Chapter 24

Tuesday, August 17, 1999

It was customary to not talk about agenda items as the council members sat around before the meeting, waiting for the minute hand on the clock to point straight up. More than customary -- it could be considered a violation of the Open Meetings Act. There had been some squabbles about near-violations of the act in the recent past, mostly stirred up by Bill Driscoll looking for anything he might be able to use to discredit the council. As a result, the members of the council made it a point to avoid gathering in more than twos or threes, unless they all happened to be at a public function like a banquet or a ball game.

That sometimes made it difficult, since all of the council members except Emily had been on the council for a long time, and most were friends anyway. Emily knew them all, but none as close friends; every one of them dropped by the Spee-D-Mart once in a while, mostly since the gas price was about a nickel a gallon cheaper than it was out at the truck stop across from General. As with anyone else, Emily often had a polite conversation with them; since she'd been on council, sometimes it was to talk about some upcoming item in a casual way, which was legal so long as there were three or fewer council members in on the discussion.

As far as that went, Driscoll was as welcome as anyone else to drop by the Spee-D-Mart to top off his tank, get a cup of coffee and a donut, and shoot the bull with Emily as she stood behind the register. He often did; she'd known long before she'd come on council that he could be an interesting conversationalist so long as the conversation was on some subject where he didn't feel he had to grind an axe. However, since she'd been on council, there had been all too many of those. One of the more unpleasant aspects about being on council was the need to carry on the business of the store as she listened politely to him as he stood and bent her ear about whatever it was he was whining about. He was all too ready to give her the benefit of his obviously superior knowledge and experience.

At least he wasn't running for council this year -- perhaps being outpolled by a dead man had something to do with it. Council terms were for three years, with two or three members being elected each year; Mike Daugherty was on the ballot for re-election this year, along with Jim Pikkala, another long-term council member, and maybe Driscoll had gotten the message he wasn't likely to shoulder either of them aside. That didn't mean he wasn't a citizen and deserved to have his opinions listened to, and Emily was of the opinion he was worth listening to since very often he was right on the nose. But that didn't keep him from being a pain in the ass who made her heart drop every time she saw him walk into the store.

"So, Emily," Daugherty spoke up, looking for something to fill the silence, "Did you have a good trip?"

"A great trip," she smiled. "There were literally thousands and thousands of bikes there. There were some good shows, and everything you could imagine was on sale. I mean, like everything."

"I can't believe you'd actually ride a motorcycle all the way out to South Dakota and back," Driscoll snorted.

"That was the best part of the trip," Emily smiled. "Just being out in the wind, looking at all the scenery going by. It makes for some long days, but we took our time and took the back roads from the other side of South Bend on. It was so neat being out with my Harley on some quiet two-lane highway under those big clear skies."

"You sure like riding that thing, don't you?" Pikkala smiled.

"Oh, yes," she grinned. "It was the nicest thing Kevin has ever done for me. I ride it whenever I can. It's not as often as I like, since I have to haul the kids around in the minivan so much."

"Motorcycle mamma, I guess," Levitsky shook his head in a slightly sneering tone.

It was not the first time that the city manager had expressed his distaste over a council member who would ride to the meeting on her Harley, like she'd done this evening. She'd been doing it since the weather turned decent in the spring, but after the kid reporter from the Hawthorne Telegram had run a picture of her and the bike on the front page he'd started to needle her about it.

"Actually, I think it's kind of neat," Daugherty smiled. "I remember the old Indian I had when I was a kid. I used to have a lot of fun riding it, but boy, that was a long time ago."

"It's just hard to believe this is a town where a woman council member would ride a Harley, of all things, to a council meeting," Levitsky commented, his tone considerably more sneering this time.

"Looks like it's about that time," Daugherty broke in before this got serious. He picked up the gavel, tapped it lightly, and said, "Call the meeting to order. Roll call, please."

Emily remained impassive. It wasn't the first time she'd been needled by Levitsky -- they really weren't on good terms with each other, going right back to when she'd voted against Hufford as the DPW supervisor. The city manager's job in any town is to follow the direction of council, which needs to provide that direction. In practice in most towns, the city manager makes a recommendation about a course to follow, and more likely than not the council goes along with it. That had been happening less and less of late on the Bradford Council. Almost anything more than a routine rubberstamping of something obvious usually got at least two votes against, Pikkala's and Warner's, but more and more frequently the recommendations were voted down, with Emily going either way, depending on the issue. Levitsky seemed to take the rejections personally, and often responded by being critical of the council members personally, and tonight it seemed to be Emily's turn. However, the council members usually tried to get along with each other and the city manager the best they could, since they knew he'd be gone sooner or later, and they'd still be in Bradford.

Still, a remark like that ticked her. It wasn't appropriate to say something in the course of the meeting, so she let it go, but afterwards she stood outside talking with Lloyd Weber about it. "You know the problem as well as I do," Weber told her. "As far as he's concerned, we're nothing more than a bunch of yokels in Hicksville he has to put up with until he can find a better job. He thinks he's smarter than the council, and if you don't believe it, just ask him. He's not the first arrogant young punk city manager we've had and probably won't be the last one. Believe me, I've seen a lot of them go through in forty years."

"It would be nice if he found a job somewhere else," Emily said. "And sooner, rather than later. I honestly don't think he's been doing all that great a job, and that's not just my reaction to him being cranky. But it's not good for the council or the community to have him badmouthing everything."

"You on the council are the ones who are going to have to remind him sooner or later that he works for the council, you don't work for him," Weber advised. "Actually, I think at least part of the problem is he's sat around listening to Driscoll a little too much about how unqualified the council members are."

"You mean, we don't have college degrees, we weren't auto company executives who know what's best for everyone whether we like it or not?"

"That puts it in a nutshell," Weber grinned. "Driscoll isn't the first person to blow into town and tell us that we're all a bunch of yokels who don't know what we're doing. Unfortunately, Levitsky agrees with him. Anyway, I wanted to tell you, that sounded like a neat trip you and your husband took."

"We had a good time, that's for sure," she smiled, grateful to be discussing something else. "Would you like me to write a story about it?" She'd been writing for the Courier since last winter, starting with the township board meeting and the story about Woodward and Malvern Hill. Sometimes it was a fairly large feature story -- the most recent was about a Bradford man's efforts to get a medal for the heroism displayed by a long-deceased ancestor -- and sometimes it was coverage of a routine meeting, like the township board. She'd said right from the start she didn't want to cover the council meetings, because it wasn't quite like the chamber and wouldn't be right; he'd agreed it could cause a conflict of interest, and said he was happy she'd seen the pitfall.

"Maybe a small one with one photo," he said. "But I was thinking about it during the meeting, and I came up with an idea. Your time at the Spee-D-Mart is pretty flexible, isn't it?"