City Council Vacancy: Selection Criteria
From:
Tom Lageson
Date:
May 16 14:00 UTC
Short link
I find it incredible that people think you can put five people, all with
different life experiences, backgrounds, education, goals, beliefs, morals,
etc. and EXPECT them to always agree on every issue that comes in front of the
city council, or for that matter, any organized group.
In fact, if you do have that, you are not building consensus, you are breeding
resentment. In a political situation, the losers are the taxpayers. In
non-political situations, the losers just leave the organization.
It is healthy to debate and hash out issues. Sometimes you win, sometimes you
lose. But you will always feel better about the debate and the aftermath if
you have the debate. Debate builds respect. Shutting down debate breeds
resentment.
And why is it "bad" for people to see the debate? We should all see the
debate, understand the people's positions and thinking, their rationale, their
trade-offs. That is not an unhealthy thing. If we don't see that debate, we
don't see elected representatives fighting for us, and instead we think they
are mindless party trolls.
If you have a council that is more interested in being/appearing collaborative,
you have a council that is more interested in perpetuating themselves rather
than protecting their citizens.
- Tom
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