Let's Get to Work
Thinking about Alexandria's ceremony installing a new Mayor and City Council
In yesterday’s installation ceremony in the almost-full Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall on Northern Virginia Community College’s campus, Alexandria’s new Mayor, Alyia Gaskins, and the four returning and two new members of the City Council, described their visions for the city in fine and optimistic terms.
The “three-minute” speeches by the new elected officials were an appropriate mix of gratitude (“I sincerely thank my [family] [campaign team] [the voters] [other]”) and goal-oriented box checking (“Working together, we can build an Alexandria that is [affordable] [accessible] [inclusive] [other].”
Some of the remarks were, fittingly, emotional. The final line, or applause trigger, for many of the speeches was “Let’s get to work,” confirming the transition from campaigning to governing and underscoring that governing is, indeed, work.
The “Let’s get to work” closing may have been a coincidence or it may have reflected an agreement among the new Mayor and Councilors. In either case, getting down to work is an important thing for our elected officials. However, spoken or not, there were other themes evident in the installation ceremony.
Early in my teaching career, a wise teacher told me that at the start of each school year teachers received a “deposit” of time with students to be drawn down over the course of a semester or academic year. How the teacher elected to “spend” that time made all the difference in what the students learned and the value they derived from the class.
So it is with local government: the new Mayor and Council have a finite amount of their time, staff time, and other resources to address the city’s priorities. It is not a matter of just “getting to work,” it is also deciding what to work on because resources, especially time, are finite.
Even the worthiest objectives may be unattainable if the timing or circumstances are not right. For example, the last School Board conducted an impressively thorough analysis of electoral reform, an important issue, only to be met with the last Council’s generally lukewarm interest and, from some on the Council, a “stay in your lane” reaction.
Outgoing Mayor Justin Wilson said at the ceremony that “every challenge to be faced by this City Council was created by a prior Council.” Wilson’s point was that whether through what he termed “benign neglect” or direct action, the new Mayor and Council will inherit the results of decisions made (or not made) years, or decades, ago. This truism is worth remembering as the new elected leaders sort through what is important and what can be improved by government action.
Wilson’s observation also relates to what is sometimes called opportunity cost, or the value of a forgone alternative action or decision. In other words, while a local government is responding to vocal advocates calling for initiative X, what is the cost of not doing initiative Y?
This is partly why curmudgeons (I am one) despair when a School Board or City Council engages in a lengthy debate, or resolution drafting process, about the position of a city or school system on a controversy well outside its scope, for example, a foreign affairs crisis. For example, last year the School Board in my boyhood home, Ann Arbor, Michigan, earnestly and thoughtfully adopted a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. There is an actual cost to such debates in the sidelining of matters that are in the elected body’s central responsibilities.
Of course, matters are further complicated by the certainty that unexpected events will occur. If the pandemic, and the proposal for an arena in Potomac Yard that consumed the city government a year ago, teach anything it is that unanticipated events will consume time and resources, and may do so for months and years.
The impact of outside and uncontrollable forces was illustrated when British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was asked about the greatest challenge for a statesman or (accounts vary) the most difficult thing about being Prime Minister. He replied “Events, dear boy, events.”
So, congratulations to Alexandria’s new elected officials and a New Year/new term of office toast: May events be kind to you and may you “get to work” on those issues where there is an actual opportunity to improve Alexandria’s quality of life.
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