Archive

Comments made to City Council - 10/20/11

At the Public Comment section of last night’s meeting of City Council, I delivered some prepared remarks. FYI, the text follows. A video of the session was recorded by Robert Chilson, the link to that is below. I’ll have more to say about the session, and the ongoing inexplicable refusal of Mayor Mack to accept the State’s Transitional Aid offer, this weekend. Have a good one!

Good Evening, Madame Chair and Members of Council. “Where there is discord may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. Where there is despair, may we bring hope.”

When you are born and grow up in a town named after Francis of Assisi, who spoke those words, it kind of sets the bar pretty high for role models. I’ve always thought that these words, in particular, provide as good a set of personal and professional goals as one is ever likely to be blessed enough to strive for in one’s life.

This evening I am not going to talk about the news of the day, or any of the pressing issues before us. They are all too familiar and too raw.

What I want to do is talk about your place in time, your roles in these chambers and in this building – now and today – in a city where Discord, Error, Doubt and Despair are sadly in far greater supply than Harmony, Truth, Faith and Hope. I will ask each of you – but leave you to answer to your own conscience – which have you been more successful at producing in your work on Council over the last sixteen months: Harmony, or Discord? Truth, or Error?

I feel safe enough to say, since I have heard it personally from many of you, that you didn’t sign up for any of this. I will go as far as to say that many days you must wake up and feel that you lost your election rather than won. Yet, here you are. This is your lot, this is your responsibility. It has been quite an education for you all. Many of you are rising to the job, serving us well and learning a tough job in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Governing a poor city in depressed times will never be easy, and it is especially burdensome when you as a Council must constantly deal with never-ending foolishness in the Executive. Some of you, however, have not acquitted yourselves well, and serve us poorly. You have assumed the prestige of your office as an attribute of your own personalities rather than a pale reflection of the trust and responsibility we citizens have – temporarily – lent you for the duration of your solemn oaths. You have become arrogant. You sow Discord. You spread Error.

This is an august Chamber, and a splendid building. This town has a proud history, and many things of which to be proud, even today, when the furnaces that made this town great, and which are depicted on the magnificent mural behind you are long cold, and the wealth they produced long fled. We struggle in the shadow of giants, though this work now be harder than anything those who came before us faced in far better times than these.

Every day I travel to work by train, on a route that takes me out of Trenton in two minutes, out of Mercer County in ten. Every day I am reminded that this is a small place, and that outside of the boundaries of this town, almost no one cares about us. Seems to me this realization should instill an overwhelming humility in all of you, rather than arrogance; and a renewed dedication to seek concord rather than conflict; and to resist corruption, deceit and fear. We have only ourselves, together, to pull us through this. For better or worse, we put our trust every day in you. Don’t mess it up.

After having said all this I will conclude as I began, with the words of Francis, this time perhaps with a sense that these words may give us all common purpose in hard times: “Where there is discord may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. Where there is despair, may we bring hope.” Thank you.

Thanks to Robert Chilson for recording last night’s full session.

1 comment to Comments made to City Council – 10/20/11

  • Bill

    Beautifully written and expressed! I sure hope it didn’t fly over the heads of those most in need of self-reflection. We are at a real tipping point in this city and I believe that decisive action is imminent.