I’m beginning to think this blog is never going to find its way back to the realities of Sailing Mahdee! This week, I took the time to sit down and make comments on the 1200 page EIR package for the proposed development project at Pete’s Harbor. The process took more effort than expected because I was unfamiliar with the particulars of the Redwood City General Plan–another 1000 pages of plan, appendices, comments, it’s own EIR, addendum, and errata. Gracious! The real civic duty for the citizens of Redwood City includes a heavy load of reading, for sure.
What I’m not quite sure of is why I bothered–except I remember the days of being on the other side of the table when I worked for a government agency that did real public outreach and really did care about what all the stakeholders had to say. Silly me.
You must have some background: I’m one of the people who was happily drinking the Kool-Aid of reinventing government (at the Federal level, at least) in 1997. Since we moved aboard the boat, I must admit I traded in my hard copy of the simple little book The Blair House Papers that said so much, for an e-book version that took up less space aboard.
After sitting through 5 hours of a planning commission meeting–much of it on unrelated projects–I ultimately endured the agony of listening to the landowner’s lawyer twist a knife of hurtful and calculatedly defaming comments in the back of the live-aboard tenants of the marina.
Today I feel like slapping myself and saying “wake up, you’re back in the purgatory of small town politics!”
How could I forget? It’s been too long, now I remember what I’ve always hated about small towns: the impacts of group-think and cronyism in small town politics. Yes, I know that the same risks exist at county, state, and national levels here in the USA. It’s just more sophisticated the further up the power chain you get. Easier to ignore. Even a Pollyanna like me can connect the dots at this simple, small town level. I’d rather be whistling in the dark, but once you’ve shined a flashlight on the face of that darkness, it’s hard to go back to sleep.
