Good Job Merrell

Recently, one of our City Council members remarked that The Journal’s “Sound Off” callers should be more positive than negative about some of the initiatives promoted by council. One citizen’s immediate response was a letter to the editor that said: “It’s not about being negative. It’s about what we don’t have in our lives at this time and that is the capability to spend money. The people of Middletown are doing everything they can to just keep their homes and families intact at this time in our depressed economy.”

Now, I can’t imagine our elected representatives had anything but the best interests of our community at heart when they recently decided the time had come to enforce existing regulations concerning the maintenance of private property or to create new legislation about where one can park a car and for how long. Lest we forget, there once was serious discussion about an ordinance that would have required us all to use the same kind of curb-side trash containers. Unfortunately, the unintended result of such actions can be seen as an example of the disconnect between those who administer our city and the silent majority of citizens they serve.

The silent majority I’m referring to are citizens who live on a modest income and have little or no influence on our city’s policy decisions that affect their everyday lives. Please understand — I’m not talking about major legislation that requires a visit to our local polling place. I’m talking about council legislation that sometimes seems to overlook the economic demographics of our community and does little more than annoy the public they are elected to represent.

The recent denial of the city to contribute to a citizen-led initiative dedicated to the restoration of our historic city-owned “Pioneer Cemetery” is case in point. Some citizens complained that if the city is unwilling to meet its own regulations related to the maintenance of its public property, why should the owners of private property be required to do so? Could this be an example of a double standard where City Hall seems to be saying one thing and doing another?

In his “State of the City” address, Mayor Larry Mulligan proclaimed: “I plan to engage residents in planning and visioning. We will be listening to you, so that we better understand the choices you want us to make.”

I’m certain the mayor was being sincere; however, it’s difficult to understand the context of his remarks when The Journal just awarded our council a “thumbs down” for their policy of “limiting citizen comments to three minutes and declining to answer their questions.”

The mayor also declared: “We will not accept that our city is dead. Instead, we will focus on the positive things.”

Unfortunately, no amount of “pride in action” is going to change the Forbes magazine conclusions about our city or the state rating of our schools. The “positive things” do not need change. It’s the negatives that need to be addressed, the things that really count: Great schools, plentiful jobs and the rebuilding of our infrastructure. We must do better.

Speaking of “positive things,” a few years ago our City Council initiated something called “Conversations with Council” that created a forum where citizens could talk one on one with their representatives. It enjoyed some early success but, as time went by, it slowly faded away. The problem was that citizens were often required to meet at different times and places that seemed to have had more to do with the personal schedules of council members than those of the citizens. After a while, the only people who attended were the usual suspects who had a never-ending bone to pick with the city.

Fast forward to today. I may be crazy, but is there any reason we shouldn’t take the same basic concept, flip it so that council members come to where we citizens are, not the other way around? Each of our wards have a variety of places where council representatives could meet with members of a specific organization in a “town hall” format that could guarantee an audience of like-minded citizens with a question or two.

Our city administrators and council representatives should remember that the citizens of Middletown are the ultimate consumers of the services our local government provides. Therefore, it’s not unreasonable for citizens to feel they should have more of a say in its operation, its effect on their lives, and ultimately their pocketbooks.

If we, as a city, want to grow and prosper, we must first find a way to restore our citizens’ trust in their government to represent all of the people all of the time instead of some of the people some of the time.

Merrell Wood is chairman of the Middletown Park Board and the founder of TV Middletown and the Sink or Swim effort.