City government: Problems aplenty, but not here on Bainbridge | Letters | May 1

Samuel Johnson observed that nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of being hanged in the morning. However, I suspect he would be bemused by what we somewhat myopic citizens of Bainbridge Island are focused upon.

Against the background of a rolling global economic collapse, where entire nations are facing bankruptcy, millions of American workers are losing their jobs, health benefits and pensions, along with other millions losing their homes and their retirement savings; while the federal government can think of no better solution than stuffing various failed bank and insurance corporate corpses with money, and while the financial wizards who brought us this dramatic scenario shovel as much of these rescue funds into their own pockets without going to jail; while state and local governments have no choice but to make draconian cuts in expenditures for health, education and infrastructure; and, against a global political background where we seem impotent to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, or North Korea from developing ICBM’s to transport their nuclear weapons, or the Taliban’s rapidly accelerating takeover of Pakistan, which already has over 100 nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them; and, against an environmental scenario where global warming is melting the world’s snow packs, glaciers and polar ice caps, which will not only cause the flooding of millions of square miles of low-lying countries and states while also significantly decreasing the water available for irrigation and drinking in a world whose population is projected to grow by 50 percent in the next 50 years; against these backgrounds, the good people of Bainbridge are focused on whether we should continue to have a “strong” mayor positioned between the city council and the city administrator.

Perhaps, in these unstable times where basic assumptions about our futures seem ephemeral, if not delusional, and where we all seem to be at a loss of how to ameliorate, much less solve, the dangers which confront us, perhaps it is comforting to have a problem we can actually do something to resolve. Perhaps it is better to light a single candle, than to curse the descending darkness.

Which way to vote? As currently structured, if the mayor is not in agreement with the city council, or has his/her own agenda, he/she can thwart the implementation of the council’s policies and run the city as his/her own little fiefdom. Why would we want to continue to keep a single politician (usually elected on the basis of personality and often without significant management experience), who constitutes an additional layer of government expense and complexity, who has the ability to block the efforts of the majority of the other seven elected officials for intervals of up to four years, when we could have a professional manager selected on the basis of experience and fully accountable to the city council? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

If only solutions to our other problems were as simple and obvious!

Philip S. Griffey

Manitou Park Boulevard