By Dale Bryant
I've read a lot of brochures and news stories, listened to political debates and edited a lot of letters to the editor about the local political campaigns in recent months. And I'm confused about something.
Over and over, candidates say they will represent "the people." Meanwhile, some candidates are criticized for pushing their own agenda instead of the will of the people. We've carried numerous letters during this election and over the years in which the writer claims to know what the people of Los Gatos want: "The people of Los Gatos want to be left alone; the people don't want to be taxed; the people want less development; the people want fewer regulations on developers."
So, what I've been wondering is: Who are the people? And how exactly does one find out what they want?
Three Monte Sereno candidates said the government was too intrusive. Opponents, speaking for the people, said otherwise.
In Los Gatos, some said the rejection of the utility-users tax meant that the people wanted smaller, less intrusive government. Others thought the vote simply meant the people, given a choice, would rather not pay additional taxes.
More than one candidate in the Los Gatos council race called for greater participation by the people in local government. In fact, there was a strong undercurrent in the race that the town needed to communicate better.
Actually, we suspect there are plenty of Los Gatans who don't lose sleep over how well town officialdom communicates with them. Still, that doesn't negate the importance of continually striving to improve communications.
We think the reason efforts to improve communications often fail is because too many people think the way to improve communications is to make their messages more easily understood. What they forget is that communications is a two-way street. It's important to put out information, but it's even more important to listen. Listening, after all, is how we find out if people understood what we said. In the end, the message isn't what was sent, but what was received.
People bring a lot of baggage to the table, be it the kitchen table at home or the table where the podium sits at a council meeting.
They bring fears and suspicions and past slights and lots of misinformation.
Last summer, Mayor Randy Attaway, responding to a request from several Los Gatans, scheduled a series of communications meetings. Town staff recently submitted to the council a laundry list of suggestions that grew out of those meetings.
They included such ideas as inserting a flier in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, publishing a town newsletter, producing direct marketing ads, posting of council information at the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Co. and on town bulletin boards, creating an 800 number where people could get information about the town and making better use of the Internet.
We suspect most of these ideas would result in the people being assaulted with more information they won't take the time to read. Why? Because most of these strategies assume that communications will improve if the town throws more information at people.
Let's face it: The people who pushed for the communications meetings and those who participated are all council junkies. They included representatives of the League of Women Voters, participants on town committees and commissions, those who'd rather attend a council meeting than watch Monday Night Football and the Los Gatos Weekly-Times. Not everyone in Los Gatos finds the workings of local government as fascinating as this group does.
That's not to say there were no good ideas floating around.
We think the ones that make the most sense, however, are those that facilitate the town's listening. Surveys have value because, if conducted properly, they give insight about what a cross-section of the community thinks about specific issues.
One idea that was discussed but didn't show up on the final recommendations was to appoint a committee of representatives from different neighborhoods to keep the town sensitive to neighborhood issues.
We think the problem with such a committee is that it gets us right back to one person speaking for "the people." But the notion of sensitivity to neighborhoods does make sense. Perhaps the council should meet occasionally with people in various neighborhoods, not to discuss controversial issues, but to listen to what's on people's minds. Such meetings would be a good opportunity to nip misinformation in the bud.
The idea of opening up communications through postings and dialogue on the Internet is also valuable. Recent postings on Virtual Valley's Los Gatos Talk, for instance, opened my eyes to the fact that some Los Gatans still are unaware of the Los Gatos Boulevard Plan, which is nearing completion after two years of intense community involvement.
When the Town Council reached out to the community by writing an Op/Ed piece in the Weekly-Times to encourage participation in the downtown streetscape plan, the response was a big yawn. Did that mean no one cared about it? Or did the meeting interfere with a popular TV show?
One reason we were enthusiastic about Jan Hutchins' council campaign is that he seemed willing to approach the subject of communications in fresh ways. It could be that it makes more sense to reach out to the community on a Web page than at a meeting in the Council Chambers.
One thing we're convinced of after more than three years of editing letters to the editor and fielding phone calls from readers is that no one person speaks for "the people."
Elected officials can never please all the people all the time for the simple reason that "the people" speak in many voices. And more than anything, what the people want to know is that someone is listening.
Dale Bryant is the editor of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, November 6, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved