Our culture is so addicted to stimulation that we just don't want to spend time on something as boring and banal as a city council meeting.
The city of Santa Monica broadcasts city council meetings. And both the items being adjudicated and the members from the public stepping up to the mic, are every bit as colorful as the brightest Hollywood blockbusters. I listened for years after leaving LA… KCRW Thursday evenings, grab some popcorn and enjoy!!
There's also the fact that if Santa Monica's politics are that interesting, then people are more likely to be disappointed with how boring their local politics are.
Tangential —- a lot of cities/towns stream city council and other committees on the internet.
Santa Monica City has around 100K population. That video has ~500 views and it's on the Internet. The public barely cares.
Of course I can. Off the top of my head:
City Council:
Lisa Herbold - neighborhood
Teresa Mosqueda - at large
Sara Nelson - at large, newly elected
Mayor:
Bruce Harrell - newly elected, replaced Jenny Durkan after one term. Was previously on the city council for 13 (?) years.
City Attorney:
Ann Davison - newly elected, replaced Pete Holmes who failed to advance through the primary after 12 years.
County Executive:
Dow Constantine - narrowly re-elected. Recently granted additional power to appoint the county sheriff.
These are the elected positions I vote on. I am also aware of appointed positions like parks, police, and city transit. I’m aware of the the parts of the council I don’t vote for.
I’m also aware of policy. Hazard pay for grocery workers. Attempting to stop catalytic converter theft. Fixing the bridge. Mask mandates. Public transit expansion. Defunding police.
I get a lot of my coverage of these events from the hyperlocal blog that covers my neighborhood. I have their number saved to text reports when I see them. They publish coverage of most local government meetings. I visit that site as often as HN.
What about Port of Seattle, Seattle Public Schools, King County Council, and King Conservation District?
But are you aware that most people cannot?
This reminds me of a strategy I once heard on how to assign weights to people's votes according to their knowledge. You want to assign a high weight to those with relevant knowledge and low weight to those with little relevant knowledge.
So how do you know who has good relevant knowledge? Rather than just collecting the response to a question: "How many beans do you think are in this jar?" you also ask the _meta_ question: "What do you think will be the average response to the first question above?" For those who perform well on question 2, you assign higher weight to their answers on question 1.
If you just average all the answers to question 1, you are likely to get a close approximation to the true number of beans in the jar. But if you assign weights according to performance on question 2, you can get an even closer approximation to the true answer.
I may have gotten some details wrong, but the idea is that if you are aware of your peers' level of knowledge about a topic, then you are likely to be knowledgeable about the topic yourself.
My city council recently spent until 1am debating zoning regulations for California's new ADU law instead of doing the sane thing and just letting people build ADUs.
It's quite easy to end up having a 1:1 conversation with a serious candidates for local office. Just 2 weeks ago I donated $500 to a candidate for CA state assembly and the next day I got a call from the candidate thanking me for the donation.
And it's pretty easy to volunteer for various organizations involved in local politics and get access to the current supervisor or state assembly member who is aligned with that organization.
And public comment is actually just like it's portrayed on Parks and Recreation.
Garbage trucks provide a critical public service. Without them I would have to buy a different vehicle.
Maybe because zoning and permitting are a large part of the reasons why they can't find an affordable house in the area?