Bitterroot Politics

There were precious few moments of lighthearted banter at yesterday’s planning board meeting. As has become standard, the two-hour discussion wavered between disciplined conscientious debate and yelling and cussing.

This morning I talked to a county official who said the debate on subdivision regulations was even more trying than those on zoning. Why? At least on zoning people commented on the specific provisions of the proposals. Critique on specificities on the subdivision regulations has been practically nonexistent.

That’s nothing new here or anywhere else, though. As a reporter I’ve probably been to hundreds of public meetings on plans like this and it’s very rare for anyone to ever comment on specific proposals. Usually it’s a very emotional all-or-nothing, and almost always it’s heavily in favor of nothing. What’s new to me here is how much broad condemnation of the plan is accompanied by personal attacks. The Constitution lays down the framework for our government; it’s unfortunate nothing was inserted to encourage people to be decent when defending it.

I was talking to a visiting journalist yesterday about the passions in the valley here and how that shapes reporting. Like other reporters I’m at fault often for devoting too much ink to people who make a big stink about things, and not enough often to people who make sense. That said, it’s hard not to think of a meeting like yesterday’s and not want to focus on the bizarre, the stupid, the cockamany or the just plain mean. The low point came when a resident said planning department employees must not have gone to a college where they learned about God and the Constitution. The second low point came when a speaker said the provisions included language from environmentalcommunists. Yes, it was one word.

There’s a bumper sticker you see sometimes; I think it’s used by people unhappy with both Bush and Obama. It says “If you aren’t outraged you aren’t paying attention.” That’s wrong. If you’re really outraged, you probably don’t understand what’s going on. It was enlightening yesterday to hear people berating the planning board for assaulting their property rights. Nevermind, I guess, that the main provision discussed yesterday was about how to support property rights. Nevermind, too, that it was not the planning board’s proposal, anyway. They’re just providing input. And nevermind that the board chairman had not even said what would be discussed before people started saying their rights were under attack.

Despite the bad taste the meeting left in my mouth, there were two bright spots:

Board member Perry Beilke on wetlands notification provisions: “You can’t make people do smart things.” Which was followed by member John Gibney saying, “And you can’t even make smart people do smart things.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.