Editorial

Workshop Wrangle

Monday night at Stimson Hall in Gray was horrible. By any stretch of the imagination, it was extraordinary and embarrassing. A Councilor had a public meltdown and told off a citizen in harsh language. The citizen gave back and a clash of unprecedented proportions exploded into public view.

What does it mean?

Proper Councilor behavior means that there is never any excuse for public officials to point, shout, name-call, and behave aggressively toward anyone. Elected officials must adhere to a higher standard of behavior and accept that with the job comes a certain amount of exploitation, manipulation, and insult along with the credits for work well done.

What does it mean?

Proper Citizen behavior means that there is no excuse for a person to spend hours heckling, insulting, and deriding Councilors during their work session. By any standard, the behavior by the citizen Monday night was not any manners that a five year old would be allowed to continue in public for two seconds. The responsibility of civic behavior includes an expectation that citizens do their homework, speak respectfully, listen to differing points of view, and leave something positive in their wake.

What does it mean?

Leadership means that the Council Chair is expected to lay down the rules and stick to them. Workshop process has been inconsistent. Workshops as a procedural activity have vacillated between no public input to all public input, sometimes within the same meeting. Citizens do not know what to expect, and Councilors who try to speak are often interrupted by citizens wanting to share points of view. Accommodation only goes so far. As any substitute teacher knows, you go into class, lay down the rules, and implement them consistently and fairly. If you don't, you're dead meat by recess.

What does it mean?

Workshops as an activity mean that the governing body and the public have gathered to do work. Everybody's time is valuable. Yet everybody wants to ensure that their position is explored. Without proper time management, too much time passes, frustrations increase, tensions rise, and at the exact point at which caution and restraint are called for, people are too tired to allow the criticism to pass unignited. The situation is a ripe petrie dish of fermenting emotions untempered by the reality of television cameras.

What does it mean?

It means that a confluence of rising tensions surrounding quality of life issues, procedural inconsistencies, unanswered questions, time management, and inconsistent leadership came together in an unfortunate exhibit which Gray will remember many decades. It means…life happened.