My Trip to the Mosque
I thought I was going to a forum for candidates for Richardson City Council, but the mosque stole the show. The forum was held in the gymnasium. (Who'd have thought Allah was a basketball fan?) Our moderator missed no opportunity to talk up the mosque. (It's not just a mosque but a community with public services and a school and great relations with the city and neighborhood, thank Allah.) After a round of introductions and a single question, we broke for thirty minutes to allow those who desired to move to the mosque itself to pray. (Men over here, women over there, please.) Afterwards, before the forum could resume, we had twenty minutes of awarding plaques. (Thank you, retired police chief Larry Zacharias and retiring council member Rhea Allison and this mosque board of directors member and that mosque board trustees member.) By the time the program ended two and a half hours after it began, I estimated the candidates had only a total of five minutes each to talk to the voters. Not a single one ran over their allotted time.
In their introductions, the experienced campaigners had the presence of mind to thank the American Muslim Alliance and the Dallas Central Mosque for hosting the forum. Jennifer Justice added the nice touch of opening with "As-Salamu ‘Alaykum." John Murphy one-upped that by recalling his attendance at the ground-breaking for the mosque a decade ago. Dennis Stewart then one-upped that by recalling his days with the Richardson Police and how they took preventive steps to defend the mosque against potential violent backlash after the 9/11 attacks.
As for the questions the candidates answered, I'm afraid to report that there wasn't much of substance there. There was time for only three questions:
- What does transparency mean to you?
- How do you spend your typical day?
- What one nice thing can you say about your opponent?
The first question, about transparency in government, held out the promise of some fireworks. Sheryl Miller came out with guns blazing, declaring "Richardson's bankrupt" and city hall doesn't want you to know and blaming it all somehow on the Sherrill Park golf pro. John Murphy, as usual, parried Miller's attack deftly, declaring the city is financially sound and "not one dollar made it into my pocket." Bob Townsend said, if transparency means televising city council meetings, the city looked into it but decided it was cost prohibitive. One by one, the challengers took him and the rest of the incumbents to task, calling for streaming video, open checkbooks, plain language meeting agendas and a code of ethics. The force of the attack diminished as the long line of candidates talked to the question one by one, until Bob Macy had to object to the implication that "we're not doing a good job now." You'd have thought he forgot for a moment that he was the challenger. Even Pris Hayes thanked him for his comments. Dennis Stewart said that up until this election campaign, "no one has been beating down the door" for more transparency. As a couple of the incumbents pointed out, Richardson has been taking advantage of technology to gradually make more and more city business available online. Finally, Mayor Steve Mitchell said the city simply had to provide some kind of streaming video and an open checkbook online. As he is running unopposed and didn't have to make any kind of commitment at all, I'll take that as a promise likely to be kept no matter who is elected in the other places.
If the first question fizzled out, the second question seemed designed more for comic relief than serious discussion. One by one, the candidates told us how early they got up in the morning and how productive they were. Mayor Mitchell was up twice during the night last night dealing with his young kids. Amir Omar gets to bed at midnight and is up at four to train for marathons. Tom Bache-Wiig is up at 5:30 every morning to read the Bible, then run two and a half miles. John Murphy has his alarm clock set permanently at 5:00 AM and eats Cheerios and a banana for breakfast ("... OK, and a pancake once in a while ... that's transparency"). By the time we reached the end of the row, I expected one of the candidates to claim he never slept at all.
If the second question was comic relief, the third question anticipated the "they lived happily ever after" phase of the election. The candidates all sounded sincerely complimentary as they said nice things about one another. Even Diane Wardrup, who accused Gary Slagel of ethical violations in a questionnaire for The Dallas Morning News, tonight said, "Gary has served the city well for 22 years." I almost looked forward to another prayer break. As-Salamu ‘Alaykum.
10 comments:
I think that "What one nice thing can you say about your opponent?" is more useful than it appears on the surface.
It can reveal whether or not the candidate has the ability to find common ground with an opponent or is pathologically belligerent and narcissistic.
