I once read that one should offer solutions, not problems. Funny, something like this passes as …. insight.
(I’m not sure where I read it. It might have been on a motivational poster, in a fortune cookie, or perhaps from an email I saw from a former city employee, writing to Chief Coan, discovered during an open records request. Somewhere…)
In any event, I’m here to offer a quick solution for municipal meetings where career bureaucrats, city employees, and consultants talk and talk with abandon.
One would think they’re paid by the word, or even more likely, by how long they can stretch every word.
How about a fee for every word uttered after the first 100? There could be an extra charge for long pauses, stuttering, or repetition.
Career bureaucrats would do better to say less in any event. Consultants already cost this city too much; here’s a chance to recoup some of Whitewater’s costs.
When city bureaucrats wonder, by the way, why attendance at an event might be low, they might also consider what happens when someone tries to speak during public comments at a meeting.
Far too often – and that would be more than one occurrence – a citizen will be interrupted as a jumpy politician tries to refute something being said.
It’s a sign of a politician’s weakness – not strength – to interrupt this way. If there should be a time limit on citizen comments, then the least a politician could do would be to let the citizen conclude his or her remarks, and respond later.
If interruptions to citizen comments were based on skill and insight of those interrupting, then no politicians in all America could be more unjustified than those who interrupt citizens in Whitewater.