City Council

I went to my first city council meeting last night. I went because there is a change coming to my neighborhood and I wanted to make sure it wasn't going to have a negative impact on us.

Here's something I noticed as we were waiting for our "issues" to be addressed in the night's agenda. 7 men and 2 women sit on the council. Not a single one of them looked a day under 50. Many of them have been on the council for years.
Have we as a city become complacent? Don't we want someone in there that's going to represent our issues? What does a 60 year old man know about what a new family needs in this city? There is a definite lack of places to take young children in this city. We keep building condos, yet we've had a major retail space empty for 4 years. People aren't going to want to live here unless there's something to do.
Also in watching these councilors during this meeting, the majority seemed uninterested in even being there. We elected you to make decisions for this city, at least act interested. There were actually 2 councilors that came up to us, (me and my husband) after the meeting was over to speak to us (I had gotten up to speak and act questions about our neighborhood "issue"). This did make an impact on me to know that at least 2 were interested in what we had to say and valued our opinions. They even told me to call them if we ran into any problems. Did they really care? I'll never know, but at least they put themselves out there.
Maybe it's time for a change. Maybe instead of just going to the polls and saying "My job's done, I voted", maybe more of us should continue to "monitor" what these elected officals are actually doing for us. We should get involved with the decisions that are being made for us.
Take time out at least once to attend a city council meeting or a school board meeting, anything that you know is going to have a direct impact on your life. You may actually learn something in the process.