I’ve served Arkansas municipalities in one form or another
since January 1971. I know a few juicy tidbits, enough to make a book titillating. On second
thought, there wouldn’t be enough to create scandals worthy of the media’s
attention. Anyway, I wouldn’t do it. I have too much love and respect for those
I’ve worked with.
No, to make a living, a good living from my experiences
working for municipal governments, by receiving nurture from their kindness and
understanding, I couldn’t turn on them. If Wiley Coyote never turned on the
Acme Corporation, I certainly couldn’t turn on the cities that kept me employed
and made me a small and semi-famous fish in an even smaller pond.
I might, on the other hand, create some interest by
discussing some of my more boneheaded moves, gaffs, mistakes, and shortcomings.
After all, I did once participate in the design of a main street mall. And I
did once agree to do a downtown revival plan for a city after I helped it get a
bypass built. That’s like a surgeon being hired to repair an operation he or
she botched.
But, some doozies and some caveats.
The frequency and hilarity of my many failures to include the
necessary letter “L” in the word public are legion. It once disrupted a
committee meeting for ten minutes.
Once, faced with an impossible solution to 18-wheelrers
blasting through the middle of a college campus on a state highway, and faced
with fatigue and exasperation, I said, “Hell, just narrow the street, they’ll
slow down.” We put it in the plan, and, to my horror, I later found the city
had done it. I rushed to assess the damage, and found it was working, sort of,
after the truckers had knocked down a few light posts in protest. They tired of
it after a while and life went on, albeit more slowly.
Have you ever written a letter to a mayor and mistook the name
of the city? No, I haven’t either. That’s the one thing they won’t forgive a
consultant for. I have gotten the name of the mayor wrong. It’s pretty bad when
you refer to them by a political opponent’s name.
I did drive my boss’s Mercedes convertible to a city once.
Once. The rule is: you can come to town in a $50,000 pickup, but lord help the
fool that shows up in a 10-year old Mercedes bought at a distress sale.
Appearances are appearances, after all.
Oh, and don’t mark the mayor’s home as “substandard non-reparable” on a housing conditions map.
Don’t bring a young wife with you to a planning commission meeting
and have her sitting at the back of the room looking straight at you when a
speaker at a zoning hearing starts explaining how she can converse with fairies
and angels and they warned her that the city shouldn’t approve this zoning
request.
Leave on time to get there, and find out beforehand where
City Hall is. They move it sometimes.
Never, ever, ever, badmouth another university, even one
from Texas. It’s a guarantee that the Mayor is a graduate.
So that’s how I would divulge secrets. And I didn’t share
the worst transgressions. They can wait.
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