Does City Council Really Matter?

A Resident Makes an Important Point

There is no more astute observer of City Council here in Troy than Steve Henriksen. Mr. Henriksen, along with his wife, attend every city council meeting, sitting in their not-quite-assigned seats - south side of the room, second row and towards the center aisle. It’s not often that Mr. Henriksen says things, but when he does, it is certainly worthy of attention from everyone in attendance.

He spoke Monday night about the same issue that dominated the conversation at the meeting; the residential subdivision that was just approved by council and was the topic of Council Member Schilling’s piece yesterday.

Mr. Henriksen challenged the council by stating the obvious:

There are ways of getting this done in a cooperative way with developers. They're not trying to build a junky piece of real estate, I don't think, and if they are, we don't want them. Why don't we just ask them, “Can you do this?” It will cost a lot of money, but I think just following things by rote means that you're all superfluous.

And looking at any agenda of the Troy City Council for the past few months, superfluous is an apt description. There are few things that Council discusses that are discretionary. For example, resolutions approving annexations are fairly cut and dried and prescribed by state law. Even those items that are discretionary, like applying for funding for the South Crawford Street recreational trail — are painted as necessary and even given coveted “Emergency” status due to time constraints.

Council Member Schilling’s no vote was met by two vocal council members that wanted it to be well known that council’s hands were tied. Failing to approve the measure could open up the city to unwanted and unnecessary legal wrangling, since the deveoper dotted every “i” and crossed every “t”. In other words, not toeing the company line and voting against the measure was akin to legislative malfeasance.

Anyone that has observed City Council over the past few years knows the passion that Council Member Schilling brings to the conversation about bicycles and recreational trails. He comes from a west-side neighborhood that doesn’t have these amenities, and he is vocal in his support for these amenities throughout the community.

And if you are a Council member that has talked about these amenities time and time again and seen very little, if any action, on connecting neighborhoods to recreational trails, what options are left? Well, as a Council member, your vote is your most important tool. Monday night, Council Member Schilling wasn’t interested in toeing the company line, he was interested in making it abundently clear where he stood on this issue. To him, that meant voting no.

And all this goes back to Mr. Henriksen’s comments.

Council members aren’t there to be superfluous. They aren’t there to be a rubber stamp on the whims and wishes of a City Administration, that honestly seems to be more and more out of touch with the needs and wants of the community. Elected officals are there to provide policy guidance, think about the needs of the community now and in the future, and to represent their constituents. It’s not in the job description of an elected official to simply “go along to get along”.

Too many times, elected officials rely on unelected bureaucrats to chart the future of the communities that they are elected to serve. The problem with that approach is that unelected bureaucrats aren’t always the best people in the room to think about a community’s future.

I recently had a conversation with an individual that does business in local communities. I asked for his perceptions on how well local communities think about the future. His answer didn’t surprise me, “Local bureaucrats aren’t exactly the best at creative thinking. They look at what worked in the past and use the old playbook. Most bureaucrats aren’t there to rock the boat. They are there to put in their time.”

So, if local bureaucrats aren’t the ones that hold the answers to what the future of our communities should like, who is? Well, it’s our elected officials, who are informed, not by bureaucrats, but by their own constituents.

If we are going to have local elected officials on our city councils that do nothing but toe the company line from the bureaucratic machine, we are going to have exactly what Mr. Henriksen describes: a government by superfluous actors.

What Do You Think?

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