I remember those nights very well. Like most reporters, I had to cover a city government at one time or another, and one of my many stints, about 15 years ago, was writing about the city council meetings of a medium-sized Delaware city for the state’s biggest newspaper.
On those nights, just as surely as the chairman would call the meeting to order and the council members would rise and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, a skinny, dour-faced man would approach the microphone during the “Public Comment Period” and begin -- or rather, continue -- his rant.
Sound familiar?
It was a rant of many, many years: Something about a long-ago parking ticket. Nefarious doings in the police department. Corruption at the highest levels of this sleepy little city.
Finally, after he had berated the ever-so-patient council chairman for several minutes, he would turn to the Press Table, hold up his latest “document” and announce: “I have made copies for the press.”
Whereupon he would approach me and hand me the missive; I would invariably reply: “Thank you, Mr. Crazy Person [maybe not those exact words] I shall file this forthwith.”
That seemed to satisfy him, and he would leave me alone.
I thought about those meetings last week when I read two stories in the Washington Post that chanced to appear on the same day. One was a column about a tenacious Montgomery County, Md., woman who has been on a single-minded quest to stop people from taking their dogs along when they walk their children to school. Actually, dogs are banned from school grounds, but some readers wondered why this was such a big deal that the woman had to visit 36 county elementary schools to monitor their compliance.
The Montgomery County School Board was wise: It proclaimed the existing rules and signage “more than adequate” and referred the matter to animal control. Solomonic.
But how do you know when to punt and when to act? Another story that same day told about residents of a neighborhood not far from my home demanding action from the Arlington (Va.) County Council on a house filled with apparently dozens of exotic snakes, many of them poisonous. The county board immediately banned “venomous snakes and other poisonous reptiles,” the newspaper said.
Board members: I don’t envy your job. People come to you with all manner of complaints and concerns, most of them heartfelt. You must decide when to act, when to refer, when to ignore.
Correction: Last week, in a story about children’s literature, I implied that David Shannon was the author of How I Became a Pirate. Shannon, who did the wonderful pictures for this cleverly written book, collaborated with author Melinda Long.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor