Fort Collins City policy almost killed me but I came out stronger
At my very first City meeting, I could have DIED — of boredom.
Indeed, two hours in, I was nearly moved to tears by this tortuous length of time during which seemingly nothing of significance was happening. I remember thinking with a begrudging bitterness, “How does anyone care about local government and their policies?”
When my editor last year said people get really heated about local parking policy and that a story about a parking meeting would get a lot of reads, I just laughed in my head. Like, really hard. Sorry Haley.
Because she was right.
People were passionate at the meeting and people were interested in the story about the policy (it was RP3, by the way).
And it was while sitting in the middle of this debate over the attractiveness of street parking signs — a topic considered worthy of curing insomnia — that I started wondering, “Am I the weird one for not caring?”
Well, if weird means “uncommon” then obviously not; but if weird means “surprising in a way that is unsettling or hard to understand” then, perhaps I am.
I’ve lived in Fort Collins for 16 years, and it’s just recently I’ve realized how ignorant I am to how the City actually works.
The actions of the City directly impact us and can be instantly felt. That new Time-of-Day electricity billing? The City decided on that. That really ugly new building you hate? The City approved it. That fine you just slapped with for some housing violation? The City made that ordinance.
Being a college town, I’m betting a good number of students here do not recognize this. We might bitch and moan about some vague “City rules” when we notice them, but despite interacting with them every single day, their actual functions are totally unremarkable to us. We serve our four years and leave without ever learning how this City actually runs.
Would it be too stupid to ask why we don’t care?
Sidewalks. Parking. A 0.000015 percent increase in sales tax.
All dull, logistical things.
Package them in wrappings of legal jargon and dry reports and now they are double-boring plus a side of complex. It’s no stretch at all to imagine a busy college student avoiding this stuff.
Part of it is we don’t like all that “policy” talk, especially when we have bigger, sexier legislative topics to attend to. You know, like those super hot ethics debates over gee, should women be allowed to be topless in public? and oh, what are the moral obligations of a sanctuary city? We like that.
We like the moral, petty federal-level drama swarming all over our news feeds. We like the drama of the federal and even state level issues not necessarily because of the immediate impact they have on us but because they’re so universal and so intertwined with our ethical and political values that they surpass the boring policy portion we might still not understand. We even like when things are politicized, even if we say we don’t. Pageviews don’t lie.
In particular, any issues with a touch of sexism, racism, homophobia, classism — become litmus-test issues at the federal level because of how attention-garnering they can be. But by ignoring our local level government, we seem to assume those hot-button issues either don’t exist at our level.
The two ethics debates I mentioned above, topless gender equality and sanctuary cities, are both pulled straight from controversies Fort Collins was caught in just the last two years. In fact, we are still in court over the topless ban on women. And those are just the big ones.
How new public ordinances concern the homeless population and trailer park rights are a clear case of class struggle in this overall affluent community. The need for ADA and wheelchair accessible bus stops is still very real in Fort Collins. Sidewalk equality in our economically and (let’s be real) racially segregated neighborhoods is obvious.
These policies might not scream “BIG ‘OLE HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES” like a wall against Mexico, but underneath the layers of numbers and boring, they’re there.
Whenever I speak to someone in local government, they all repeat to me one thing: local government impacts you. Yes, you, the reader. It touches us in our monthly bills, our hourly routines, and in the people we see each day. Those intimate, universally emotional topics which heat us up at the national level don’t vanish at the county line, but our consideration for them does. And even though I understand why it happens, I can’t help but wonder what this town would look like if it didn’t.
Personally, every time I survive another City meeting, my tolerance for pure policy goes up and my ability to take these huge honking trees of land use code and 42-year-development plans and see the forest of their implications grows a little stronger.
You don’t have to be like me and regularly attend City meetings or hearings (really, but you might not survive it). But simply looking up how a City Council meeting runs or following one City issue in the local paper: that might be enough to start the understanding. Build up your policy tolerance now, and maybe when the time comes, when you are rallied by a local issue, when you do decide to care about the mechanisms reshaping the world of your daily life — maybe then, you’ll know what you have to do.
I doubt this article is going to get many if any reads. Nobody wants to hear about why some uninteresting thing is important — I get it.
At the very least, I hope my words didn’t bore you.