When City Council members talk about “the Six Million,” they are referring to the number of words they need to say good evening to the cable television audience.
City Councilman Steve Rose was smiling — but I was not — when he suggested last night that it would be a proper penalty for violators at the Skateboard Park to force them to sit through one of those long-winded Council meetings.
Hot air balloons were named in honor of Council meetings at City Hall, you know.
Golden oratory, it isn’t.
With a single exception, all violate the commandment Thou Shalt Not Spew Too Much Hot Air.
A Love Affair
Most of the Council members are in rapturous love with their voices, I mean really in socko love. Since they assume you are an intelligent person, they are convinced you are just as madly in love with their pipes.
Some of them frequently appear disorganized or undisciplined.
They do not simply put forth one viewpoint. They demand to describe in grandiose, overheated detail a broad scenario surrounded by miles of rhetorical shrubbery.
Passionate as they are about their pipes, they are even more enchantingly mesmerized by their uniquely structured minds. Of what benefit, praytell, is wisdom, they ask, if it isn’t enthusiastically, aggressively shared with panting constituents?
Doesn’t Have to be Important
If you doubt me, walk into Council Chambers any Monday evening. Before you can cough for the first time, you will become convinced they are being paid by the word. They can declaim terminally about a speck of silver-colored dust they encountered 21 years ago in their mother’s pantry.
For five or six years, Vice Mayor Carol Gross, a charming, detail-oriented lady, was the undisputed champion of the Monday night talk show.
She not only has been dethroned by second-year Councilman Scott Malsin, she is not even close to striking distance.
A Few Million Words
Let me take you back to last night and one of the premium reasons the community does not turn out to watch City Council meetings. They do not want to be bored.
At issue was how the Council should respond to youthful skaters at the new Skateboard Park who refuse to wear the safety equipment.
Council members did not have to invest in hours and days of research in a cluttered laboratory to discern an answer.
The Work Was Done
A subcommittee had helped formulate a coverall answer that aligned exactly with the tone of response favored by four of five members. It was more comprehensive than an octogenarian’s resume, spread across every conceivable possibility.
The five undisciplined Golden Throats of the City Council spun this into an hour and a half tableau.
Reasonably speaking, it would seem you only could make it last that long if you had not given the item any pre-meeting reflection. It was not that complicated. Going in, at least four of them knew how they were going to vote. Still. It was difficult to convince some they were not in an oratorical test.
How Many Questions?
To open the Council discussion, member Gary Silbiger posed more questions than I could think up when I met Diane for the first time. At odds with his colleagues again, he worried about the safety of skaters, and he wanted serious police supervision. You can say that in less time than it takes to duck bullets from a circular firing squad.
Yesterday was the 144th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the most eloquent and most succinct political speech in American history.
Council members are Lincolnian in their own unique ways. When they get the floor, they threaten to speak longer than it took to find Lincoln’s killer.
And Now a Few Words…
When Mr. Malsin spoke for the fifth time last night, he finally said, with impressive clarity, “I want to support the recommendation of the subcommittee.”
Hallelujah.
The unmysterious mystery was over.
But why string it out until the audience is screaming for relief?
Everybody in the building, including high school students, knew which way this was going. This Council meeting was not an audition for Broadway. It was not a final exam for Ding Dong University, where every position and potential position had to be explained and defended.
Try to convince the Council.
Artificial Drama
Ms. Gross and Steve Rose, who confined their pithy remarks to brief statements, said so earlier. The fourth member, Mayor Alan Corlin had made it clear weeks earlier where his sympathies were.
There wasn’t anything Hitchcockian about the moment.
Meanwhile, my mind was telegraphing a message to me: Dear audience. Let me tell you what I think in 28 million words or more.