Speed Bumps: Steve Bauer + 630 Signatures + Six Months = No Change

August 25 will mark six months to the day from the County Board of Commissioners meeting at which Steve Bauer and Jan Angel were presented with over 600 signatures on a petition demanding that the speed bumps be removed. (Josh Brown was busy with something more important that evening and thus was not present).

What has Commissioner Bauer done in response? Well, as one who has been involved in the front lines of the fight, I can say that he has exhibited very little willingness to talk straight with people who are against the bumps, and has repeatedly failed to respond to straightforward inquiries regarding his role in the process that got the bumps installed, his bias in favor of the bumps, and his scheme for trying to defuse the issue and make the problem go away.

But - Bauer has at least made it clear that he does not care what the majority of Hansville citizens think about the bumps. He has ignored emails asking whether he will respect a majority vote of the affected residents/owners as to whether the bumps should stay or go. In fact, at an April 23 meeting, he very clearly stated that he was not going to remove the bumps simply because a huge majority of people wanted them gone.

So, Bauer has reverted to a proven technique that government and public agencies rely on all the time: death by meeting. Bauer and his lieutenant, County employee Ann Blair, have rolled out a plan for endless meetings, with no clear outcomes, and with no commitment by Bauer or the Commissioners to do anything when the meetings are all over. Bauer's game plan is the famous "Four Ds" of using procedure to kill something off - an endless series of meetings and "process" designed to "delay, defuse, discourage, and defeat." For a guy who took the position - publicly - that the bumps needed broad community support before they were put in, he has certainly changed his tune. Now, he accepts them as valid, and has placed the burden on those opposed to the bumps - the majority - to somehow "satisfy" the pro-bumpers' needs (as defined by the pro-bumpers) before Bauer will even consider doing anything at all.

The series of meetings that Bauer set up to try to fend off the speed bump critics has been a sorry exhibition of much that is wrong with today's trends du jour in management theory and organizational development. First, nobody will actually be responsible for making a decision and taking the heat for it. Instead, somehow, the people of Hansville - if they just go to enough meetings and talk enough about validating each other's core principles and personal needs, etc., etc. - will end up agreeing on everything. That way, the non-decision maker (Bauer) simply stands aside, lets everyone have a lovefest, and in the end pats himself on the back for guiding everyone along such a successful path to personal fulfillment and harmony. After all, as Bauer has stated publicly, he does not want to choose a winner and loser. Well, OK, but I thought that was a core function of any governmental official, especially an elected one: making the decision between two opposing views, and letting the chips fall where they may.

Instead, Bauer wants the two opposing camps to simply continue to bludgeon each other until one side or the other calls it quits. That is not a recipe for happiness in Hansville. Bauer and the pro-bumpers have already been surprised by the scope, intensity, and depth of the opposition to their bumps, and by now they would presumably understand that the speed bump opponents will not be going quietly into that dark night.

And, more to the point, Bauer is picking a winner: the speed bumps. Every day that he keeps them in place, while endless meetings with no defined outcome take place, he is picking a winner. Rather than treat the bumps as the unwarranted and unsupported deviation that they are, recognizing the mistake made in putting them in, and then promptly taking them out - thus returning everyone to the pre-mistake setting - Bauer is treating them as though they belong there. For Bauer to claim that he is not picking a winner is simply disingenuous.

Second, some of the meetings have been so condescending to Hansville's citizens that it makes you wonder what the County people were thinking, or if they were thinking at all. Therese Reilly wrote an excellent review of the big April 23 meeting, at which we were treated to a Sheriff who was there to compare the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to the death and destruction that would occur in Hansville if the bumps weren't there - oh, and who also mentioned that a few of his deputies were there to "keep the peace" because of concerns about tempers getting out of hand at the meeting. Puh-leez, Sheriff. And, there was Kreskin the Fire Chief, who somehow tested things without testing them . . . .

The last big meeting on June --- was a doozy. Adult citizens of Hansville were subjected to a lecture from a rather agitated Ann Blair about how things were going to be done - and then proceeded to put little sticky dots on some paper on the wall. If this sounds like 3rd grade to you - well, that's about what it felt like in the crowd. Another highlight was her explanation that when someone votes for a solution, they won't know what they are voting for because a smaller group will later decide what the proposal meant, and craft something that they think is appropriate.

So, there will be more meetings, more committees, more emails about working as a team and listening to our hearts so that we can move forward with a cohesive mission that validates all of our core values and achieves a new paradigm of community love, and - critically - more time spent by people to whom time is precious, doing work that will very likely be ingnominiously flushed down the nearest receptacle by Steve Bauer.

Because I think Bauer already knows what the outcome of all this tail-chasing is. He just isn't telling you and me.