Jill Duman
More than a year ago, I accepted a job as a lunchtime yard monitor at a local elementary school. I had been a bartender before, and I figured (correctly) that the same basic job skills applied: You’re there to make sure everyone has a good time, with a minimum of pandemonium, hurt feelings and bodily injuries.
Fortunately, the school where I work has made my mission easier by teaching kids about “Kelso’s Choice” – a conflict management model that provides solid tools for resolving disagreements before they turn into epithets, tears and fisticuffs.
Now, when kids in the lunchroom or on the playground have a gripe, we ask them if they can work out the problem themselves. Most often, they choose one of Kelso’s solutions: walk away, talk it out, tell the offender to stop, make a deal, apologize, ignore the problem or go to another game. If the scrap isn’t resolved, the protagonists get sent off to the principal’s office to spend the rest of their free play period hammering out a compromise.
Sadly, there are grown-ups in government who haven’t learned these conflict resolution skills – and they’re allowed to operate without play yard supervision. The most egregious local example is the Davis City Council. There, two members are proposing to toughen the “play nice” procedural rules for council meetings to avoid the kind of name-calling, disruption and hysteria that peaked at the Jan. 26 Davis City Council meeting. Because of that meeting, Davis Mayor Ruth Asmundson was hospitalized with stress-related afflictions and Councilwoman Sue Greenwald became the star of a scary video clip that so far has attracted more than 11,500 hits on YouTube.
Included in the evening’s drama were Greenwald’s refusal to yield the microphone and Asmundson blaming Greenwald for her own panic attacks. The understatement of the meeting was made by Greenwald, who sagely observed that “not everybody is cut out for public office.”
Like other cities and towns with educated, hyper-involved residents, Davis is known for public meetings that are involved, opinionated and even cantankerous. Just two years ago, the council adopted a few rules for reasonable behavior based on pointers drafted by local Judge Dave Rosenberg and published by the League of California Cities.
Miss Manners would probably regard those guidelines as minimal for maintaining civility at any gathering. Ask permission to speak. One person at a time, please.
The measures currently posed by Councilmen Steve Souza and Don Saylor – and drafted after consideration of policies in seven other California cities – are a bit stricter, but no less logical. Council members are asked to “preserve order and decorum,” to avoid delaying or interrupting “the proceeding or peace of the Council,” to cease speaking when ruled out of turn and, “to not refuse to obey the orders of the Council, or the presiding officer.”
Failure to abide by these basic rules of polite behavior should win offenders the derision of every city constituent and a personal visit from the Manners Police. Souza and Saylor are instead asking that consequences include public censure or having council members stripped of committee assignments.
Following a postponement, the Davis council is slated to discuss the new conduct rules on March 30. With any luck, the public won’t be treated to another round of elected officials behaving badly. Our confidence in government is already rattled.
A January poll by the Public Policy Institute of California revealed that 74 percent of those surveyed believe the state is going in the wrong direction. A nationwide survey taken last month by the Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan Pew Research Center showed anti-incumbent sentiment running higher than ever recorded in 16 years. Three in 10 voters said they do not want to see their representatives re-elected.
With health care premiums spiraling, employment in the dumps and our educational system and economy uncertain, we need to see calm professionals at work. No one wants to be a passenger in a plane where the co-pilots have lost control and are screaming at each other – particularly if we think the plane has already drifted off course.
At the Jan. 26 Davis council session, Greenwald was arguing about a measure she thought would save her city thousands of dollars in labor costs when the meeting erupted in pandemonium. Few constituents will remember what she was trying to do. Everyone will remember elected officials acting like buffoons.
Grown-ups should be able to regulate their own behavior at public meetings. When they can’t, they need new rules to spell out what they should already know. If that doesn’t work, we can always call in some yard monitors. I know some elementary school kids who would gladly advise.