Tuesday’s Common Council meeting was a good representation of a typical city meeting, with several matters before the Council, but nothing out of the ordinary. Here’s the first part of a recap, with (of course) commentary.
From the City Manager’s report. The most important part of the report, and maybe the most important part of the meeting, came early in the evening, in a reference to a university and city liaison committee. City Manager Brunner announced the names of several people to the committee, and the university will select its own representatives.
If any town has ever needed a better relationship with its university, it’s our town. I often write that we’re a town of fourteen thousand, and a part of that number includes students in town. Take that number away, and we’d be noticeably smaller, and in economic distress. The university may be our most distinguishing characteristic as a town. Still, as I’ll highlight later, in a subsequent post on the August 21st meeting, our town has a love-hate relationship with its university, and it’s a shame.
Quickly, there are two ways to approach a better relationship: (1) with small, concrete, structural actions to change community attitudes, or (2) with a preliminary change in community attitudes to produce small, concrete, structural actions. (This choice is present in many efforts to produce a better relationship, of whatever kind.) The best effort here probably involves small, concrete actions, as the other approach is just too challenging as a place to begin. If our town makes progress here — and we need progress here — we will have made good use of the opportunity of hosting a college campus. It’s distinctive to us, and only several other towns of our size, and we should seize the possibilities our campus offers.
Recreational Burning. The council considered those times of day when recreational fires may be allowed within the city. Small outdoor fire places, more than bonfires, are common to many homeowners. I don’t have one, but I am not opposed to them, and it’s enjoyable to many people to have a small fire in the evening, several times a season. I would favor fewer restrictions on a homeowner’s use of his or her property, and so this would be a sensible idea in my eyes. It was clear from the discussion that neither the police nor most council members wanted the police involved in prior approval of this recreational burning.
For the most part, that’s just a waste of police time and effort, so the idea of only limited police involvement, in response to direct complaints, is a good idea. It’s really a good idea, though, for reasons other than use of police time: use of complaints to the police about small matters (rather than true dangers or emergencies) causes more animosity between neighbors than it resolves. I’ll write more about this in a bit. For now, it’s enough that the inclination to police action is not present. (The only remaining question is whether police action in response to complaints might prove selective.)
Liquor Store at the Westsider. It’s an empty space now, but the area of the Westsider now vacant could become a liquor store. Council approved the surrender (from a current holder) and re-issuance of a liquor license to Frawley Oil for sale of liquor at the area formerly occupied by a Wendy’s restaurant. A drive-though window for liquor met with some skepticism, however. I think part of the reason is that it seems a new idea, and almost unexpected, somehow. I see no harm that would come to it, though, any more than someone who drives to a liquor store, and makes a purchase that way. I would support the idea, in full, as a good business strategy that will produce no measurable, incremental risk over current methods of alcohol purchase.