|
NorthWest Citizen.us
Let's do the Public's business in public. To Contents of this section Bellingham Mayor Let Them Eat Cake Okay, as I said, I'm probably voting for Mark Asmundson for mayor. But I just wish he wouldn't make it so difficult. At a forum hosted by several social service agencies last week, some very pointed and poignant questions on homelessness and hunger were put to candidates. Instead of telling us what he would do to further help ease the burdens and barriers faced by people of low or no income, Asmundson dazzled us with expertise. He continually pointed out all that's been done. His responses did nothing to acknowledge that the people and organizations who went to a lot of effort to stage this forum obviously needed more help than they were getting to handle the social burdens they've chosen to shoulder. He spent most of his time rebutting Brett Bonner's suggestions on how to provide more assistance to those who needed it, taking every opportunity to point out that each suggestion was not feasible because of wrong source funding, block grant limitations, the economy, the federal government, rules and regulations, etc. In other words, he offered no ideas or suggestions, choosing instead to make Bonner fish for solutions so that he, Mark, could shoot them down. Bonner, on the other hand, seemed to grope for solutions. Unlike the mayor, he knows up close and personal what it's like to live in poverty. So maybe he did lack immediate expertise on just how to get the job done. The mayor's summation was little more than saying the usual "Yes, it's indeed a problem, my administration has already done a lot, we need a comprehensive plan, etc." And he didn't leave out my favorite mayoral campaign summation: "This is a difficult and complex job, folks, not just anyone can do this job, believe me - experience really counts," or some such. If experience and prior knowledge of procedures is so important in running for office, why don't we just save a lot of money and cancel the elections? Then we'll have experience up the wazoo. And of course, in Bellingham, you don't have to worry that the crowd is actually going to listen to some cockamamy conservative radio talk show host, so you've got it in the bag anyway. So here's the setup: agree with the problem, say you've done a lot, challenge the new guy for a solution, shoot down his solutions, wax philosophically more-liberal-than-thou, say Bellingham is beautiful and shake everybody's hand. If you haven't noticed, he's used this same tactic on the reservoir. It's always worked before, right? So the party line is I'm supposed to vote for Mark, right? But damn!
|