In the fall edition of the Chapter Newsletter I wrote an article about where waste in government comes from. I stated that it comes from the pesky citizens who ask us for stuff. That wouldn’t be so bad but we give it to them because they’re our bosses ultimately and that’s where waste in government comes from.
It’s not quite that simple of course but it does cover a lot in explaining why we do things that don’t add that much to our mission. A local citizen reminded me of this a few weeks ago. When I worked for Vancouver he was one of those folks who complained about something at almost every meeting he attended. After I retired I found that he had joined the same athletic club I belonged to. He wasn’t the only one. Several other critics of local government also joined the club at the same time. It was in their economic interest to do so because the club offered bargain rates to senior citizens on the Kaiser health plan.
Now these guys who used to be my adversaries are my buddies. Sort of. I’m glad I never burned any bridges with them because I now see them almost every day and life’s too short to spend that much time with your enemies.
What my old adversary/new friend reminded me of is that not every citizen is always asking for stuff. Some would just like to be left alone. He pointed out what he thought was the biggest waste of money currently being built by the city. It’s a land bridge commemorating the Lewis and Clark expedition. He doesn’t need it and he believes most people don’t need it and the city should be spending its money on things people do need. I chose not to bring up the complexities of funding such a project because I know full well that even if most of the money comes from the federal government they got it from us in the first place.
He also complained about traffic diverters and bike lane striping. I should mention that he’s been retired for many years and used to work for the Department of Transportation. So he knows something about the subject. I told him I didn’t think the stuff he found confusing was all that bad and I tried to explain my theory of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and how it explains City Council expenditures. I really need a chart to do that explanation justice and since we didn’t have a white board or a flip chart in the locker room I just exchanged pleasantries and went on my way.
It later occurred to me, however, that he and I had lived through some pretty big changes in how traffic engineering is done. In his day, and early in mine, traffic engineers fought anything that slowed down traffic or made room for alternative means of transportation. Over time that attitude shifted and today traffic engineers are designing speed humps and diverters and bike lanes all over the place trying to slow down traffic in neighborhoods while trying to speed up traffic on major arterials and freeways.
Like all general statements, the last thing I said isn’t true about all
traffic engineers all the time. One of my first jobs out of college almost 40
years ago involved building a bike path. Even before that I can remember my
father coming home from a neighborhood meeting complaining about the city wanting
to cut off access from one side of the grid we lived on. He thought it was stupid
because he’d have to go all the way around the block to get into the alley
that led to our garage. That was in the early 1960’s in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
and years later I realized that they were trying to slow down traffic on the
next street over to make it safer. That concept wasn’t sold to my father
and it wasn’t an easy sell to the citizen’s I served early in my career.
In those days I could pretty well predict that half the audience would be in favor of traffic diverters and the other half would oppose them. Obviously the people who were happy with their mobility and unaffected by the problem that instigated the meeting didn’t see why they should be inconvenienced. The people who wanted the diverters were tired of speeding traffic and cut through traffic that shouldn’t be in their neighborhood in the first place.
So, the world has changed a lot over the last 50 years and it’s
going to change even more. Technology has changed. Some of our attitudes have
changed. And different generations look at things differently. What hasn’t
changed is human nature. People still have the same needs. They still expect
government to help them and not hinder them. Communications systems are more
extensive today so we have more ways to talk to our citizens but they also have
more ways to talk to each other about us. Fortunately, most of the time they’re
talking about what color to paint the tool shed. At least that’s what we
have to think if we monitor cell phone conversations.
As usual, comments or questions can be fielded at ostrowj@pacifier.com.