TOWN MEETING AND THE SCHOOL VOTE - III

I recently watched the magnificent HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero for the second time.  Not only is it superbly directed and acted, it is a valuable primer about local government.  It follows the Yonkers, New York, mayor, city councillors and city residents as they all grapple with a court order for low income housing thirty years ago.  The series is factually true, but it is also true to the F Scott Fitzgerald quotation that gives it its title:  “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.”  I recommend it highly, particularly now when Amherst is also wrestling with a contentious issue - its future form of government.  And it forces me to think about the last couple of years when the school proposal was our version of the housing issue that Yonkers faced.

One takeaway from the series particularly pertinent to the charter debate is how important it is to distinguish among the institutional structures of government,  the individual and social dynamics which they house, and the issues they must decide.  The description of Yonkers’s government is perfectly straightforward - a mayor, a 7-person city council with its own president, majority and minority leaders, and an administration.  Like all such descriptions, it sounds pristine.  Like all real governments it is conducted by people with divergent ideas, biases, personalities and priorities.  Like all real governments it must deal with issues that are messy. divisive and volatile.  It needs to govern people some of whom are passionate on all sides of issues, while others are indifferent to local government and uninformed about it.

On March 27th  Amherst is voting on the institutional framework of its governance.  It is important to emphasize that.  The two frameworks - select board/town meeting and council/manager - are both empty.  It is difficult to realize that, since our actual select board/town meeting government is not at all empty.  It requires a thought experiment to empty it, as the proposed town council is empty, so that the two structures can compete on equal ground.

When we populate those empty forms in our minds, it is important that we populate each of them with divergent ideas, biases, personalities and priorities.  And throw in a dash of distrust and a pinch of personal animosities.  To both structures.  Another way of conducting the thought experiment is to imagine our Select Board enlarged to thirteen members. Populate those new eight seats with people whose views diverge from the current Select Board.  Or if that is too difficult, recollect the times over the past fifteen years when each of our elected boards has experienced volatility over issues and when disagreement descended into acrimony.

However you do it, imagine the school proposal in the hands of a council that has to achieve a two-thirds vote to raise taxes and borrow funds.   Then watch Show Me a Hero.  And think hard.

In Yonkers in 1987, the popular sentiment was strongly opposed to low income housing.  The sentiment was largely racist, although usually couched in terms of class.  The majority on the city council shared these views, although a few were realistic enough to understand that the city had no choice but to accede to the court’s ruling.  It was nasty.  Here in Amherst we are amateurs of animosity compared to Yonkers.

So put the school vote in front of a town council.  How do you imagine it?  Is the council a group of thirteen independently elected individuals, who won their seat in a contested election?  Or do you imagine a council in which members were elected by being on a slate supported by political action groups such as Amherst For All?  Do you imagine a council whose members fairly represent the range of opinions and concerns of Amherst’s citizens, do you imagine a council representing a particular viewpoint, or do you imagine a council elected as a protest against incumbents? 

Whatever you imagine, it is imaginary.  We don’t know.  Councils nation-wide have conformed to all of these configurations.  We have seen Amherst Select Boards and Charter Commissions reflect all of these configurations.  What an Amherst Town Council would have been like as it confronted the school vote is anybody’s guess.  

If you believe that an Amherst Town Council would have councilors who think like you, maybe you are right.  Or maybe not.  Or maybe right this year but not right two years from now.  What we can say with confidence is that councils, by their very nature, are more volatile than Town Meeting.  They are more dependent on the actual individuals elected than is Town Meeting.  They are more prone to internal animosities than Town Meeting.  

Yes, that’s right.  Passions - even animosities - among Town Meeting members can be strong and can be heard in the corridors and lobbies.  But not on the floor.  In Town Meeting debates, all points of view can be heard but decorum reigns.  Widely divergent ideas are received in silence.  And during those silences, members are thinking hard.

Will there ever come a time when Amherst’s civic passions can be “recollected in tranquility,” to  misuse Wordsworth’s famous definition of poetry?  Perhaps not.  But the silences on the floor of Town Meeting while the Moderator is choosing the next speaker are testaments to a civic maturity that we should prize and praise.  They are the symbols of a political culture that stubbornly resists being categorized into majority and minority, and where the outcome of a controversial vote remains a mystery until it is cast.

During the school debate, Town Meeting was a source of stability and equity but never predictability.  That’s why I love it.  That’s why Amherst needs it.  We lose it at our peril.