Category: Good Government On The March, Mon Valley Miscellany, Politics || By jt3y

As usual, there's almost as much truth this one story from The Onion as in a week of the AP wire. (Thanks to Alert Reader Jeff for sending along the link.)

Some people hate borough and township and school board meetings. I love them. They're a great place to meet people, corner public officials who don't return phone calls, and get ideas. I could attend a township commissioners' meeting and return to the office with a week's worth of things to write about.

But there are a few crackpots at almost every meeting who month after month demand the microphone during the public comment period and say nothing. (The great American philosopher Melvin Kaminsky nailed this phenomenon years ago in a classic documentary, as this soundbite will demonstrate.)

During my failed newspaper career, I was able to identify a few archetypes:

• Angry Balding White Guy: Every month he singles out the councilmen or school directors for some perceived slight that happened 25 years ago when they were in high school. He usually tries to couch his attacks in weak, sometimes ethnic, jokes.



• Elderly Nervous Lady: She walks up to the podium, quivering, with pieces of spiral-bound notebook paper clutched in her hands, which she then reads from in a timorous voice. She's terrified the planning director might leap from the stage and beat her to death for questioning his decision to grant a side yard variance on Elm Street.



• Crazy Wanna-Be Academic: A self-professed political independent (who nevertheless has never voted for a Democrat), CWBA is smarter than you. He spends his spare time listening to right-wing talk radio, poring over state websites, and demanding photocopies of contracts and ordinances from the township manager. At meetings, he gets his kicks by grilling the roadmaster on finely nuanced points of the second-class township code.



• Shouting Heavy-Set Woman: She's angry, dammit. About everything! That's why she put on her good sweatpants before she came down here! Kids are going to get killed! She pays taxes! Somebody better do something! And her family and neighbors are mad, too! (They're the ones in the audience spitting tobacco chaw into paper cups and clapping loudly whenever she pauses.)

There's been a new twist on this phenomenon recently at West Mifflin borough's council meetings, thanks to former state representative, now borough councilman, Richard Olasz Sr.

Olasz sits on the dais until public comment period, then walks down to the audience podium, and as West Mifflin Resident Richard Olasz Sr. he questions Councilman Richard Olasz Sr. ... and then he walks back up to the dais to answer himself.

Perhaps it's more evidence that the state should rethink its decision to close Mayview.

As always, H.L. Mencken (himself a notorious crank) offers a useful comment on this situation: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

. . .

'Next To Yours, The Best Town in The U.S.A.': Speaking of people who have attended a few public meetings in their lives, my old cow-orker Scott Beveridge of the Observer-Reporter has been writing about the history of Donora and its neighbor across the Monongahela River, Webster, an unincorporated village in Rostraver Township.

Check out his series called "Welcome to Nowhere" at his blog, Travel With a Beveridge.

And don't miss other entries, like his story about how Tom Savini is bringing the dead to life in Monessen.