It’s almost 4:00 a.m. in Midlothian and the frozen status of the community has most everyone hunkered down for the early morning hours of this New Years Day. Awake and asleep in whatever percentages, thousands of residents went in search of happiness with revelations and hopes only the calendar New Year seems to be able inspire. A slowly crawling pace of good will and pleasantries on many of the popular places online replaced the sometimes creeping scroll of heartache and loss pouring into these digitalized repositories with the Midlothian tag somehow present in the content. I myself fell asleep at 11:00 p.m. and found myself not entirely disappointed when I awoke a little after 2:15 this morning. I was counting on some measure of noise reaching my snoozing thoughts, but alas. I was too busy watching the insides of my eye lids to notice how anyone else chose to spend their evenings, except in hind sight. Pondering Midlothian politics was an exhausting endeavor for some in 2014, myself included. Meandering musings sped their way in and out of social media outlets and not always disguised with the best intentional diplomacy someone could derive while taking their freedom to speak out for some hard-core exercises. As there is nothing fundamentally illegal about being in a “bad mood,” the emotions of some seemed to improve their deliveries while others presented differences of opinion to the extreme. I apologized to the Park District official who spilled coffee at the next meeting. I should have asked if he was okay right when it happened and I didn’t do anything except keep the camera recording. The rules at public meetings are actually fairly cut and dry and I would have been logically breaking the rules if I had piped up, but I also had faith he would have said something if there was additional pain besides watching a pile of papers get wet and I was in no mood to break any documented rule I hadn’t read from their rule book. Agendas unbound both in personalized ideals and on taxpayer-funded papers, unflattering characteristics of Midlothian made it to the “water cooler conversation” quite frequently towards the end of 2014, with no names needed to start the chats rolling, but not always absent of an identifier of some sort. My own decision to stay with the online identity of “Midlothian Valerie” with my own online published content will continue to remain ironic in 2015…as long as the names of public officials remain short-handed in the meeting minutes produced per legal mandate. I could argue this identity is 100% true, 100% false and any number in between, but to some who tried to stay fairly connected to the content and context of meetings being held in public by local government officials, names of public officials responsible for addressing what set of circumstances is something that will hopefully see some corrective activity in 2015. I myself have tried to stay away from identifying individuals when I am in a “bad mood,” as it can frequently be a set of rules that provides glimpses into what the future would look like, and not always the rules of law and justice. Sometimes it is a complex economic equation that even with thousands of actuaries crafting their own forward-looking algorithms while other times it is the punctuation that can make the difference between one thousand dollars and one hundred thousand dollars. It was taught to me that a misplaced period is part of why on paper checks people were expected to spell out the amount, which was a decent protection for the check writer…something missing in this ATM world. I may not understand yields and interest rates as it relates to Midlothian specifically, but I certainly understand how to build databases and indexes with information we all can find on paper, both real and virtual. Some of us witnessed some real shifts in moods and temperament from time to time, but nothing this community was unable to bear with some measure of decorum after the fact. Speaking only for myself, it is a risk worth taking, as I find no flaw in making new decisions when new information provides such opportunities… These next 96 days hold opportunity to apply at least some of the promises made to us by individuals we never will get the chance to email or call on the phone if we are unhappy with some aspect of the economic outlook for the Village of Midlothian in 2015 and lack of discernable leadership amongst local government officials other than a Mom and Pop approach across the board…”Listen to your mothers and fathers, children” in a figurative sense I suppose…but sometimes it just seems so really unreal? The candidates have already set themselves up in opposing camps, the Incumbents versus the New “No One Really Knows Who the New Ones Are” group and it’s pretty clear why the dividers are up even though the blinders continue to be taken off far more frequently than ever before in the Village by the potential voters. While social media can and should play a role in the process, there have always been strong voices promoting the idea of knowing our neighbors is an effort worth pursuing in a civil manner and I suppose not everyone has the cell phone number of the Mayor, but apparently she puts it on her business cards. And yet 2014 was a year of closed doors for at least some. I don’t usually try to call her directly as my own concerns typically don’t need to rise to the executive level, or so I’ve told myself, rather it was the flurry of data scraping that happened in preparation for the October 22, 2014 Town Hall meeting. Local officials in other municipal bodies around Midlothian were not immune to being presented with fairly well-researched positions, let alone a camera and a crowd for sometimes entirely separate reasons than what line item was being brought up during the public portion of the meetings. Challenging the “authorities” in a slightly effective manner can be an expensive prospect for even the smallest of basic matters, with an under-lying under-tow being driven by motives and agendas that can never be replicated in a proof-positive that “something” happened in which government stepped over its own boundaries…or perhaps simply tripped? Many contracts were signed even before 2014 that are difficult to review. The payers of such contracts have the right to know what the terms of these agreements are and yet a copy of a 1962 contract was considered sufficient fulfillment of a FOIA request to see the contract by and between the codification company the Village has been using since…yes, 1962. And if I was to put out a copy of this notated contract, I would not be entirely putting forth false information, even though I don’t believe for a moment this contract has never been modified in some manner so that larger invoices for unlisted products could be paid for. 96 days to really think about what the Village of Midlothian could look like…if only so and so was elected to such and such position… Who will earn the trust of potential voters who have yet to register? Who will put forth better arguments than “shut up, stupid” or some other publicized insult of the day? Who can pull together the most facts connected to some of the more critical issues Midlothian municipalities are facing in 2015 in a relatively prompt and timely manner? Who can pick up their phone and inspire some measure of volunteerism at some point in the year? Who should be held accountable for what measure of the day to day circumstances the Village continues to face, such as a portion of the Village’s computer system being on its last days before action was taken? Who should share what about which public officials hold multiple positions in multiple jurisdictions and the benefits of such arrangements? When did the Village start/continue its deficit spending relative to the current level of bond debt acquired by Midlothian? Was there ever any fundamental system of giving and receiving feedback, no matter how critical the tone may have been attached to a right to communicate a concern to a government employee and/or official? What feedback systems can be put in place in the next 30 days to begin improving relations and quality of data being shared between the general public and the Village of Midlothian as a government entity? As this short list of questions is but a “Welp, it is another Thursday morning in Midlothian and there is nothing on the old-fashioned television to entertain me” musing, perhaps this public draft of thoughts won’t startle the regulars to this group too greatly… To a peaceful and productive 2015!
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 11:46:25 +0000
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