Friday, October 12, 2007

71 Rowdies enter the Inner Sanctum



About 12 of us rolled up to the meeting and filed into the empty chambers. It was one of those rooms that demands quiet, even when empty. There was something about the embossed wooden board proclaiming names and titles of past mayors hanging above the very large and dominant red mayoral chair, the large u-shaped bench that ran around the room and focused on the red chair, and the closed world-excluding curtains that gave the room atmosphere. We squeezed onto our tiny chairs that were crushed against the three walls that would be in clear view of the mayor.

Half a dozen councillors looking like very ordinary people and not so different from us, wandered into the room at a minute or so before the due time and, after saying hello to the throng, took their seats. The mayor then wandered in, no special gold chain or wig or fawning underlings, except his secretary who seemed to be in charge anyway, and sat down in the big chair. There was hush. I expected a prayer but there were just a couple of coughs like in a musical recital after the strings have finished tuning their AAs. Clearly the erudite presentations were due. I checked the clock. A huge spider stared back at me.

They started the discussions by deciding when they would have their next discussion and who would be able to come. This took around 15 minutes and was quite riveting. All councillors made a contribution. I was starting to wish I had had more tea because I was rumbling uncontrollably and I guessed everybody was hearing the groans. A few more topics were discussed before they moved to our issue, the Creewah Road upgrading. Before the key councillor was asked for his findings there was general discussion with each councillor commenting on the sterling job done by the council on maintaining roads in the shire and the general positive feedback by the community about the methods and outcomes achieved. Some of the congratulations had been in written form so carried weight. Sadly, none of the speakers had been to look at our road in preparation for the meeting as all had been too busy with important issues. The people in the small chairs were moving restlessly by now, dying to interrupt.

At long last, the sole informed councillor was invited to make a presentation. He was a grey-haired, intelligent-looking gent nicely dressed in a suit. He did a bit of nervous paper shuffling. He started by reading aloud a short letter that she and I had sent in. It was beautifully written and totally balanced in viewpoints but quite unsupportive of the tree felling. It used the words ‘Needless destruction’ to describe the situation. ‘I also view the felling as needless destruction’, the councillor said. The mayor interrupted authoritatively. ‘This was not needless destruction as the felling was done in the process of upgrading the road. Furthermore, the word destruction has a subjective connotation. Could we please stick to facts’? The mayor was clearly worried that the word suing might come next. The councillor soldiered on. ‘I propose we should accept that mistakes have been made, because the local community is unhappy, and concentrate on ways that we can alleviate the needless destruction, sorry, consequences. We need to prevent this happening in future. I move that we postpone discussion of details until a later time when we have all had a chance to think more about the bigger issue of how we might upgrade our road maintenance procedures’.

The mayor looked relieved, brightened visibly, and asked for comments from other councillors. They all agreed to a later meeting after again fully supporting current methodologies and reventilating the tree drip problem. Nobody actually said ‘it’s just a few old trees, I don’t know what you greenies are getting excited about, and we’ve got lots of trees here’.

Surprisingly, the mayor opened the meeting to the floor. He pointed out that he would have anyone removed from the meeting who did not show the correct decorum. I whispered to Peter in the next seat, ‘what’s that?’

She stood up. She’s a good speaker cleverly thanking everybody first and saying what a terrific council they were bringing out the smiles and relaxing the room. I was scared she was going to say everything was my fault which is her usual fall-back position, but I didn’t get mentioned. She pointed out that the trees hadn’t needed to come down to improve road visibility as it was a straight section, the trees hadn’t had any falling limbs, were in good health, and that lying down trees are much more likely to jump out and kill drivers than standing trees that have gaps between them; safety on the road had been reduced by the council’s actions. Nice facts and a good thing to discuss logically without red angry faces. She’s quite smart sometimes.

Kim told us about the EPA, the fouling of the river and lots of other things about the environment but didn’t tell the council he would hang them all out to dry. This was because he had calmed down by now and had his stocks and shares to think about. Peter made some nice relaxed comments. Only Old Tom came within five seconds of being thrown out by telling the council loudly and repeatedly what we had all been thinking. He refused to sit down probably because he couldn’t see his small chair so far down below him. He had also been in the Vietnam War so was quite good at handling conflict.

The meeting was brought to a close because things were starting to warm up with the decision that council would clean up the site. In particular they would remove the big tree that had been felled right across the river and put it on the bank with the other corpses. That was a pity because it made a great bridge right into our back yard. I had walked across it several times.

No comments:


Hanging Valley