The Supremacy Of Ideas

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "A Budget Rant":

"It would be refreshing if the next budget represented items that Council was really anxious and enthusiastic about - their ideas. The last one struck me as a wish-list for staff & trying to clean up past errors. A positive spin would be welcome."

And this would be the only time that this Town's or any town's council did that. Municipal politics breeds the local lobbying that we see. It should not be a surprise.

While this councillor contends she represents the views of those that elected her, there is an equal representation by the others around the table. Why should one councillor's opinions have more validity than another?
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This Councillor  does not contend, for the purpose of this discussion that  one Councillors opinions have more validity than others.
I do contend that any and all Councillors opinions are more relevant that any individual who may attend a budget meeting and seek to have input. 
Councillors represent the public. An election was held to establish that principle. Nine people sit around the table. Some argue that's too many. It should certainly be enough to hear whatever opinions might be expressed in the community, if everyone is doing what they have been chosen to do.
Having private meetings with Directors  for questions to be answered and  willfully allowing themselves to be overwhelmed by professional expertise is not what they were elected to do.
We are not administrators. We are not part of their team.
We are there to maintain authority in the hands of the people who pay the bills.
Questions need to be asked and answered in public and therefore shared with each other and the public.
We need to ask the questions they would ask,were they in our place. We need to take the positions they might take in the circumstance, without fear or favour.
We need to maintain separation between ourselves and the administration for the purpose of decision-making. 
We are not required  to take the same position as any other. There may be safety but there is no virtue in that. 
In a town of  twenty-four thousand voting adults, it is entirely possible there could  be at least nine different positions on any given issue.That would be a democratically robust  and vigorous Council of strong-minded individuals prepared to duke it out for the supremacy of ideas. 
We don't have that.
But I  keep trying.
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