Last Thursday’s meeting was a triumph of civility. You never saw such civil sons o’ bitches in all your life. 😀 I was looking for ‘signals’ as to whether this was a surface thing or something deeper and my comments reflect on what cues I got.
- I’ve heard about a dozen times about how the Council has ‘turned a page’. Cool. But one defect in our Council is that the calendar has almost zip at certain points of the year–including the beginning. There just wasn’t much to disagree on. Give it time. 😀
- In his new role as front man for the band Mayor Mahoney was perfectly fine. But if you haven’t done it before, it’s like when yer learning to drive. You’re pre-occupied with operating the controls. Every presiding officer I’ve watched here tries to signal that they are going to be fair-minded people. And then begins the slow descent into hell. 😀 I know how that sounds, but it’s not a dig against anyone as much as a caution: no matter who you think you are, there is something that the job of mayor seems to do to people in Des Moines over time. Self-care is probably a good idea. 🙂
- Several fairly obvious items were raised as new business and we all agreed that they were items to put onto a meeting agenda. It’s fun to agree.
- I proposed to devote a meeting to an update of our Rules Of Procedure. Something we have not done since December 2019. I added a bonus which also got support. And that was, to devote a block of time at a meeting before then to discuss the ground rules. The previous Council had a nasty habit of scheduling important, complex meetings, such as the ARPA Stimulus meeting, where the rules would not be worked out in advance or where the Mayor would simply ‘announce’ how things would go. Having a discussion of the ground rules is, in itself, a major upgrade. But again, at the risk of sounding cranky, I reserve judgment. The ground rules discussion simply follows a normal procedure. I’m not gushing over ‘normal’–and definitely not until I see normal actually happen.
- City Manager Matthias made a point to note that he agreed with me on something. But then followed up by emphasising how rare that is. Alrighty, then. 😀
- Councilmember Nutting and I often get fiddly on parliamentary details. I rarely mentioned them before because, well, I’m trying to be civil for 2022. 🙂 Deputy Mayor Buxton proposed two ideas that I fully support, but both were not fully-worked out in my opinion. And I wanna stop here and say that what I just wrote is one change I want for 2022. They weren’t fully baked. I don’t feel bad about saying that and I ain’t gonna feel bad about it. And neither should she. That’s how I talk. Fix the problem, not the blame. One sign of true ‘civility’ will be how we accept one another and how people take constructive criticism. (The only weird thing is that this sort of thing is very out of character for Deputy Mayor Buxton. Normally, she is meticulous, a quality I highly value.)
- She seemed to be proposing to provide a mechanism by which proclamations which noted significant events or causes would be remembered every year. I knew what she meant, but Councilmember Nutting had a valid point. A proclamation is actually a one-off. When you proclaim “LGBTQ Pride Month” you do it once. We want people to remember it every year, but the actual resolution only happens once. I’m still not exactly clear how that process will be implemented, but since we weren’t talking about, say… demolishing a historic home, for example… I was willing to roll with it. But as I said in my comments, I fully support the idea. If we proclaim June as LGBTQ Pride Month, then we should find a way to mention that we do every year from now on. We have that obligation to the issue and to the community.
- She also wanted to add language from a State House bill still being negotiated to a current proclamation, but only if the bill passes. The sounded fine, but she didn’t bring a copy of the draft bill. I’m sure it’s fine, but that’s not the point. This is a matter of ‘good hygiene’. When you propose something, please provide the document. (And in fact, a rule change I will propose will allow councilmembers to have documents like that added into the packet ahead of time to insure that we (and the public!) can see what is being proposed.)
- Councilmember Steinmetz proposed having a meeting discussion about the web site. Which is great. He credited Councilmember Achziger for help with the idea but not me was a little weird. Not mentioning the one person on the Council who actually nagged about it for over a year? Who, you know, built commercial web sites? Who proposed a budget amendment to fix the thing? OK. 😀 I honestly don’t care about credit. As long as I get what I want. 🙂
- And I’m saying it just like that because I am a subject matter expert on this sort of thing. For all their great qualities, none of my colleagues besides CM Martinelli are particularly literate with digital media. It would be foolhardy for my colleagues to marginalise my input on this sort of issue. And frankly that is exactly what happened during the past two years. We’d have situations where CMs acted based on personal animus. I mean that literally: I agree with you on the issue, but because I cannot stand you, I’m not doing it. The web site was just such an example. Until now I had never experienced that kind of professional pettiness. Seriously. I had never had a case where my colleagues did not behave ethically based on how they felt about one another. You’ll know that the Council has turned a page towards civility if the web site turns out to be something special. If not? Dad-Mobile. 😀
- And by special, here’s one example. In my comments, I mentioned ‘phones’ and it’s been my mantra. Every resident of Des Moines now has a cell phone, not a computer. It’s the one universal that crosses all boundaries. We can educate, alert, market, improve public safety, provide better customer service. Â We improve our digital presence on phones and we instantly move the needle on equity, outreach and public engagement.