With A Little Help From Friends

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "SO, You Disagree":
Dear Evelyn:
In a couple of weeks your blog will be five years old.
Congratulations are in order.
Despite the pummeling you take regularly, both here and at council meetings, you have continued to be true to your convictions, on rare occasion having to admit making a mistake.
It's disappointing that our local government representatives don't seem capable of growing into their responsibilities. Likewise many of senior staff.
This is probably just as true today as it was 25 years ago.
But your sun will continue to shine through it all. 
Keep it up !
*********
I first ran for office in 1963,three years after coming to Aurora. Last year's term was an aberration from all the others. 
Common among all other terms is that politicians do their best to please. Making people hostile is not de rigeur. .
It means Councils  do not govern  in a vacuum.  
People who make the most noise generally get what they want. 
The rest tend to silently deplore the weakness of politicians. 
Until  the advent of social media, the conversation has  been lop-sided. 
On the whole,traditional media have contributed.They need  heroes and villains. They create them.
Now we have social media and the ship is beginning to right itself.
If politicians don't hear from  another side, they  think there isn't one. Or they are not willing to take the risk. 
Councillor Gaertner  publicly expressed the mind set best during the debate on traffic calming in the north-east quarant. 
The Councillor said;"We must do what the people want" 
It's  how things were rigged to look. 
The campaign to  encourage  Council to  continue  the insane set-up
at the Culture Centre is an example of how it works. . 
Council was deluged for days with e-mails from people from miles around who wanted the give-away to continue. Why not ? No other town was doing it. Only in Aurora ,by golly.
Several campaigns have followed the same pattern. .
The latest is to continue exploitation of  public facilities by a monopoly for a musical  promotion. 
Despite a definitive decision made by Council more than a month ago to open the opportunity to competition, the beat goes on.
Unless or until a Council collectively acquires confidence in their own judgement, decisions are almost always made on a tug-of-war basis.Now it seems staff are also happy to mix  in. 
Councillors  need to hear from  all sides and be encouraged to follow their own best judgement.
 Most politicians, having stuck their head up above the crowd, want to be seen to be doing the best job possible.
They just need a little help from their friends. 
Not the ones intent on  persuading Council to give the store away..  To them.