Fighting Firefighters with Fire

Last night, I went to a Local City Common Council meeting, where two hot topics finished off a night of an unexpected level of public participation (more citizens than usual came to speak, mostly to support the first controversial issue, a nonbinding resolution against the Iraq war, blaming President Bush and Congress for starting it, which passed in a partisan vote, 13-2 -- but I'm writing about the second "hot topic," here), council debate and a longer-than-usual consent agenda.

Personal highlights of this council meeting, which was the first full Common Council meeting I've attended, included learning what a consent agenda is; realizing that the security guard was definitely hitting on me, no question; being identified as "a member of the press" by a citizen wanting to comment on the ratio of cops to firefighters in the city; being promised $50 by one reporter if I broke the shins of a reporter from a competing paper; and being approached by one of the Republican aldermen with whom I had exchanged emails on our opposing views on bilingual education. But these highlights paled in comparison to listening to the rhetoric of the first, and then the second, hot topics.

Part of what makes the Local City Common Council so interesting is how closely its makeup resembles the cast of a summer action blockbuster.

The Democrats, though the majority, are obviously the good guys:
They're diverse -- women and men, young and old, black, white, Hispanic, Polish, etc.
Three of them are young, white and attractive. (Two men, one woman, and the woman is blond.)
They're both polite and passionate.
The majority leader's last name is "Tru-worthy." (Letter e removed to prevent Googling.) No lie.

The Republicans are the bad guys:
There are only two of them -- enough for one mastermind and one henchman.
They are older white men.
The mastermind tends to harangue the council in terms that misframe the original issue, in order to "win."
They always vote against the "good guys."

Add to this that last night, the Republican mastermind berated those from the public who had come to speak against the war -- and in favor of the resolution against it -- saying that their opinions they "spewed" were "an abomination," among other things.

You can't make this stuff up.

So the second topic taken off the table was regarding firefighters' overtime pay, which had gone beyond the budgeted amount for the fiscal year. The council was being asked to approve a $1million appropriation for this line item to cover the overage on what had originally been a $1.17m budget.

One alderwoman pointed out before the council comments began that the OT line also included retirement pay and other overage pay, and later said that even the fire chief could not predict who would retire in any given year, and so could not have predicted precisely what the line item should have been budgeted at -- but also that last year's line was at $2.1m, and a few year's ago's, $2.9m. We had shortchanged the line, she said, misrepresenting reality when the budget had gone through with its original appropriation.

Republican comments were limited mainly to denigration of the contract that had been put in place "ten years ago" after the city and the fire department went into arbitration to settle issues of contention, like how to staff firehouses. The fire department is, of course, unionized. The mayor got in on the union-busting action, despite being a former firefighter with Local City Fire Department before running for office, and cited sick leave "abuse" as one reason for the over-budget expenditures.

But majority leader Tru-worthy stole the show when he questioned the man charged with presenting the request for funds to the council.

The money being requested was not being requested for future use. It had already been paid out. This made Tru-worthy mad.

It's not that we shouldn't pay firefighters, he said, but that the Finance Committee needed to ask for additional funding before using money that hadn't been approved.

In fact, the amount spent was, as of last night's meeting, in excess of the amount being requested, by about $50g.

Eventually, the Republican mastermind proposed an amendment to the original request, adding the $50g that would square the city up until last night.

So as of last night, the city has retroactively approved the payment of firefighters' OT, which reaches time-and-a-half pay after 182 hours put in during a 22-day period.

There are new recruits in the wings, waiting to begin work at Local City Fire Department, but as the fire chief explained, they won't be fully trained for another four months -- though they will be paid for the training time.

It's hard to know whose fault all of this is, though I tend to blame the ones who under-budgeted to begin with, and the ones who didn't seek approval of expenditures before making them.

This is all insanely interesting to me. And the plot, though provincial, has real potential, I think.

Imagine: If we could get this cast of characters out of Chambers and into some ridiculous action-movie plot -- something involving a real fire, perhaps, or seeking the lost city Atlantis, or a car-race, or being charged with stealing the unstealable or assassinating the unassassinatable -- we could have ourselves a real government for the people.

Having dispatched the red-herring Republicans (who ultimately voted, with no choice, to allocate the necessary funds to the OT line) and protected the hard-working firefighters of Local City, the last scene would have to feature our hero, Majority Leader ("Major" for short) Tru-worthy standing over a cowering Finance Committee Nerd -- the brains behind the operation -- overturned firetrucks and flames shooting up behind him (camera angled hard from the ground to frame Tru-worthy against the night sky), evidence of the hard-won battle (against what would be unclear, but who cares! There would be fire! Overturned trucks! Angled cameras framing our hero!).

"Go," Tru-worthy would say, disgusted by the sniveler's sniveling. "Take the money. But I never want to see your face here, again."

As Tru-worthy turned his back on his enemy, the Nerd would pull out an adding-machine-turned-semiautomatic and take aim just as Tru-worthy's sidekick shouted a slow-motion "Nooooooooo!" -- a hand on either cheek -- in time for our hero to turn, and in one swift motion, blast the Nerd back to wherever Finance Committee Nerds come from.

It's not epic, certainly. It's B-quality at best. But when I work out the screenplay, I think I may send it to that guy who handles Vin Diesel's movies. Surely that guy needs some more work.