by Travis Mateer
I book-ended last week by attending two public meetings, Missoula’s City Council marathon meeting on Monday, then Mineral County’s Commissioner meeting on Friday. Some of the highlights? Gwen Jones defines clapping as an “outburst“, and Debra Jackson can’t approach a table to answer questions without shoes on.
In Missoula, the process to select our place-holder Mayor moved forward with 19 potential candidates filling out their applications. A little controversy emerged during the selection of the questions that will be asked of these candidates because two questions were allegedly problematic. From the link:
While council members supported the questions for their range of issues, at least two of the nine proposed questions were called out for being potentially biased or loaded.
One asked if a candidate would “replace Rogers International with another private security force” or create a “public, non-militarized” replacement.
…
Another question on the Missoula Redevelopment Agency was also set aside for needed revisions. It asks a candidate if they’d be “willing to change the governance of the MRA, specifically how they identify and distribute funds, to a model where they must seek council approval.”
Several council members suggested the question was loaded and narrowly focused and failed to reflect the majority view of the City Council. Rather, it suggested that change was necessary and imminent, when that’s not the case.
While Missoula’s elected leaders can’t agree on questions to ask our Mayoral candidates, the local government in Mineral County struggled just to hold a meeting, since part of it was scheduled to be a closed session. Some local citizens were a little miffed at how this was being handled, so they showed up to ask what the hell is going on.
Here’s how Mineral County Attorney, Debra Jackson and Deputy County Attorney, Wally Congdon, decided to conduct themselves on Friday:
After the excitement of that odd showdown ended, most of the crowd left, so I didn’t have much of an audience when I made my one and only public comment (during Missoula’s Council meeting I made 3).
Thanks to modern technology, I have an audio file of my comment, so you can listen to it below.
After the excitement of watching local governments struggle to accomplish basic things, I returned to Zoom Town where live music played all weekend long, for free, thanks to the River City Roots Fest.
This event has been happening for 16 years, just one year short of our deceased Mayor’s reign. It’s also one of Ellen Buchanan’s favorite events, so I’ll conclude today’s post with a song I recorded for Ellen, the director of Missoula’s shadow government known as the Missoula Redevelopment Agency.
Enjoy!
JC
So, the numer 1 thing on the peoples’ mind last Monday was the outrageous attack on the digmity of persons in distress at one of our concentration camps, by Rogers International, and Councilman Carlino even made a Quixotic motion to defund R.I. without identfying the alternative to replace it, saying we couod come up with a more humane and effective approach. He’s right, and 10 Councilpersons who voted No were right in saying that the alternative wouldn’t be figured out by October when R.I.’s contract expires. That, of course, missed the point of Carlino’s motion and of the many people demanding immediate termination of the contract: a response appropriate to the outrage was needed. If it meant temporarily closing the authorized camping space, the city should have iasued motel vouchers to campers. But what I’m getting to here, is something you’ve likewise touched on before: in the theatre of the absurd (politics), sometimes guerilla theater has to be practiced in order to get action on serious problems chronically ignored by the elites. Carlino & Jordan certainly knew that the Council majority wouldn’t vote to defund R.I. I mean, you saw Acting Mayor Jones’ response to my imploring of her to make a firm, unequivocal public statememt denouncing R.I.’s paramilitary-like terrorization of campers apparently done just for fun at the expense of human beings they deem ripe for such cruel exploitation: her commments a few minutes later were an improvement over her original milquetoast nothings, but not by much — not even meriting a mention in any of the local corporate news media.
So now, we have a proposed question for the 19 prospective Interim Mayors on that very issue, being censored from the applicant interviews, by the neolib Council Majority that instead of permitting each Councilor to ask any question as long as it’s asked of all applicants, imposes a dictatorship of the majority and bans the question whether Mike Nugent or Jordan Hess — er, I mean the applicants — if selected, would continue R.I.’s contract or instead pursue a non-militarized approach to camp security.
Each Councilor was elected and each ought to be permitted to ask any damn auestion they want to ask, regardless of the reason for asking it, as long as it’s put to each applicant.
But the theater becomes truly absurd with the “return for revision” council majority dictate re the question about reforming MRA, in particular by making the mayorally appointive position of its director subject to Council confirmation.
MRA, urban renewal, TIF, housing demolition, gentrification, etc. have comprised the #1 topic of comments by what have many times been SRO throngs attending Council meetings. To reject that question of applicants unless made warm, fuzzy and meaninglessless, is to betray one’s self to the world as terminally myopic.
Can’t wait for Act II, scene !!!
Fat thumbs + smartphone = several typos. Apologies!
So, the numer 1 thing on the peoples’ mind last Monday was the outrageous attack on the digmity of persons in distress at one of our conventration camps, by Rogers International, and Councilman Carlino even made a Quixotic motion to defund R.I. without identfying the alternative to replace it, saying we couod come up with a more humane and effective appriach. He’s right, and 10 Councilpersons who voted No weee right in saying that the alternative wouldn’t be figured out by October when R.I.’s contract expires. That, of course, missed the point of Carlino’s motion and of the many people demanding immediate termination of the contract: a response appropriate to the outrage was needed. If it meant temporarily closing the authorized camping space, the city should have iasued motel vouchers to campers. But what I’m getting to here, is somrthing you’ve likewise touched on before: in the theatre of the absurd (politics), sometimes guerilla theater has to be practiced in order to get action on serious problems chronically ignored by the elites. Carlino & Jordan certainly knew that the Council majority wouldn’t vote to defund R.I. I mean, you saw Acting Mayor Jones’ response to my imploring of her to make a firm, unequivocal public statememt denouncing R.I.’s paramilitary-like terrorization of campers apparently done just for fun at the expense of human beings they deem ripe for such cruel exploitation: her commments a few mimutes later were an improvement over her original milquetoast nothings, but not by much — not even meriting a mention in any of the lical.corprate news media.
So now, we have a proposed question for the 19 prospective Interim Mayors on that very issue, being censored from the applicant interviews, by the neolib Council Majority that instead of permitting each Councilor to ask any question as long as it’s asked of all applicants, imposes a dictatorship of the majority and bans the question whether Mike Nugent or Jordan Hess — er, I mean the applicants — if selected, would continue R.I.’s contract or instead pursue a non-militarized approach to camp security.
Each Councilor was elected and each ought to be permitted to ask any damn auestion they want to ask, regardless of the reason for asking it, as long as it’s put to each applicant.
But the theater becomes truly absurd with the “return for revision” council majority dictate re the question about reforming MRA, in particular by making the mayorally appointive position of its director subject to Council confirmation.
MRA, urban renewal, TIF, housing demolition, gentrification, etc. have comprised the #1 topic of comments by what have many times been SRO throngs attending Council meetings. To reject that question of applicants unless made warm, fuzzy and meaninglessless, is to betray one’s self to the world as terminally myopic.
Can’t wait for Act II, scene !!!