MY CONSTITUENTS ARE CORRUPT
I’m sick of hearing about corrupt politicians. You want corruption? Try constituents.
I was the mayor of small city overrun with corrupt citizens, especially those who
became doggedly devoted to the cause du jour, and would do anything, ANYTHING to get their way.
Reflect on this, dear reader. Which side are you on?
A woman buys an expensive empty plot of land on which she naturally expects to build a home.
But her neighbors, my constituents, prefer that the plot remain empty lot so their dogs can continue to play and poop on it. The plot in questions has a large redwood tree at its epicenter, and the new owner's plan to build a home necessarily involves cutting it down. This provides her dog-owning neighbors ammunition to go bonkers and protest. They morph into implacable redwood protectors.
Never mind that the property owner is willing to build a goddam forest around the perimeter of her property to compensate for the lost redwood and to appease the neighbors. Never mind that redwoods have shallow roots and are inherently unstable, so building near or around them is dumb. Never mind that old trees don’t clean the air the way young new trees do. Never mind that we live in California where any tree grows--like Jack’s bean stalk—super fast.
The neighbors, intent on denying the property owner use of her property, made that damn redwood a cause célèbre. They conducted five marches to protect it and jammed the public comment portion of our council meetings. A petition, circulated to protect that redwood, was signed by over 500 people—most from neighboring towns. The poor property owner tried to float her own petition and got just 100 signatures—the most prominent being Donald Duck’s.
The property owner had to hire a lawyer, and one city-staff member (salary $100,000 yr) devoted 6 months to the issue. The woman finally got to build on her property. You know why? Because the leader of the protesting neighbors withdrew his opposition after deciding he wanted to build an addition to his home and had to remove some mature trees to build it. “Shameful NIMBYs” I called them. “Anti environmentalist” they called me. And I bet, dear reader, you agree.
From this fiasco emerged what some call the “Heritage Tree Ordinance” and what I call the “Heritage Twig Ordinance” because it protected trees that were young and just a few inches wide. I was the only council member bold enough to vote nay. The tree huggers labeled me tree hater. I was accused of liking people more than trees.
Folks. Only 9% of incumbents fail to get reelected. And thanks to my corrupt constituents, I am now part of the non-reelected elite.
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