I had the this session on my calandar to attend but ended up unavailable.
bloggermouse, I won't disagree with you. But, with only 3 questions on the night, this wouldn't have made the cut in my own selection of questions.
I thought it was great how Schnurr pointed out we don't have to wait until May 10th to enact some of these 'transparency' ideas. What a great call to action for the current incumbents! He gave them a wonderful opportunity to put their actions where their promises are.
Destiny, thanks for the comment. Maybe Schnurr should have acknowledged the transparency steps Richardson has already taken. Did you hear one candidate point out that Richardson has been making improvements in transparency all along? Another said that televising council meetings was looked at but rejected due to cost. And a third said that no one was beating down the doors to speed up their efforts until this election campaign started. There's an issue here, but it hardly rises to the level some partisans would have us believe.
Indeed, Ed, John Murphy has placed on his website a Q&A on the issue of transparency where there are more than a dozen links to things like the more than 500 pages of text, tables, and graphs describing the state of the City's finances over the last 5 years - see John Murphy Q&A. You are quite correct that there is a huge amount of information about the city and about whom to contact that is already on the web.
The issues of filming the City Council meetings was certainly discussed by the Council (I was there), and, yes, the immediate implementation of the issue faltered on the cost of retrofitting both the Council Chambers and the Richardson Room (where the workshops are) for filming, as well as the unknown cost of placing this content online in a manner usable for the public. Sadly, some people think that just because it's free to download this content, they mistakenly think that it is free to create it and upload it - as a long time veteran of content management industry, I can tell you that it just ain't so.
This explains why the challengers are much more enthusiastic about demanding such things...because, unlike the incumbents, they've never had someone actually price it for them in a presentation at a Council meeting.
Ditto with "Open Book" - this involves multiple departments with multiple disparate operations placing certain content (but probably not all content, as the City can/should restrict some content) on the Web in a way is accurate and cost effective....again, this sort of content management exercise is non-trivial and will cost money.
Might the citizens of Richardson choose to bear the cost? Sure, that would be their right. But for candidates to blindly promise that such things will be done without any knowledge of the costs or other considerations just doesn't serve the City well...why didn't any of the challengers ask the incumbents how much video-feeds or open expenses would cost? I know for sure that the City staff briefed the Council on some of the expenses in video-taping the Council meetings and workshops. Then, at least, we could hear an intelligent discussion on which things that the various candidates are willing to pay for, since in the real world, we have limited budgets and have to make hard choices over whether we are going to film the Council meetings (that for all we know, no one will watch after the first few weeks) or hire that new police officer trainee...
Bill
William J 'Bill' McCalpin, if there were a ballot question asking voters if they would rather spend tax money on video production or on public safety, I have no doubt which would win. And if the council went hog wild on new technology anyway to make every action of the council publicly available and understandable, I have no doubt that would provoke new challengers in the next election complaining about how wasteful the council was in buying all those new gadgets. Sigh.
You guys just don't get it. We don't have to broadcast meetings on cable TV. Internet streaming is much cheaper. For those who do not have internet accessibility they can go to the public library.
Grammie, trust me, I get it. I, too, think the cost of setting up an Internet streaming capability is worth it. The costs are coming down, too. I'm sure we'll get it, just like we got a city Web site and just like we got the budgets put online. I just don't happen to think there's any malevolence at work here.
If the voters think spending the money for the technology is worth it, it'll happen. But put it in terms of tax dollars needed instead of promises of "transparency" and I predict many voters might prefer to roll things out as it makes economic sense, not just as soon as a technology is available.
Ed, I agree - there's no groundswell from what I can see to televise/webcast/stream council meetings. It is just something that practically all cities our size do. And, you're right, the cost is coming down. In response to Bill McCalpin, who appears to be John Murphy's campaign manager, how about trying to be a bit more objective about the guy. I like John, but your biased comments are a bit over the top for me!
Anonymous, I make no secret of who I support, and I sign my name to it. I am happy that you like John, too, but I am a bit puzzled on your statement that I have written "biased comments".
Could you point out one of these biased comments to me? I don't believe that I have written anything that I can't objectively prove, or which I clearly indicated to be a matter of personal preference or judgment.
Bill
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