Frogs for Snakes

Except rarely, the people who habituate website comment sections are the most disaffected and angry in the “community”, taken to mean a loose accumulation of people surrounding an idea, issue, or geographic area. So, normally I wouldn’t spend a second on the handful of comments on a Daily Camera  article pertaining to the Boulder Public Library, an issue I care greatly about, but in the case the comments are revealing in a way their authors surely don’t intend.

The article lists some newyl funded maintenance plans for the main branch, plans that are only news because they have now been funded after waiting in line for several years, but the comments reveal that there is a perception that the library’s main use is as a day shelter for Boulder’s homeless population. The apparently homeless certainly do frequent the library and their presence doubtless keeps others away, but others (homefull? homed?) predominate. But the perception is real (although wrong, at least so far), library support is a political matter, and in politics, perception is everything.

If the conventional thinking ever becomes that libray funding is charity for the poor and indigent rather than an integral part of the social/intellectual/cultural life of the municipality, then it will just be a matter of time, and probably a short time, before we decide to lock the doors and find another use for the land–more million-dollar condos maybe.

An article today on the Boulder Daily Camera website describes a plan by the City of Boulder Parks and Recreation Department to operate more-or-less like a business–recovering fully, that is, all costs incurred in their operations through fees.

On the surface that seems smart: those of us of such “modest means” that the $6.50 entance fee for the rec. center is a budget buster (and there are a lot of us, especially if you include the ones who think it simply prudent to keep that $6.50 in their pocket right now) probably shouldn’t subsidize those who can already spring for the fee for a money-losing class, like drop-in Yoga.

But then, every city recreation facility, with the exception of the rez, competes with commercial recreation facilities, so it’s hard to see why we shouldn’t just privatize them completely if they’re going to be run as businesses anyway.

The idea should be to combine our tax money to provide opportunities that we can not afford individually, which is the way it works with parks and tennis and basketball courts. It is plain wrong to do that, combine our money to provide an otherwise unavailable opportunity, but then deliver that opportunity only to people of means.

According to a post on the tech blog Slashdot:

“Classical music is being used increasingly in Great Britain as a tool for social control and a deterrent to bad behavior. One school district subjects badly behaving children to hours of Mozart in special detention. Unsurprisingly, some of these youth now find classical music unbearable. Recorded classical music is blared through speakers at bus stops, outside stores, train stations and elsewhere to drive away loitering youth. Apparently it works. Detentions are down, graffiti is reduced, and naughty youth flee because they find classical music repugnant.”

I don’t need any convincing– the local Sprouts market has been playing loud ’60s rock and roll to get me to shop at Sunflower since they opened. Face it–Freddy and the Dreamers, bad then (IMO), haven’t aged all that well.

At the Boulder City Council’s recent goal-setting retreat, council member Suzy Ageton, one of the most consistently thoughtful people we have seen on council in recent years, expressed a wish for executive sessions, wherein the whole council could meet for deliberations outside the public view. In a follow-up editorial, the Daily Camera pointed out that the charter change that would be required for executive sessions was rejected by Boulder voters in 2008 — 14 months ago.

Last year, as a study session to consider the role of Boards and Commissions and the way members are selected,  one council member suggested that Boulder again consider allowing non-citizens to serve on boards. When reminded that the voters had rejected that idea, she responded “Yes, but not by much.”

The council member who reminded her that the electorate had decided against the idea made a similar statement, or at least a similar logical jump, a few years ago. After a council pay raise had been rejected by voters in consecutive elections, he was attempting to justify an expenditure for child-care for council members, arguing that even though voters rejected council pay raises, the vote was close and proponents hadn’t even campaigned. The logic of that argument, I thought at the time, went something like this: “The voters expressed a narrow preference for not increasing our pay. But we didn’t campaign, and if we had campaigned they would have expressed a preference in favor of a pay raise, so obviously they would like us to have increased compensation.”

If that reminds you of Vizzini in the Princess Bride saying “So I cannot possibly choose the wine in front of me,” good.

A guy shouldn’t imagine a trend from three data points, especially if you’re relying on memory for two of them, but I’m pretty seriously bothered by this casual observation that elected government officials seem to consider an election not so much a decision-making process, but rather a preference-expression process, like a poll or a focus group, making recommendations rather than decisions, recommendations that would, of course, be trumped by the superior knowledge of the political elite.

This apparent understanding is a mark of what I have come to believe is an increasing disdain of our municipal government for the citizens, which is precisely mirrored in the increasing disdain the citizens have for the government.

According to the Boulder Daily Camera, City Council last night decided to hire a consultant[1] to investigate tacking on a “maintenance fee” to city utility bills in order to fund transportation maintenance. This option seems to be attractive because they can slip it in without voter approval.

Two things about this disappoint me:

• Taxes should generally be paid by people enjoying the benefit and this idea would apparently tax everyone the same, no matter their level of use, while not taxing people from outside Boulder, who we also let drive on our streets.
• The City Manager just went through a thorough, city-wide budget review, and you’d think transportation maintenance costs, which most would agree are a core-value, would have been covered before such things as parks and recreation and libraries.

1. The consultant they have in mind is probably somebody’s brother-in-law so this comment is likely irrelevant or ridiculously obvious, but why are we paying THEM?