And you might imagine that the most local politics, the most personal politics, the most personal and primitive politics, are based in selfishness. You might expect that at the core, each person is a Libertarian, who wants only to be left alone, to do whatever he or she wants, and has nothing for anyone else. Not necessarily so. A door between the individual and the outside world remains open.
We had the workshop to review new proposed codes in three areas of property maintenance. The areas were centered around management of one's personal property: the condition of one's house and grounds, and one's possessions, mainly boats and RVs.
Up to a point, O'Neill accurately predicted the feedback of workshop attendees. Many of them were boat and RV people, and they didn't want anyone limiting their ownership of what Steve Bernard called these "toys." Basically, these homeowners didn't want anyone limiting, controlling, or regulating them at all. The entire set of code proposals, and the act of proposing them, were "stupid," declared one attendee. He said he hadn't looked at the codes yet, but he was sure he would be able to declare them "stupid." Let people do whatever they want, he ordered. They behaved like Libertarians: they mind their business, and the rest of us should mind our own.
But here's where we saw a tangent. The now iconic matter of maintenance of trees, dead trees, in one's swale was taken up. It's what Steve Bernard referred to several times as the "Bergeron Ordinance," so named by Steve for one of the homeowners in whose swale the problem tree lived. And died. Steve says he passed that Ordinance. It must be his memory that he gave the rest of the then Commission the night off, and passed it himself. The Bergeron matter was about removing a large tree, in an unusually large swale, outside the home Dr Bergeron shares with her husband. Although the Bergerons (not his name) cared for the tree, and paid for maintenance of it, while it was alive, they did not want to pay for its removal when it died. They wanted the Village to pay. Which it ultimately did. Bergeron's language was telling here. She pointed to the Commission, and said "you" should pay for removal of the tree. Bryan Cooper took a similar tack, when he suggested "government," not individual homeowners, should pay for things like removal of the Bergeron tree. And whenever the matter came up, Dr Bergeron nodded her head vigorously, that yes, "you," the Village, the government, should pay for these things. The guy sitting next to her got on a similar roll, talking about the problematic tree in his swale, and how the Village should pay for removal of it, too. But Dr Bergeron's head was no longer nodding. It seemed to have dawned on her what she was saying. "You," the Village, the government, is all of us. The money for the Village to remove her tree came from the taxes we all pay. She had no problem at all allowing us all to "share" (her word) in the expense of removing a dead tree from her swale, but it was less clear to her that she wanted to contribute to paying for the removal of a tree in someone else's swale. She was completely still when the Andersons, and Chuck Ross, talked about dead trees in their swales, and how they simply paid for removal of those trees themselves. It never occurred to them, they said, to ask the Village or anyone else to come solve their problem. They saw the trees in their swales as theirs, enhancing their properties, and their responsibility when there was a problem.
So this is where Tip O'Neill's theory diverges from the Libertarian posture. As Steve Bernard put it, when he was trying to clean up the mess Jeanne Bergeron made for herself: the cost of removing a large tree is a smaller proportion of the Village's budget than it is of the budget of a private homeowner.
Those who took the narrowest, most personal, most "local," view of Village politics wanted what they wanted, with no interference from the Village. But when there was an expense, they wanted the Village to take it over. One man even said that if those on the Code Review Committee thought boats should be concealed behind fences, to which he apparently did not fully object, the Village was welcome to remove part of his fence, create a place for his boat, and build him a gate. If "the Village" is willing to pay, it's OK with him. He allowed himself to overlook where the Village gets the money he is happy to have it spend. Things got really quiet at the end of the session, when Bob Anderson started talking about the possibility of the Village caring for the trees in everyone's swales, and what kind of tax rate we should think about imposing to pay for that. But that's the issue, isn't it.
When politics get as local as they can, you want what you want, and you want someone else to pay for it. That's O'Neill gone infantile.
The meeting wasn't fully interactive, but I would have wanted to ask Jeanne Bergeron whether she and what's-his-name would have bought that house, and whether they would have paid the same price for it, if that ample, beautiful, and abundantly shade-producing tree had not been there in that swale. That tree that was someone else's problem.
There was another dynamic considerably at play during the workshop today. It was exemplified by a few people, most notably Bryan Cooper and Steve Bernard. It was also representative of the Libertarian agenda. This theme was the "government is evil," "government is an intrusion and an offense," "government is not to be trusted," and "government is 'them,' and 'them versus us'" theme. It was as far to the right as there is to go. And it was discouraging to hear it coming from people who allege even the slightest commitment to the Village, and its residents, and its government. It was frankly disgusting to hear it coming from people who are or were part of that government. And to make matters worse, it was supported by pedagogy and a sabotaging approach.
Bryan Cooper gave us a good example of this dynamic. The matter was "holiday" decorations, and the newly proposed code was to limit how long before and after a "holiday" they could be displayed, because many people do not want to look at them for months, or indefinitely. Bryan tried to reframe this limitation as a violation of the separation of church and state, an intrusion of the "state," in this case the Village, into one's "religious" practices. It was a non-starter, with no identifiable heads bobbling, but he did try. More than once.
This kind of attempt to inflame and discomfit is not what we need around here. It's not what anyone needs anywhere.
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