We saw it yesterday at City Council.
City Council holds discussions behind closed doors, and then presents their decision to the public as a done deal.
City Council had already made their decision to merge the downtown library with the new Mexican American Cultural Center (more on that later). The public vote was just a formality.
The process was more than a little reminiscent of the ballpark decision. Announce it on a Thursday, and vote on it on a Tuesday. Except for the public vote, the process is not that much different than if we lived in a dictatorship.
The results are the same.
The takeaway is that your opinion doesn’t matter. The decision was made before you had a chance to voice your opinion.
City Government is a closed system and you’re out of the loop.
City Government is a private party and you’re not invited, except when the waiter arrives with the tab.
Our representatives expect you to trust them. They think they don’t need to explain their decision-making process to you. So, it they make a perfectly reasonable conclusion based on bad assumptions, you don’t get to challenge their misconceptions.
If you control the assumptions, you determine the conclusion.
Do you trust our City Representatives? Do you trust their judgment, or their reasoning?
Do you trust their reliance on Operational Security, some secret, arcane, knowledge they possess, to which we are not allowed access?
Yesterday District 2 Representative Alexsandra Anello asked City Engineer Sam Rodriguez for some project budget numbers to share with the public, and City Manager Tommy Rodriguez got in a huff. “You’ve had those numbers,” he told council.
Maybe the Council had that information, but the numbers weren’t available to the citizens.
See, City Government is City Management and City Council. There’s no room for voters, taxpayers, or citizens in the process. Voters, taxpayers, and citizens, only gum up the works.
Processes? We don’t need no stinking processes?
EVen more extraordinary, four of the folks in the Clown Car actually stated in public BEFORE the discussion with public comment that they had already decided to vote for the plan. And the Mayor would of course have broken a tie to support that if, stretching the realm of probability, the other four had voted against. So they might have well just stood up and said all you folks out there, just go home and relax, no point in wasting your time here.