights would dim every Monday by 7:30. Unleashed ego. Is there any other reasonable explanation?
Playing by Logic
Three items on the agenda called for discussions rather than precise, binding decisions completed by a vote. Giving these guys a discussion item is like handing a book of matches to an arsonist and telling him to have a nice day. When the Council was debating the renewal of an ad hoc homeless committee, the members created hot air for 50 minutes. They repeated each other more than they disagreed. They don’t show the slightest recognition of boundaries. As is their habit, they did not demonstrate any inclination to obey a sense of proportion. How long can I rhetoricize before a colleague rolls his eyes. It is like being an infant: “Here are matches. I may as well play with them as long as they are lying here.” No one seems capable of prioritizing, exercising discipline or behaving with a sense of modesty. Beyond the most succinct comment (1 minute or less), why is it necessary for four persons to repeat, in their own unique ways, the same 9-minute speech the first person gave? The meeting lasted almost 6 hours, 4 hours longer than the most reasonable maximum. I have sat through the same tired scenarios in Council Chambers in Santa Monica past 1 in the morning. The identical problems plague both Councils. They are like five guys whose wives have left town for a month, and they plan activities they normally never would participate in. When they squabble, each person throws both of his loving arms around himself. Each one is enchanted by the sweetness of his own voice, amplified a few times to the live audience and into living rooms around the community. It’s like watching a 34-inning baseball game between 6-year-olds. Dodgers, yes. Six-year-olds, no. Ain’t no Patrick Henry or Paul Revere in this here room. If there were five statesmen declaiming in such brilliant tones that you involuntarily shivered, maybe we could allow an occasional meeting to go 2 hours, 15 minutes. Until, however, the Council members impose as much discipline on themselves as they love to do to public speakers — “Call the firing squad, she went 2 seconds over her 3-minute time limit” — they should just sit there and suffer, as we do when listening to them.
Postscript
Finally, all five members of the City Council, at separate times, left the dais — for bathroom calls, I presume. Who can sit for six hours? When the Councilmen were not noshing on cookies, they were sucking on water bottles. I, regrettably, did not have that luxury. Had I stepped out of the room, I might have missed something. For the last hour or so, I was the only non-city staffer in Council Chambers. That, lady and gentlemen, is a message for you to seriously embrace.