The Schultz Report - Where are the Citizens?

Reading and rereading his report brings to light an assumption made by Dr. Schultz in his attempts at facilitating improvement in council trust and communication. He assumes that distrust and poor communication are problems the new council members want to solve. It is just as likely the opposite is true.

Schultz, as was his charter, only considered intra-council relations and council-staff relations in his examination of trust and communication. A more complete picture includes some of Maplewood's citizenry as the third body in this love triangle, the constituency of the new members.

Future posts can develop documentation, but I want to make these assertions clearly. As an observer with no inside knowledge, it seems to me that:

• Cave works to separate citizens from one another (group homes from neighbors, seniors from other citizens) and their government (eminent domain) to create an agitated group for which she can be the champion.
• Hjelle works to encourage distrust within the ranks of public safety workers, and between citizens and the public safety department heads.
• Longrie works to undermine the professionalism of staff by constant second-guessing of engineering, planning, financial, and legal work. We are likely to see this in Technicolor as Gladstone continues to develop.

If you want to be seen as the fixer to your constituents, something has to look broken. Nothing does this better than creating an atmosphere of distrust by undermining the relationships and traditions in place. They are indifferent to governing: they want to rescue, to be the saviors.

It is not clear that the three of them are even conscious of what they are doing and how they are doing it. It is like a big, tall guy going around being intimidating. As far as he knows, he is just going around being big and tall. It seems that distrust, tribalism, and the idea that rules are for other people are fundamental aspects of human nature in their worldview, so they act as if these traits are universal.

It was not in Dr. Schultz'’s purview to look at citizen attitudes, and it is consistent with the threesome's attitude to forget that outside of their control citizens have a voice and power. But citizens have not forgotten. At least some of us credit the city staff for the professional work that has made Maplewood a good place to live, administrators like Richard Fursman for creating conditions where professionals want to work, and prior city councils for open and fair public discussion of public policy, leading to consensus positions.

We credit the new crowd with reaping dissent and distrust, as they have sown.