Local politics is also absurdly boring which, I would argue, is why nobody pays attention. It's such an inconvenience to participate in the local political process because we're so used to the theatre that is Federal politics. I mean honestly, can we all name the members of our city council, our mayor, etc.?
Our culture is so addicted to stimulation that we just don't want to spend time on something as boring and banal as a city council meeting.
With all due respect—I have something which will blow your mind!
The city of Santa Monica broadcasts city council meetings. And both the items being adjudicated and the members from the public stepping up to the mic, are every bit as colorful as the brightest Hollywood blockbusters. I listened for years after leaving LA… KCRW Thursday evenings, grab some popcorn and enjoy!!
My town also broadcasts their meetings, and they're pretty darn tough to actually watch and focus on. Not that I expect my public officials to entertain me or cater to my interests, but it's not a particularly engaging format for a variety of reasons.
Yeah and it's cured me of any idea of ever running for one of those offices. No way could I handle sitting in every one of those meetings for several years.
With all due respect (seriously) - you're making the problem worse. The problem is national politics sucks all the attention in the political arena away from
local politics. Suggesting that people add yet another competing attention grab that occupies not only the politics but the local politics itch is just another push away from listening to what city hall is doing in their town.
There's also the fact that if Santa Monica's politics are that interesting, then people are more likely to be disappointed with how boring their local
politics are.
> I mean honestly, can we all name the members of our city council, our mayor, etc.
Of course I can. Off the top of my head:
City Council:
Lisa Herbold - neighborhood
Teresa Mosqueda - at large
Sara Nelson - at large, newly elected
Mayor:
Bruce Harrell - newly elected, replaced Jenny Durkan after one term. Was previously on the city council for 13 (?) years.
City Attorney:
Ann Davison - newly elected, replaced Pete Holmes who failed to advance through the primary after 12 years.
County Executive:
Dow Constantine - narrowly re-elected. Recently granted additional power to appoint the county sheriff.
These are the elected positions I vote on. I am also aware of appointed positions like parks, police, and city transit. I’m aware of the the parts of the council I don’t vote for.
I’m also aware of policy. Hazard pay for grocery workers. Attempting to stop catalytic converter theft. Fixing the bridge. Mask mandates. Public transit expansion. Defunding police.
I get a lot of my coverage of these events from the hyperlocal blog that covers my neighborhood. I have their number saved to text reports when I see them. They publish coverage of most local government meetings. I visit that site as often as HN.
This reminds me of a strategy I once heard on how to assign weights to people's votes according to their knowledge. You want to assign a high weight to those with relevant knowledge and low weight to those with little relevant knowledge.
So how do you know who has good relevant knowledge? Rather than just collecting the response to a question: "How many beans do you think are in this jar?" you also ask the _meta_ question: "What do you think will be the average response to the first question above?" For those who perform well on question 2, you assign higher weight to their answers on question 1.
If you just average all the answers to question 1, you are likely to get a close approximation to the true number of beans in the jar. But if you assign weights according to performance on question 2, you can get an even closer approximation to the true answer.
I may have gotten some details wrong, but the idea is that if you are aware of your peers' level of knowledge about a topic, then you are likely to be knowledgeable about the topic yourself.
Sure or people could just participate locally instead of being apathetic trolls on the internet. You get back what you put in. Nobody owes you anything. Do the work.
I could care about them if they were people I knew. For the most part I’m happy to leave the running of my city to the people interested in doing the job (with all the perks and mind numbing boringness it brings).
I don’t know the names but port of Seattle has two new representatives. They are the first minority-only representatives for the port. This is after a multi-year renovation of terminal 5 which is just now seeing new businesses from MSC.
That assumes you even live in a city. I have no idea who our town manager or whoever sits on the various boards of our 7K person town are. And, yeah, there's no hyperlocal blog. Maybe whatever filers through NextDoor and Facebook.
Then start one. My hyperlocal blog is sponsored by local businesses and promotes events like art walk where people walk around the local shops and purchase or view art created by local artists. If your community sucks it’s because of the people, not the government.
That's because local politics is dedicated mostly to establishing inane bureaucratic blockers for policies that would benefit everyone except the existing homeowners in the city.
My city council recently spent until 1am debating zoning regulations for California's new ADU law instead of doing the sane thing and just letting people build ADUs.
It's sad how true this is. What makes this particularly challenging is that most people that have the resources to seriously run for office have assets like real estate, which has a major impact on the decisions that you're talking about.
It takes less money than ever to run for office. What they do not have is the network and connections, nor are most of the public engaged. The segment of the public that is engaged and votes in the primaries for local elections tend to be business, real estate, and home owners.
our city council tries to do some stuff occasionally - but usually just ends up with the state legislature (90+ other counties) deciding they know best for our city.
Austin, TX by chance? We have some pretty infamous examples of that here. One of the sillier ones was the ban on plastic grocery bags that was overturned by the state legislature.
And also local and even to state politics are incredibly accessible.
It's quite easy to end up having a 1:1 conversation with a serious candidates for local office. Just 2 weeks ago I donated $500 to a candidate for CA state assembly and the next day I got a call from the candidate thanking me for the donation.
And it's pretty easy to volunteer for various organizations involved in local politics and get access to the current supervisor or state assembly member who is aligned with that organization.
And public comment is actually just like it's portrayed on Parks and Recreation.
Zoning is a huge issue. Houses are unaffordable to all but the upper middle class in my city because we can’t build fast or dense enough. Permits are an equally huge issue.
Garbage trucks provide a critical public service. Without them I would have to buy a different vehicle.
I agree that things like zoning and trash are important, I don't think anyone disputes that. However, they're not particularly accessible, engaging topics to discuss. That doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about them, but on the issue of a lack of engagement in the community and local government, citizens are asked to devote time to talking about zoning and trash as opposed to whatever else they choose to fill their time with, whether it's entertainment, side hustles, primary job, etc. On top of that, a growing number of people are being priced out of the market as you point out, which I suspect reduces engagement further. Why would the average person who can't even afford a starter home despite working full-time care about an issue like zoning? It feels like somewhat of a paradox.
A big part of the problem IMO is that as wealth inequality increases, more and more people just don't have a desire to participate in the system because the system perpetually disadvantages them. As the share of the population with enough income to own assets like real estate decreases, the overall engagement in the community decreases, which makes sense.
I think it is mostly cultural. But think it has more to do attention, entertainment, and community breakdown. Most communities are functionally nonexistant. People don't talk or engage with their neighbors.
The fact that local media has been pretty much disappeared doesn't help. I live in a small city and they few times I've tried to see what was going on (I missed a couple infrastructure public information meetings) I was thankful the local university has a student paper.
Our culture is so addicted to stimulation that we just don't want to spend time on something as boring and banal as a city council meeting.