With the massive cuts in state funding that now seem inevitable, local communities may soon find that in the absence of adequate support from the State of Missouri, they will have to fend for themselves. This may very well mean that the residents of Linn County as a whole, or of our local municipalities individually, may be called upon to lend some of the support the state used to provide. While that request for local support might be monetary on occasion, it may also be for local residents to volunteer their labor and expertise to help those who cannot help themselves. I personally have always harbored the belief that serving children, the elderly, the handicapped, the poor and other vulnerable citizens would always be the State’s bottom line, that even if the State withdrew its support of other services, it would never fail to fund programs for those most vulnerable members of our communities. The latest news from the State Legislature is that not even those who are least able to help themselves will be spared from the state budget cuts to come. Having grown up during the 1960s when President Johnson’s Great Society held out the promise of support for those who wanted to better their lives but lacked the wherewithal to do so, I had only heard about an earlier time when neighbors—not the State—made certain the needs of the less fortunate were met. Now we may be faced with the choice of either adopting an every-man-for-himself attitude or shouldering more of the responsibility to care for those who have trouble caring for themselves. Those who subscribe to a philosophy of unfettered individualism may very well assert that they have no legal responsibility to provide support for the unfortunate and look the other way. But having had the privilege of living here for the past decade, I doubt that any personal belief system or political ideology will be used as an excuse to withhold aid from those who genuinely need it. We are blessed to share a community based upon concern for one another, and I don’t believe our sense of connectedness will disappear anytime soon, regardless of what happens in state government.
Having said that, I do have some concern with what sometimes seems to be an apathetic attitude of citizens toward their own local government. When we elect our fellow citizens to serve on local governing bodies like city councils and school boards, we do so trusting that they will act in our best interests. Such trust is part of the “glue” that maintains the interpersonal bonds that sustain communities. But I question the wisdom of using our votes to build part of the mechanism we call community and then abandoning it with the misguided belief that it will somehow maintain itself satisfactorily without further input from us. Democracy is representative government of the people, but it can’t fulfill its promise without popular participation, not just on election day, but as the rest of the year unfolds. We may trust our elected representatives, and they may behave in a manner that is deserving of that trust. But by not attending city council and school board meetings we have unwittingly bartered away the transparency of political process. You might be thinking, “Isn’t the political process that leads to our local ordinances and commitments of public funds just as transparent without an audience as it is with one?” In theory, perhaps. But in practice, performances without spectators—especially spectators who exercise critical thinking skills and are prepared to participate—soon get abbreviated or done away with altogether. After all, who will do a conscientious job of making a presentation to the public if he or she is almost certain that public won’t show up? On the other hand, certainty of the presence of a discerning public prompts our officials to make their intentions known much more fully. And at the risk of undermining my role as the messenger, I prefer first-hand experience to an account told from someone else’s perspective because I can make my own judgments based upon what I experience with my senses and faculty of reason. The media, no matter how informed, is no substitute for a citizenry that exercises it responsibility to take an active part in their own governance. Because a complacent attitude about attending school board and city council meetings sometimes leads to an equally complacent attitude on the part of the officials who conduct those meetings, none of us can afford to routinely miss them. Reasoning that a meeting agenda is personally irrelevant can amount to at least a partial denial of the interpersonal bonds that give us our sense of community, and remaining connected to our community isn’t a passive exercise; it requires active participation.
