Our Government in Action

This is not a snarly post about our current President or his administration.  I am not going to take that on here -- those people have taken so much emotional and intellectual energy, it is completely distressing. Never mind the disasters they are presiding over.

No, this is about two hours I just spent watching our local government in action. In this case, I don't even know if our elected officials were Democrats or Republicans. It didn't come up and it didn't matter.  Our Loudoun County Supervisor had called a second meeting to update us on their response to a petition they received from a small group of concerned citizens.

Last summer one of our workers came to me with a petition to sign -- it was created by the "neighborhood" of people who live on the two lane road that goes past our Loudoun farm.  These neighbors were expressing their upset about traffic and safety issues (there is lots of traffic now, and it makes them feel much less safe).  I signed the petition because I didn't have any reason not to, but I wasn't feeling passionate about it.  There is so much traffic everywhere and I doubted that a petition was going to make a difference.

About a week ago I got a phone call from some young-sounding woman telling me that the meeting had been changed to this Monday evening at 5:30.  Since I didn't even know about the original meeting, this sounded fine.  I inquired about the subject of the meeting and she said it was about the petition.  Because it is the middle of winter and I have all the time in the world, I put it on my calendar.

As it turned out, my whole day was built around this meeting since it is really hard to get to Leesburg at that hour. I went to my piano lesson in the afternoon and then I headed west to hang out in a nice little coffee house for a while.

I did not know what to expect when I peeked into the conference room on the 5th floor of the government center, but no one was there.  Hmm.  I sat down to wait.  A few minutes later, about 15 people arrived all at once and filled up the chairs around the table.  Two County Supervisors, the Director of Traffic (or something like that), three staff members and a bunch of neighbors. One of them recognized me right away because he mows the lawn of the little house that we own on that stretch of road (in exchange he gets all the tomatoes he can eat every summer).

Even though they fully intended to get through the meeting in one hour, we were still sitting there at 7:30.  A lot happened in those two hours. Perhaps nothing of  immediate consequence, but the constituents got to have their say and the government people got to answer.  Basically, the neighbors wanted to say that things have changed a lot in the last few years and they don't like it. They want someone to make the traffic go slower or just go away.  The government people were sympathetic to the concerns and they promised to do what they were able to do, but everything takes time and the real power lies in the Virginia Department of Transportation.

We all learned a lot about the theory of roundabouts, and how everyone feels about them. We learned about how complicated it is to get a speed study funded. And we learned how powerless the supervisors are about some issues.

Really, we learned the consequences of unplanned growth and unaffordable housing.  People drive from a very long way to get from west to east or from north to south (past the "neighborhood" on the rural road in question) so they can get to work. They can't afford to live where they work -- they come from West Virginia and Maryland to get to the Dulles corridor where 1/3 of the DC area works now, apparently.  That is nuts! "Growth" is seen as inevitable and good and necessary. Everyone expects western Loudoun County to be fully built out in 20 years.

I do not fault these particular Supervisors. I don't even fault VDOT. It must be very hard to plan what is best for a whole county, let alone an entire region, or all of society.  The mistakes that were made 50 years ago, 20 years ago, last year are coming home to roost everywhere.  There are cars and trucks clogging up every road in the county. Rush hour is a constant reality.

As always, I have no patience for people who complain that their front yard or back yard is not the same as it was when they bought their house. There was plenty of that tonight and I am absolutely amazed at the patience of the elected officials and staff.  Even though I sat very quietly, I had plenty of internal responses to these residents who think they own their surroundings.  This is a super pet peeve of mine -- people who whine about what is happening just beyond their property line. 

I came away pretty proud of the people who spend their evenings listening to the complaints of their constituents.  People who choose to serve in local government must have a strong sense of civic duty.  It certainly can't be a thirst for power -- there is way too much grinding bureaucracy for them to feel powerful. One of of the Supervisors was a former truck driver (who knew about what happens when trucks do that thing with their brakes and make a lot of noise).

At 7:30 I whispered to the staff lady next to me "I'm going home." She whispered back, "can you take me with you?" 

My most serious observation was that those officials need some training in facilitating a meeting.  No one should be allowed to repeat himself as much as one of the most vocal neighbors did. No one should let us wander off topic for such long stretches. And there should be a lot more summarizing, with action items identified.

Other observation: every person in the room was white.  That would never happen in Fairfax County.