Chaos and drama or facts and debate - what'll it be?

In the years of my youth, rural and small-town America carried an often-undeserved badge of honor that represented wholesomeness, politeness, and a deep sense of care and protection of each other. In reality, nothing could be less accurate.

Small towns nearly always came pre-packaged with longstanding cliques, as well as temporary alliances ready to pounce on whatever could be twisted into a controversy, keeping boredom at bay and adrenaline high as drama set in. As mechanization replaced sweat labor in agricultural communities, the need for dopamine became more pronounced. And in communities that lacked a variety of productive and tempting opportunities competing for attention, real-life soap operas took their place.

After several years of relative peace, Belton’s city government again finds itself the target of that group – the names are the same each time – that thrives on creating the same chaos that used to be restricted to the telephone lines and grocery stores. Today, it is done far more broadly and effectively on social media. The illusion that these participants represent a significant number of citizens is easy to maintain among those who enjoy the drama and like to see chaos.

And the risk to those who want to manage our city in a way that will put Belton in a position to capitalize on its pending and continual growth is that they’ll buy the illusion and waver from what their conscience, education, and direct contact with the challenges being faced tell them to do. It’s hard to remember that even 20-30 vocal keyboardists don’t represent anywhere near a critical mass of our 25,000-plus citizens. And it is even harder to recognize when they fill council chambers, as does happen from time to time.

That’s not to discourage anyone from voicing their opinions, loudly and passionately if appropriate. But it’s on the intended targets of those messages to discern what percentage of those voices are coming from “personally aggrieved” individuals, what percentage is coming from frequent flyers that are onboard for any battles with City Hall, and what percentage from citizens that have a grasp on the facts involved. Then vote your conscience based on the research and thought we elected you to put in. That’s nearly always happened in the past, but chaos en route to that end is never pleasant when sprinkled with misunderstandings of the issues, gross inaccuracies, blind assumptions, and personal axes.

There are two sets of changes afoot at City Hall, both driven by the challenge of managing inevitable and fast-moving growth.

The first has to do with the city’s Park Board, the longstanding “untouchable” component of our city’s government. It’s “untouchable” because of the independence granted to it by the city charter and its separate flow of property tax income, both confirmed by voters on multiple occasions. Overall, the structure has been undeniably successful. Our parks are, without doubt, the envy of the metropolitan area.

But by state law and necessity, the board’s authority and independence come with distinct limitations. Some of those limitations have only recently been revealed by legal precedent, and some of the spending authority limitations have in the past not been strictly adhered to. There are also questions of interpretation involved on that front that are being sorted through. All this brings the threat of change, and the ever-present “that’s not the way we’ve always done it” protest.

And of course, that protest has been heightened by Mayor Norm Larkey’s decision to bring two new members onto the board to replace two members whose terms have expired. Those members wanted to stay, and the City Council, as is its right, voted not to approve the replacements. How this will end, we don’t know. The mayor, like any chief executive, has the absolute right to fill vacant positions with candidates of his choosing. In Belton, the council has the absolute right to reject those selections. This isn’t as big a deal as it is being made to be. Negotiations will be held, and eventually a vote will be held, most likely placing two members of Larkey’s choosing on the board. This happens everywhere, all the time. In most cases, the initial “no” vote from the council comes about simply as a need for more information. Once that has been given, consent will as well, even if there are a remaining holdout or two.

The second, which drew immediate concern from a contingent of city staffers that have by necessity kept their names out of the fray but whose message has been picked up by the same group that generally joins in any time there’s a complaint about City Hall, is the proposed move of our emergency services dispatchers to Harrisonville under a contract with the Cass County Sheriff’s Office.

Nobody wants to hear their job is being moved, they’ll report to and be part of a new agency, or they’ll be shifted to a different department and duty altogether through no choice of their own. Anyone who’s worked in the corporate world or government for 10, 20, 25 years or more has experienced it. I have. It’s a terrible thing to hear, and once the move has been made, it’s hard to get used to. No one begrudges the staff the right to feel sacrificed.

