Suppressing civic participation

Tonight I attended my civic league meeting. Unlike a lot of other civic leagues around the city (we have in excess of 100 civic leagues), ours only meets quarterly. Tonight’s speaker was Dr. Stephen Jones, the relatively new (less than a year) superintendent of Norfolk Schools and a resident of a neighborhood that adjoins ours. He had some good things to say about our school system.

After he left, our meeting continued, covering some routine business like the nominating commitee and so forth. At one point, the conversation turned to the Norfolk Federation of Civic Leagues. Our president talked about how the Federation has about 28 member civic leagues. That seems rather small to me. I recall the Federation being much larger and more forceful than that. Perhaps, like so many in Norfolk, people have gotten tired of trying to fight City Hall and the numbers have dwindled. (Side note: there are actually two Federations of Civic Leagues in Norfolk, the Norfolk Federation, which traditionally has been comprised of the white civic leagues, and the Inner City Federation, which was for the black civic leagues.)

The Federation wants to try to force council to have meetings in the evenings, when more people can attend. Right now, council has 3 meetings a month at 2:30 in the afternoon, and one meeting at night. Floyd, our president, then mentioned that there is “some law” that says the cities can’t do anything without permission and that Norfolk will have to ask for permission before it can change to night meetings. I pointed out that that “law” is the pesky Dillon Rule, and that the city charter would have to be changed to permit evening meetings. Further, I mentioned that this issue of evening meetings has come up before and council is unwilling to change.

We are the only locality in the region to not have an elected school board. We were the last to televise council meetings, which are about as bland as you can imagine. The real work goes on in the informal sessions. Funny but the meetings that they tape and show later are mostly the evening meetings.

Council in Norfolk has all the power and they want to keep it that way.

After the meeting, I talked to some of the members about the Dillon Rule as well as recent council elections. One in particular was upset that we had council members running unopposed. I told him about my sense that there is a culture of fear in Norfolk that keeps people from running for office. One of our older members, a former candidate for the House of Delegates, talked about the shadow group in Norfolk that runs things and is behind every decision. He said it has always been this way.

Lower participation in civic leagues, fewer members of the Federation, low voter turnout, lack of competitive races – some would say these are the symptoms of a satisfied electorate. I’d say it is a symptom of an electorate who feels powerless.

UPDATE: The council approved the budget yesterday and as a part of the package, decided to have two night meetings and two afternoon meetings each month. Yesterday’s informal session was the first ever televised. The two night meetings will be televised.