The Poetry of Local Government

On Monday, Swarthmore Borough Council met in its first work session of the year, which was also its yearly organizational meeting. Thus, the main business of the evening was swearing people in and appointing folks to various positions and committees. Not much happened that I would call news, but I felt as though I made some progress in my ongoing quest to understand how our borough government works.

Here are some things I learned.

The organizational meeting is fun to attend, because people’s spouses come, and everyone is excited, and the room feels almost full.

When you are being sworn in as a new council member (or as mayor), you have your choice of swearing or affirming, and also you have your choice of whether you want to put your hand on a Bible or on a copy of the constitution. Jill Gaieski, Swarthmore’s newest council member, brought the small Torah she was given at her consecration ceremony when she was in kindergarten and swore on that.

After everyone was sworn in, the council elected Mary Walk as its new president (she replaces David Creagan whose second term ended in December) and Lauren McKinney as its vice president. I learned that there is also a third position — president pro tempore — so that there is someone to lead a meeting if neither the president nor the vice president can make it. Michael Carey was (re)elected president pro tem.

I also learned that there is an entity in our borough government called the vacancy board that has one specific duty: to choose a replacement council member should a seat on council become vacant. This board consists of all the council members plus one person whose job is solely to cast a deciding vote in case the council members split evenly when trying to select a replacement. In Swarthmore, this person (reappointed at this meeting) is Peg Christensen. So far, in all her years serving in the position, she has yet to be called upon to exercise her power.

There are a bunch of administrative positions in Swarthmore to which people have to get appointed (or reappointed)  every year, any many of them are filled by Jane Billings. These are: borough manager and secretary, open records manager, and zoning and code enforcement officer. I knew about the first and third of these, but I’ll have to get back to you about what an open records manager does. The formal protocol of this yearly reappointment ceremony was oddly charming.

The only other business came out of the Environment Committee, which is chaired by council member Lauren McKinney. For some time now, this committee has been trying to hire a tree company to inventory and assess the health of Swarthmore street trees (which are privately owned) as well as trees owned by the borough. A potential contract with the Davey Tree Company is under review, proposals from other companies having been rejected by council because of those companies’ requirements for indemnification.

Questions remain about the tree-company contract and about borough responsibilities under it. Who would be responsible for notifying homeowners if a street tree in front of their property was judged to be sick or in need of trimming? What responsibility would the borough have in following up with a homeowner who was told there was a problem but did nothing? What role might the Tree Committee or the Environmental Advisory Council play in educating borough residents about how to take care of trees?

As the conversation grew animated, Council President Mary Walk stepped in to cut it off. She asked that council members postpone further discussion until they got more information. “We’re not ready for a freewheeling conversation about this tonight,” she said. “I think there’s work for us to do.”

At this point, Swarthmore resident and Tree Committee member Michael Matotek, who has been involved with the negotiation with the Davey Tree Company and who was in the audience, spoke up in an attempt to answer some of the questions that had been raised.

There was a problem, though. The public comment section of the meeting was long over. Council President Walk suggested to Matotek that he come to the next council meeting on Monday, January 13 and speak during the public comment section. This palpably frustrated Matotek who kept trying, politely, to make himself heard.

Council member Ross Schmucki then spoke up, explaining that it was not practical for the council to engage in dialogue with the public in the middle of a meeting. “It just doesn’t work at [the full council] meeting to do the digging in the dirt,” he said. “That usually goes on at the committees.” If they talked to Matotek, he explained, the council would have to engage with everyone who wanted to bring up issues about sidewalks, parking, or anything else. 

After a bit more civil but tense back-and-forth, the meeting moved on to the mayor’s report.

I’m going on about this at some length because the moment opened up something about our system of government.

As citizens of the borough, we have certain powers and certain freedoms. We elect these people — our neighbors — to their position on the council. We are free to attend their meetings and to speak during the public comment section. We can serve on the many borough commissions and boards (I hear there might be an opening on the Planning Commission). But there are certain things we cannot do.

In many ways Swarthmore is an informal town. This was brought home to me recently when I attended a Zoning Hearing Board meeting in Springfield Township and saw the members sitting raised up above the audience, in the semi-dark, all dressed in suits.

Nonetheless, a Swarthmore Borough Council meeting has its protocols, the way a sonnet has its rhyme scheme. 

There is a certain freedom inherent in constraints. Formal boundaries not only fend off chaos, they can also give rise to surprising bursts of creativity. To new solutions to perplexing problems.

I like the idea that poetry and government might be cousins.

— Rachel Pastan

The video recording of the January 6 Council Meeting is at swat.ink/council.

The next Borough Council meeting will be on Monday, January 13, at 7:30 p.m. at Swarthmore Borough Hall, 121 Park Ave.