the making of sausage

There's those old sayings about making sausage - about how, like laws, you shouldn't learn what goes into it or how it's made. About how much less attractive it is the more you know about it.

Well, it seems I (metaphorically) don't agree. I mean, I know that politics and law are complicated and thorny bits, but the more I learn about my local government, the more intrigued I am. Lots of people get turned off the by the amount of bureaucracy and red tape that goes into even local government. I, for one, am ok with it.

It's easy to lean back on one's Libertarian Lounger or Republican Rocker or Democrat Davenport and snipe about the waste of time and energy and money that goes into government. Bound to special interests, lazy, corrupt, shallow, whatever you want to call them.

But here in Ann Arbor, I'm left with the overall feeling of a fairly well-run city. Sure, there's rough spots here and there, but that's the nature of compromise. And like the old saying goes: a decision that satisfies everyone's needs, but makes no one happy, is probably the fairest compromise possible.

No one gets exactly what they want, so everyone is unhappy in at least one way or the other. But that also likely means that it compromise serves the needs of the largest number of people.

Make no mistake - governing/government is a perpetual exercise in compromise (unless you live in a totalitarian dictatorship, incendiary criticism about the Bush administration ignored for now). It wasn't until recently that I saw the elbow grease/dirty fingernails of the workings of that at the Parks Advisory Commission meeting a couple weeks ago. The point of going was to show support for the Ann Arbor Skate Park, but watching the rest of the meeting was... interesting. It would seem that decisions made have reasons, and data to back them up (go figure!). Proposals in front of even modest groups like the Parks Advisory Commission still get bounced back when there's no data to support claims. There were multiple times I heard comments, criticism, discussion from commission members that showed that they did indeed have the interest of park users, taxpayers, and the future welfare of all of the city in mind.

Yes, I know... that's what they're supposed to do. I shouldn't be surprised when it happens. But still - it's nice to see that it actually happens in real life.