Dumb and Dumber

By Kent Carlson

For weeks we have all witnessed media stories depicting outraged citizens up in arms over the CIETC scandal. They are lining up to sign petitions demanding that two shameless Des Moines councilmen who served on the CIETC board now resign from their council positions. Many of those outraged citizens can legitimately claim that they didn't vote for the bums.

In fact, they didn't vote at all.

The recent emergence of the righteously indignant crying fowl couldn't be more hypocritical. According to Polk County Auditor Michael Mauro, there are 126,825 registered voters in Des Moines.

In 2005, 2,731 people voted for Tom Vlassis. That was a little over 8 percent of the voters who were eligible to vote in his ward. And he won.

In 2003, 14 percent (4,140) of eligible voters cast their ballot for Archie Brooks. And he won.

So do we blame the 6,871 voters who showed up and voted for Dumb and Dumber, or the 55,650 people who didn't show up at all?

There is more than enough blame to go around. That's because both of the embattled city councilmen that many Des Moines residents now want tarred and feathered ran uncontested in their last elections. The 62,000 registered voters in Ward 1 and Ward 4 were apparently so content with their "leadership" that nobody felt the need for change.

While it may be an inconvenience to attend a city council meeting, even Stephen Hawking could find DMTV 7 on basic cable or watch live streaming video of the Monday evening extravaganza. There's no excuse to not realize there are morons on the city council.

If pulling the plug on 911 communications during the floods of '93 doesn't get you permanently voted off the island, it's hard to imagine why people have their underwear in a wad now. Come to think of it, if Brooks had his stroke in July of '93, we may have avoided this current fiasco.

The truth is that public oversight is something Archie Brooks disdains. While serving on the Urban Renewal Board, I questioned the use and abuse of tax increment financing by the city. The city's Urban Renewal District is the Tax Increment Finance (TIF) district. So to have a dialogue about urban renewal projects without a discussion of the repercussions of the increased debt and redistribution of tax base caused by TIF is irresponsible. But when those discussions started to take place at Urban Renewal Board meetings, it made people nervous. People like former City Manager Eric Anderson, and Councilman Archie Brooks. It was only a matter of a few months before board members were informed by Anderson that Brooks had successfully convinced the rest of the city council to dissolve the Urban Renewal Board and morph it into the Urban Design Board. And it was made clear that the new board would have no charge over financial matters. I wasn't a bit surprised that an effort was made to suppress public oversight of city spending. But I never thought that the city council would have the glands to disband a decades-old board comprised of volunteer citizens in a blink of an eye. My mistake.

It was during the effort to save the old AIB Building on 10th Street that Tom Vlassis demonstrated his depth of knowledge on preservation issues. He had just returned from Charleston, S.C., where he learned that some people actually fix up old buildings. Prior to the trip, he hadn't been a supporter of the AIB effort. After sharing his epiphany with the audience, he went on to lecture those supporting the AIB preservation effort, asking where we were when they razed the Victoria Hotel. I can't speak for others, but I was riding my tricycle. The Victoria Hotel was knocked down in 1962. I'm not sure that Vlassis could ever be defined as a preservationist, but I'd bet he'd run barefoot across broken cocktail glasses before he'd let anyone tear down Christopher's in Beaverdale.

"I was there to be a rubber stamp," Vlassis said of his CIETC board role. "That was my function."

Given the apathy, poor voter turnout and uncontested council seats we have all witnessed in past years, it is apparent that the citizens of Des Moines feel it's their function to be a rubber stamp.

Des Moines is a classic example of a representative government, and on occasion, reprehensible government. It's the responsibility of citizens to facilitate change. Until they take that responsibility seriously, Des Moines will continue to have the political representation it deserves. CV

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