You bore them

5/22/05

Voice of Travis Armstrong

Travis Armstrong is the editorial page editor of the News-Press.

You take time out of your day to attend a government meeting to help better our community. You have to wait hours and hours to make your comments.

What's your reward?

At the county Board of Supervisors, it could be having two supes leave the chambers to go talk to each other in the back room. It could be having another one step down from the dais to talk to someone in the audience.

And, as a final insult, it could be having the board chairwoman leave her seat to talk to a county employee.

Unbelievable? Yes, it's hard to believe, but this is how the board treated Noletan Ann Crosby last Tuesday.

Official inattentiveness, sadly, is nothing new at the Board of Supervisors or at city councils and school boards. But Supervisors Salud Carbajal, Brooks Firestone, Joni Gray and Susan Rose took it to new lows last week.

Only Supervisor Joe Centeno completely listened to Ms. Crosby.

A state appeals court last year threw out a zoning decision by the Los Angeles City Council because members basically were ignoring a speaker during a hearing. The court said "eight council members -- three of whom were absent -- were not in their seats. Only two council members were visibly paying attention. Four others might have been paying attention, although they engaged themselves with other activities, including talking with aides, eating, and reviewing paperwork."

It shouldn't require a court order -- or in the case of our county supervisors, publicity about last week's incident -- to have our elected officials give citizens the respect and attention they deserve.

Why didn't Susan Rose, chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors, live up to the responsibility of the title? Why didn't she stop the meeting after the supervisors, one by one, abandoned the dais? Instead, she also started talking to someone else.

Making matters worse is that Ms. Crosby is a resident of Ms. Rose's 2nd District.

Ms. Rose's office has a history of not listening to Noletans, so much so that recalling her is still on the minds of many people.

Think back to an e-mail exchange between her executive assistant and the supposedly independent facilitator of Ms. Rose's neighborhood council meetings. The exchange -- inadvertently released -- showed the disrespect her office has toward some residents.

Ms. Rose also hasn't aggressively fought for Noleta on planning and other matters in the same manner that the four other supervisors have looked out for unincorporated communities in their districts.

Mary Whalen, at Tuesday's meeting, jumped to the mic to comment after the supes dissed Ms. Crosby: "In this whole (planning) process, many of us in the eastern Goleta Valley feel very discounted. And this morning as someone was giving public comment on some of our concerns, I found the lack of attention by the Board of Supervisors to be very disconcerting. . . . We have felt discounted all along."

What the supervisors shouldn't discount is the resentment over their rude behavior. Public apologies are in order Tuesday, as are promises it won't happen again.