Whew! Now that this election business is finally behind us, it’s on to the business of governing. How timely because I’m retiring as a lawyer on December 31, 2008, so I’ve begun to think about my next act–government consultant. My credentials are strong. I read this paper almost every week, and from 1987 to 1991, I was an elected official in Oak Park.
Right now, I don’t have any clients, but after this column appears, I’m sure I will have plenty. The following is free advice to all the various elected bodies. It is pretty much guaranteed to make your lives easier in the coming years. However, hereafter my advice is going to cost you. Fees are negotiable.
Length of meetings
Never, ever start a meeting until you know when it is going to be over. Most meetings should be over by 10 p.m., so if you start at 7 p.m., you’ve got three hours to finish. So if you’re only halfway through the agenda at 9 p.m., your leader says: “We need to speed up, so let’s skip some of these agenda items until next time,” or “Everybody shut up so we can get done.” Or something like that.
Paper
The staff sends you reams of paper. Read it if you have time. Don’t bother with the pages that have lots of numbers on them. Just call your finance guy and ask him or her: “How are we doing financially?” If he can’t explain it to you in 15 minutes, get a new financial guy. Also, at the end of the meeting, throw all the papers away. Trust me, more papers are coming your way, and you’ll never have time to read them. Clinton gets a library for his papers. You don’t.
Relation with the staff
There will be a tendency to become best friends with the staff. Don’t do it. You review their performance and give them raises, so of course they will be nice to you. Remember you may have to fire them, and nobody fires their best friend.
Community participation
Oak Park is famous for its citizen participation. We’re big on “process,” whatever that means. Please keep the following in mind:
You don’t have to listen to everyone. Many people carry on at public meetings as therapy so they don’t have to pay a shrink.
You don’t have to listen to five people make the same point–or the same person make the same point five different times. Invest in a really loud air horn.
Never listen to citizens who cry at a public meeting.
You can ask citizens to put their comments in writing rather than in person. That’s one of the reasons civilization advanced–reading and writing beat out the oral tradition. That’s why we don’t know much about the Druids.
If someone comes before you purporting to speak for anyone other than himself (e.g. The Dope Smokers of Scoville Park) ask them: how many members they have, how many attended their last meeting, the size of their budget, and how many voted in their last officer election. Lots of these groups are shady and overstate their importance.
Super-secret stuff
You can’t be impeached. If you decide you aren’t running for re-election, you can do most anything you want. Nobody made you do this. Don’t feel sorry for yourself.
