Chapter 27

It was cold and windy in Bradford that day, too, and since daylight savings time had ended, it was dark when Emily parked the minivan and headed into the annual council organizational meeting, held on a Monday as always. It would have been nicer to have been out on the Sportster on a warm summer evening. But, that time of the year had gone; the Sportster was under a tarp, and likely to stay that way unless the weather over the next few days broke out into an unseasonably gorgeous warm spell -- it was capable of doing that, but whether it would was a different story.

The election the previous week had taken place without any incident or comment whatsoever, since it was an off-year election, with nothing on the ballot but the council election. There was no real contest for seats with Mike Daugherty and Leonard Pikkala running for re-election to seats they'd held for several terms, it would have been remarkable if a hundred voters had shown up at the polls. In fact, only forty-seven did.

Emily was uncomfortable about that fact. It was not that it showed any lack of civic interest on the part of the voters, but that it cost the city over a thousand dollars spent on the various complexities of holding an election. That included hiring four poll workers who did little but sit and work on their knitting all day. When she'd come down to vote the week before, she'd mentioned to Marci, the city clerk, that it seemed like it was an unnecessary expense. "It probably is," Marci had told her. "But that's how it's set up in the charter."

"Maybe we ought to think about changing the charter," she'd said.

"In the past they've talked about it," the clerk replied. "The problem is that you'd have to open up the whole thing, and that would be even more expensive. We only have about one election in four that's this bad," she'd added.

She'd still been thinking about it earlier that day when Leonard came into the store. "The problem is," he told her when she'd brought the question up to him, "That with elections every other year you could take a majority off council every year, and it would be a lot simpler to change a majority. Alton told me once that there were times in the past when things might get so stirred up that they had factions who tried to take council over to grind their own axes. Having so much time between filing and the election helps prevent that, and elections every year means the change can't be quite so abrupt. Emily, you've been on council long enough to know that it takes a while to learn what you can do and what you can't. If you had four people with axes to grind get on council not knowing what they're doing, it could take years to clean up the mess. They had one like that back in the sixties; that's how we got the current charter in the first place."

"I suppose," she sighed. "But it'd be nice to have people showing a little more interest in council."

"True," he smiled. "Alton told me there used to be stuff so controversial they had to have a primary, with eight or ten people running for two seats. The council hasn't gotten the community stirred up much in recent years, which tells me we've been doing a pretty good job. But that's at least partly because we've learned to keep reins on the city manager, and because we've learned there are areas there's no point in sticking our noses into because it's going to be not worth the trouble if we do. I'm not opposed to bringing up something controversial if it solves a genuine problem. The thing is Driscoll brings this stuff up because he's trying to stir something up to satisfy his own ego. Can't you imagine the zoo we'd have if there were four like him on council?"

"I'd just as soon avoid it, thanks," she said dryly. "But I have to say it's been an interesting year. I've learned a lot about how this stuff works, and there's more to it than most people think."

"You've done well, and you seem to have a taste for it. I know we've been on the opposite sides on a few votes, and that's fine, you have your reasons. It's good to see a new face who's taken a positive interest in it. Anyway, the other reason I dropped by was to see if you're still OK with Mike and Jim as mayor and mayor pro tem. That's one of those things it's nice to have cut and dried before Driscoll can spout off about something."

"I don't know why I wouldn't be," she told him. "Not that there's anything big they have to keep a handle on. It's mostly just running the meetings."

"True, but the mayor is the symbol of the community in some ways, and having a nice clean-cut vote for mayor shows that we're trying to work together."

This meeting was slightly unusual in that it would be two meetings back to back. Usually, the first meeting was to finish up any outstanding non-controversial pro forma items before having the election; then the new council took over and they took up any new business. There was no reason to think this evening wouldn't otherwise be routine. Other than the swearing-in and the vote for mayor and mayor pro tem, there were several other items of routine business, including a discussion and vote on whether to order a new skid steer loader for the DPW. That was almost a rubberstamp -- the loader was the most important piece of machinery the city had for cleaning up snow downtown. The current one had a cracked engine block that would cost half the price of a new replacement, and it was old enough that it was turning into a maintenance hog, anyway.

There was only a handful of people in attendance besides the council, clerk and city manager -- a couple city department heads, including Hufford, present because of the loader, and Daugherty's and Pikkala's wives. Lloyd Weber was there from the Courier -- the picture of the councilmen getting sworn in was one of those regulars that ran every year. There was also a handful of regulars that included Driscoll, who was there as usual to look for an opening to cause trouble.

It only took a few minutes to finish the old business and get down to the election of the mayor and mayor pro tem. The election was presided over by the clerk, by charter, and Leonard opened the nominations by saying, "I nominate Mike Daugherty for mayor, move the nominations be closed, and that a unanimous ballot be cast."

"If I may have a word," Daugherty spoke up. "I've been thinking about a few things the last few months, and Leonard, our discussion the other day crystallized a few of them. In the last few months, I've become particularly disturbed by some comments that have been made by people in this room who seem to think that people who are not college graduates are not qualified to be on council or serve the city..."

The city manager tried to break in "Mr. Mayor, I want..."

"I was speaking, Mr. Levitsky," Daugherty said with an evil eye, making clear one of the places where his comments were being directed. "I'm particularly resentful of some of those remarks, because I'm not a college graduate, and neither are some of the other members of this council, nor many others who have served the city on this council in the past. Contrary to the obvious opinion of some of the people in this room, it does not take being a college graduate to be a good citizen."