Calhouns Can(n)ons

Ooooo, Noooo, it’s Deja Voooooo


Life is like a B movie. You don’t want to leave in the middle of it, but you don’t want to see it again.
Ted Turner


Poor Pismo Beach City Councilman Bill Rabenauldt. He’s suffering re-runs of the Hideous San Luis School Board and the Hideous pre-recall LOCSD.

In a story in the July 10 New Times “Rabenaldt muzzled, Take 2” Bill is complaining that the Board Majority is making it difficult for him to do much of anything as a city councilman. They’ve changed the rules so that it takes a majority of councilmen to place anything on future agendas. In the past, any Councilmember could request any agenda item be added. And the Board Majority has changed the council members comment time to the very end of the meeting, like midnight, when anything they say will be heard only by the mice still scurrying around in the back of the room – the public and press having long since departed.

Mr. Rabenauldt said, of the changes, “I’d sure like to be able to prove that there’s some kind of conspiracy.”

Naw, no conspiracy, Bill. Just business as usual for councils and boards in general. It’s part of the board dynamic – a majority soon forms and anyone who doesn’t go along soon finds themselves on the outs. If the Outie is a complete looney tune and starts wasting board/council time on a grand scale over nothing, he/she’ll soon find him/herself shut out completely (or censured, or recalled or unelected by angry voters)

Ah, but if the Outie starts spilling the beans or turning over rocks or bringing up unpleasant realities the Board Majority doesn’t want to hear or have discussed, then they begin maneuvering the Outie so far out that he/she’s effectively both muzzled and eliminated as an effective member. It’s Shut Up, Shut Down, Shut Out time.

And if you’re a bean-spiller or whistle blower, you can’t get critical items on the agenda, items the majority don’t want brought up, or aired out, when you have rules requiring that the majority only set agenda items. That’s the way lids are kept on things the public often really needs to know about. But won’t.

And the only thing an Outie can do is go to the press, or reach out to the public (newsletters, town-hall-type meetings, flyers,) to let them know what problems are there he/she feels are important but being ignored, and urge the public to show up to demand items be agendized, and, since that will fail since the Board Majority will lock arms and ignore the few people who do show up, the only thing left to do is start recall proceedings against the Board Majority (an extremely unpopular remedy, very, very, very difficult to do. SLO School District parents and citizens tried three times, got very close once, but were ultimately unsuccessfully. Recalls are one in a million since people hate them so. And recalls scare the Board Majority so that they clamp down even harder, thus hardening the battle lines and escalating all the original problems. By the time it gets to that, it’s a total no-win, with the voters the biggest losers.)

No, the truth is very few voters know or care when things start to go awry. If the issues being shut up aren’t important to them, they pay no attention. Rubber Stamp Board Majorities on the Hideous San Luis School Board under Superintendent Ed Denton resulted in the school district roaring off into a financial ditch – budget ruined, millions pounded into holes in the ground – despite huge efforts to stop the werck. And need I remind anyone what happened here in Los Osos? Yep, train wreck, more millions pounded into the ground even before the train left the track.

As Ted Turner said, a B movie. And just the way boards and councils can often end up. Especially if they have to deal with serious, controversial problems. And get out of the habit of following Mark Twain’s dictum to always tell the truth; it will astonish your friends and confound your enemies.

Transparency and honest in government at all levels prevents these kinds of Board divisions – wanna spill some beans? Go right ahead. Are there alternatives to look at? Let’s look. We gotta problem? Let’s turn the lights on. Was that a bad decision on Issue X? Yes, it sure was. Now, how can we avoid that in the future? And so forth.

Instead, too often, human nature dictates other behaviors that lead to Board Majorities locking themselves into place, arms joined, hips joined, jaws clamped with hands slapped firmly over their eyes, thumbs in ears, singing La La La La, I can’t heeeeear you . . . Until the wreckage makes so much noise everybody hears.

But then it’s too late.

Sigh.