One of the things that people like to see in their government employees is common sense. Most of us don’t see common sense used that often so it must not be very common. I guess technically, common sense means some sort of sensible approach that we all hold in common. Or that we all think we hold in common. Or we wish we held in common.
Why do I bring this up now? The immediate answer is that I have
an article deadline and I have to come up with something so why not common sense.
The other reason is that I read something recently that made me wonder about
common sense in government.
What I read was a question in an infoNOW email. If you don’t know what
an infoNOW community is, you’re not alone. What infoNOW is all about is
electronic networking. If you’re an APWA member you can go to the members
only portion of the web site and sign up for one or more subject areas. What
that allows you to do is to send a question to everyone who has signed up for
the infoNOW community covering that subject area. If you get one of those emails
(and you will), your response will go to everyone in the community. If you’re
out of town and set your email for auto reply, we’ll all get the news about
your whereabouts. Some people find this a nuisance and take their name off the
list. I’d like to see more people use it, however, because I see a lot
of questions from people about problems I (and others) solved 10-20 years ago.
InfoNOW is a quick way to tap into that kind of history and get advice on new
problems.
The email that made me think about common sense came through the Government Affairs infoNOW community. The question was simple but pregnant with possibilities. Here’s the question:
“Our City passed an Ordinance prohibiting brick mailboxes on right-of-way as being an obstruction and thus a liability, recalling a circumstance I read where a motorist hit such a structure and sued. Recently, City Council received a request to allow, perhaps in certain circumstances, this type mailbox with limitations on its size. Do your communities allow brick mailboxes and if so, are there any restrictions on them?
One additional comment, we had a resident construct a brick mailbox more the size of a monument, requiring a tow truck to move rather than break apart.
Thanks for your responses.”
I was pleased to see a quick response from someone who had what
I thought was a common sense solution to the problem. They allowed brick mailboxes
under a special permit that required a liability waiver and some other things.
But then I received an answer from someone else warning about the liability
that goes with allowing brick mailboxes under any circumstances.
Then I read the original email again and realized that what got
this started was one instance in which someone read about a motorist hitting
something like this and suing.
In my 40 or so years in the business I’ve seen way to many instances like
this when someone passed a new law because of something that happened once and
nobody questioned that statistic.
Then I read more of the original email and realized that they went as far as towing away a mailbox the size of a monument. Common sense is a two edged sword. I’m hoping someone at that city felt silly towing away a mailbox. I’m also hoping that the owner felt silly for having a monument to postal delivery.
I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Mail delivery occurred at our front door. If we wanted to put a mailbox at the curb made of brick or made of marshmallows we’d have to be crazy since that wasn’t where our mail was going to be delivered. It was only after we started designing our cities and city-like areas around automobiles that we started having mailboxes at the curb in urban areas. Before that, I’m sure that the very wealthy people on rural estates had fancier mailboxes than the farmers down the road but I doubt if it was a very big deal.
But mailboxes are only the tip of the iceberg. Picture an iceberg
with a mailbox sticking out of its side and you’ll probably see a government
official in a boat writing a new regulation. But I digress… After thinking
about this issue I realized that there are all sorts of things erected in the
public right-of-way. Some of them are substantial enough to stop a truck. Some
of them aren’t. Some of them are pretty. Some aren’t.
Some rights-of-way are much wider than they need to be. Some are much narrower
than they need to be.
Some people actually know where the right of way is. Most don’t. Even I tend to forget how much of “my” land is public right-of-way. We recently had some stumps removed and they called before they dug. Imagine my surprise to see the buried power cable twelve feet in from the face of the curb. I’ve been mowing that area for almost 30 years. I was thinking of planting a hedge there and maybe moving my perfectly legal mailbox from its present location to a more convenient location in front of the house. I thought it would be nice to put up one of those brick mailboxes I’d been seeing in so many places. You can bet I’ll think about that a little more now.
I’m not prepared to tell you if I think mailboxes should be made out of brick or even if special permits should be required. I am prepared to suggest that the common sense solution will be different in different jurisdictions. It’s only slightly ironic that the common sense solution will not be held in common by communities across the country.
While we’re at it, let’s talk about other countries. Liability laws are different in other counties and so the solutions to these right-of-way problems will be different under different legal systems. This also applies to different states in this country. You may have noticed that we are now talking about the law and we can’t do that without talking about lawyers. Attorneys block most of the common sense solutions we’d like to implement. Most of the praise we get as public officials comes from ignoring legal advice when it doesn’t make any sense. This is a tricky area because you’d think that the attorneys would be the ones who would know when their opinions don’t make sense, what with having been trained in the law and all. But no, it’s left to the poor public works official to figure out when to take a chance and when to play it safe. That means that we have to have good judgement and experience and a good understanding of the law and we have to have this when we’re too young to have enough time to acquire all of this.
So, what does this tell us about a definition of common sense. For one thing, it’s like obscenity… we know it when we see it. There are some behaviors that might be useful, however.
If we are able to see the other person’s side of an issue we get a more complete picture of what’s going on and we might be able to avoid something stupid if we can see the rules we’re writing from the standpoint of the person living under those rules.
The next level up from empathy is perspective. If we can take a step back and look at what we’ve gotten ourselves into, we might be able to think more clearly. This “big picture” look at things could prod us into asking the key question about brick mailboxes. That key question is, “How often does someone actually hit a brick mailbox and get seriously injured?”
We often write rules for the evil people in the world and make the nice folks live with those rules. The evil people probably aren’t going to comply with the rules anyway so why did we think writing rules would solve the problem. The nice people might even be insulted by rules that are written for criminals.
This last one is the hardest for young people to acquire. That’s
why being wise beyond your years is such a high compliment. But just being old
isn’t enough. It’s not enough to have experiences, we also need to
learn from them.
There are probably other thing we need to do in order to exhibit common sense
but these are a start. Fortunately, they’re things we all should be doing
anyway. But then that’ kind of a common sense statement.
As usual, comments or questions can be fielded at ostrowj@pacifier.com.