But the facts are simple. Belton faces a stark choice, even sooner than it thought. Its dispatch facilities are hemmed in on all sides by the jail. Whether through lack of foresight when the facility was built, or simply greater growth than was anticipated, the call volume has increased to a level that more call-takers are needed than there is physical room for. Additionally, former department leadership saddled the on-duty dispatchers with assisting correctional officers with certain duties – something few communications professionals outside Mayberry have ever had to deal with. We’ve outgrown all of this.

What’s more, despite the social media concerns about response time and geographic familiarity, Belton Communications was actually conducted from the sheriff’s state-of-the-art facility for longer than a month this spring during jail renovation. Just days after moving back, the dispatch center was hit with a roof leak, severely damaging at least one of the existing consoles. Within minutes of the incident, Belton communications were switched back to CCSO, our dispatchers were sent back to Harrisonville, and there they remain, to this very day. Again, none of the threats to emergency response have materialized – even if we do all sympathize with those who have adjusted to new surroundings, work rules, and procedures.

Sheriff Jeff Weber is, as you might imagine, excited at the possibility of taking on this new responsibility should it come as a permanent change. He believes his facility is being underused currently and would love to see it stretched to its potential. And, as an illustration of how misinformation can become part of policy debate, he denied a charge made during city council debate last month that he had mailed each of the nine dispatchers chosen to make the move a letter asking that they commit by Aug. 1. That alone could change sentiment and shows how critical it is to have only verified facts on the table at decision time.

The bottom line is that running a city, or any entity with a $100 million budget, is complex. Far more complex than social media commentary can capture, even if some of the pot-stirring is originating with city council members who are supposed to have a grasp of the complexities, but appear to be far more offended because they may not have been treated as nicely as they’d like by the city manager. Nearly every time someone who immerses themselves in following Facebook drama has asked me, “Why’s the city doing this dastardly thing?” I’ve answered with, “but they’re not telling you (this consideration or that) that limits the mayor or staff’s options,” and the response is a thoughtful, “ohhh, I didn’t realize that.”

It’s extremely complicated to serve as an elected official if you’re truly taking the position seriously. And even more so to serve as a city manager or department head. Every single decision has multiple facets, with potential traps and rattlesnakes around every corner.

Nothing is anywhere near as simple as it appears from a glance at social media. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be public oversight – there must be. But to understand what you’re overseeing, you have to ask enough questions to grasp the issues. And much can be understood simply by watching the meetings, listening intently to the discussions, reading the agendas and backup materials, and shooting a quick email with remaining questions to your councilmember. None of that will make you an expert, because even that is just a scratch on the surface of what’s needed to fully understand. But it will nearly always quell the actual drama.

The other important thing to understand is roles. As City Manager, Joe Warren is paid to catch quite a few arrows, and he’s quite used to it. What he’s not paid to do is be a grinning, backslapping politician. We had that recently, and it was a disaster. Somebody else gets to deal with that now. We need competence, an aggressive growth strategy, and the development of a shared vision from the city manager through every department, top to bottom (realizing, of course, that there is no “bottom” when it comes to public servants).

We need a point person that’s in alignment with the course provided by the mayor and council, without being too intimidated to challenge ideas that don’t make sense or seem afield from the general direction. If there are some that are offended by Warren’s directness, the strength of his opinions or his dogged determination to set an exact course for the future on what goes and what doesn’t go with regard to city management’s relationship with the Park Board, then I suggest they should get a handle on exactly what it is we’re paying for.

Fight your battles across the conference table or in the council chamber, but ask yourself truthfully, does it really ever just come down to “this is how we’ve always done it?”

Because if that’s the case, understand this real fast: we’ve never before been at 25,000 population; our growth rate is matched only by that of the 1950s when we were suddenly assigned an Air Force base and most of us know we’re only now recovering from some of the mistakes made in that era; and what we decide now very well may make the difference between us becoming Raytown and us becoming Lee’s Summit or Overland Park. Which would you rather be?

If it’s the latter, understand the complexity behind every single decision that’s being made. And please learn to bother your councilmember with “this doesn’t make sense” questions rather than stirring political pots on social media. Instead, try sharing facts on social media. There are plenty of reality shows that’ll give us our “chaos” fix.

And since we’re no longer the small rural town I discussed in the opening of this column, it makes sense that we should finally outgrow that stage.