The Ghost of Council's Future

[Nancy Holmes <ncmholmes@moscow.com>]

Dear Visionaries;

I (Evan Holmes, not Nancy) have few thoughts to offer about Tony Johnson's
imaginary successor.

I agree that the voters' voice must be heard. Should that be the 1999
voters who chose Aaron Ament or the 1997 voters who elected Tony Johnson?
Seems like those 1997 voters might still be expecting a couple of years of
representation. It is likely that Tony and Marshall Comstock can come up
with a name or two of somebody that might serve well as Tony's proxy. Maybe
they already have. Do you dare me to ask them? Double dare?

In the broad sense it seems like the real issue here is the process by
which successors are named. Is there a terrible problem with that process?
Can we devise a better one? In fact, it seems to me that there are members
of this community who think that any appointment would be questionable
unless, of course, it was made by them.

There is a common denominator here that exists whenever there seems to be a
contested decision. Everybody outside the inner loop wants to see a more
open process. That is possible, regardless of what the Idaho law says about
who actually submits the nomination. For instance, the mayor and council
could interview three or four nominees in an open forum. You can probably
think of other ways to demonstrate inclusivity.

As a footnote I'll add this musing (even though Steve Busch and I both know
that public musing can lead to trouble). The three candidates elected this
autumn each appeared on over half of the ballots cast - a pretty good
statistical indication of voter approval. None of the other candidates did.
(My apologies to the mathematician/statisticians out there who know I'm
making one big, though likely, assumption in order to state this).

One final note. Mostly good will arise from any public forum, such as this,
that promotes dialogue about government. We usually treat "the government"
as an object but in reality it is merely a collective idea.

Thanks for listening.

						- Evan Holmes