![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Months too late, if we're going to be technical about it.
My city voted on November 5; to my astonishment, it elected me, and a whole lot of very cool newbies besides. We have an anti-MAGA supermajority, and I'm reasonably certain we intend to use it -- even if all that means is fixing things like our financial controls systems and not actively inviting ICE to come to our fair city.
It is February 20 as I write this. We've held office for about six and a half weeks, and we're still flailing desperately to catch up with what we need to know and what we need to do.
It's a strange, strange gig, in some ways that I expected and in some I had no clue about.
(Like, I expected to have to do a lot of counterintuitive things if elected, like communicate with spoken words instead of just with little notes. But I did not expect to have to do the ceremonial things that go with holding office. Not that I expected not to have to do them: I just hadn't thought about it at all. So I woke up a few days after the election, to find little notes like, "You're going to the Veterans Day remembrance ceremony, of course. It's at 8 AM, see you there!" or, "Here's a list of flag-raising dates, and the Christmas Tree lighting will be at __." Or "You're marching in the parade, let me know if you need a green carnation for the Ambassadors' Breakfast.")
Meanwhile, we have no policy staff, though fortunately we do have an amazing administrative assistant. We're assigned to committees, where all of the basic policy work is done, and the general expectation is that you'll show up and know roughly what to do when you get there. It's fun, but it's also fun in a completely bizarre Alice-in-Wonderland kind of way.
-- So anyway. I plan to use this account as a sort of journal of Adventures of a Baby Legislator, in a city that my campaign consultant (who works on a national level) assures me is every bit as strange as we think it is, and in a body that one of the city's officers recently described (off the record) as "The Little City Council that Couldn't. [long, long pause] . . . believe what happened next."
It's true, it's true. And as proof? Gentles all, I give you the Saga of the Air Raid Siren.
But not until next time, because now I have to pull some six all-nighters in order to rewrite a city comprehensive plan.
. . . god, I need more userpics. I am so tired of looking at campaign pictures, and if you're here from my city, I bet you are too.</small
My city voted on November 5; to my astonishment, it elected me, and a whole lot of very cool newbies besides. We have an anti-MAGA supermajority, and I'm reasonably certain we intend to use it -- even if all that means is fixing things like our financial controls systems and not actively inviting ICE to come to our fair city.
It is February 20 as I write this. We've held office for about six and a half weeks, and we're still flailing desperately to catch up with what we need to know and what we need to do.
It's a strange, strange gig, in some ways that I expected and in some I had no clue about.
(Like, I expected to have to do a lot of counterintuitive things if elected, like communicate with spoken words instead of just with little notes. But I did not expect to have to do the ceremonial things that go with holding office. Not that I expected not to have to do them: I just hadn't thought about it at all. So I woke up a few days after the election, to find little notes like, "You're going to the Veterans Day remembrance ceremony, of course. It's at 8 AM, see you there!" or, "Here's a list of flag-raising dates, and the Christmas Tree lighting will be at __." Or "You're marching in the parade, let me know if you need a green carnation for the Ambassadors' Breakfast.")
Meanwhile, we have no policy staff, though fortunately we do have an amazing administrative assistant. We're assigned to committees, where all of the basic policy work is done, and the general expectation is that you'll show up and know roughly what to do when you get there. It's fun, but it's also fun in a completely bizarre Alice-in-Wonderland kind of way.
-- So anyway. I plan to use this account as a sort of journal of Adventures of a Baby Legislator, in a city that my campaign consultant (who works on a national level) assures me is every bit as strange as we think it is, and in a body that one of the city's officers recently described (off the record) as "The Little City Council that Couldn't. [long, long pause] . . . believe what happened next."
It's true, it's true. And as proof? Gentles all, I give you the Saga of the Air Raid Siren.
But not until next time, because now I have to pull some six all-nighters in order to rewrite a city comprehensive plan.
. . . god, I need more userpics. I am so tired of looking at campaign pictures, and if you're here from my city, I bet you are too.</small