If last night’s Common Council meeting could be likened to a football game then it was the Republicans acting like the New England Patriots and the Democrats acting like the Miami Dolphins. Both these teams are working on perfect records. For you non football fans out there, the Patriots are currently 10-0 while the Dolphins are currently 0-10. Now, before we get all our partisan fur up, let’s review what happened. Two teams hit the field last night, one team executed its strategy perfectly and the other didn’t. While I’ll get into the analysis of what really happened, let’s not drop sight of the most important part.

Outside of the political flunkies, junkies and wonkies, no one in the city of Norwalk cares who is chairing what committee, who is the council president and what any of the council eats for breakfast. Seriously, if I spent a day doing street surveys in front of Stop N Shop, less than half of those surveyed would be able to name the mayor let alone a council person. Krummel is right in some ways that Democracy is ending, but not for the reasons he alluded to, the silent killer is indifference.

So why is Galen Wells saying to the Hour: “The voters of Norwalk elected a Democratic majority, which is a check and a balance for a Republican mayor, and we no longer have a Democratic majority.” ? Well, I could be flip, and say she can’t count. But I usually reserve that for Dr. Corda and the BOE, where counting is one of those skills you just assume that educational management has mastered. Instead, I’ll point out that Galen has yet again practiced a totally bizarre form of Democratic “Big Tent” politics by forgetting the useful Lyndon Johnson advice, of “better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.” Politics was and never will be something Wells is good at. Of course the Democrats still have a majority on the council. But that majority, other then as a measure of racking up political flunkie power points, doesn’t mean much when it comes to actually getting the work of the people done.

There’s some pretty big issues out there for sides to be drawn up, and those sides will have nothing to do with partisan politics. Getting all the issues that concern Norwalk to be discussed in an open honest debate will be difficult. The game of government is played with the rules stacked against the public. We should be more concerned about holding the feet of our newly elected legislators to the fire of open and transparent government then on what label is attached to their name.

For starters, lets demand that the council adopt some investment into technology solutions that would enable people to follow what is being discussed more easily. Tape the meetings, post the minutes and agendas on time, and offer a way for the public to weigh in remotely. Conduct polls and surveys proactively, rather than reactively and begin a dialog with all the residents of Norwalk, not just the ones who show up and vote.

Fred Bondi became council president last night because he communicated to the entire council. Doug Sutton and before him Bill Krummel never bothered to talk to council members beyond their own political party. For Democrats to continue to believe that the only conversation that can happen is with themselves is bad for Democracy. To further restrict the conversation to a subset of Democrats is sheer lunacy. Someone was handing out bad political advice like it was candy on halloween night. Communicating with all the council members about all the issues is exactly the way common ground and common sense solutions are found. The city of Norwalk needs more common sense problem solving than anything else.

When I asked Fred Bondi, after the council meeting had ended, what he thought were the greatest issues facing Norwalk he said that he was very concerned about seniors being able to afford to live in Norwalk on fixed incomes and wanted to work on a senior tax credit. “I’d like to see that the demolition delay ordinance gets adopted, and that Fodor Farms moves forward too,” he said. Lets hope that those issues are on the table for discussion, as well as the infrastructure and impacts of development. We can only expect our government to be as good as the time and effort we put into it.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.