Compared to 2009, this summer has been pretty calm.  The City of Springfield has chosen a new Fire Chief, hired a new Chief of Police, passed the budget for the upcoming fiscal year without a lot of controversy, and has seen its sales tax revenue increase for the first time in a number of months.

However, in addition to the day to day business of zoning changes, budget adjustments, proclamations, and public appearances, we on Council have also been dealing with a number of issues that—by no means—can be considered monumental.  Maybe it’s just a normal summer lull, but some of these seem trivial and a number of residents have asked me if Council doesn’t have anything “important” to work on.

The first issue revolves around the idea that we should “re-brand” Springfield.  I will admit that having the same city name as that fictitious locale on The Simpsons is not the ideal frame of reference, but we’ve been Springfield since the early 1800s and Springfield we will continue to be.

However, changing the logo, the City seal, and the City flag at this time seems fatuous and contending that these changes “won’t cost anything” is simply wrong.  If one considers only the associated printed materials put out by the city, the cost of replacing those with new logos, seals, etc., are enormous.  Then you have to count the number of City vehicles—police, fire, public works, and others—who sport a City logo and the costs skyrocket.  If we were to re-brand Springfield as a component of a new economic development plan designed to bring new jobs to Springfield, then I could probably line up behind it.  But just to do it because the City seal has a humorous reference to the Great Cobra Scare of the 50s isn’t the right reason.

In November, I returned from a Thanksgiving trip to discover that coal tar sealants were the greatest threat to human life since the atomic bomb was created.  Or at least that was the feeling, given the amount of publicity and drum-beating going on by the Environmental Advisory Board.  This topic was remanded to the Community Involvement Committee for a number of public meetings.  The Committee wisely recommended that Council wait for the Public Works department to determine if PAHs even exist in local streams and, if so, if it can be determined where they came from.  You never know:  it might be like that episode of NCIS where Abby explains that she found traces of polycyclic aromatics on one of the weekly dead bodies.  Gibbs’ response:  “Oh, tire dust.”

And, without a doubt, the topic of chickens in the city is making a lot of people snicker and is generating a lot of jokes around the neighborhoods—generally at the expense of those promoting the chickens.  Maybe it’s an indicator of contemporary education—but there seems to be little societal memory of the Sanitation Movement within the public health field.  This movement occurred in the early to mid-1950s when legitimate science found that flies spread disease (that’s when we started putting screens on windows) and that livestock in the city contributed strongly to filth, stench, and disease.  That is why the current ordinances around the country exist.  Unfortunately, no one has yet engineered a chicken whose poop doesn’t stink.

The mission-creeping proponents of chickens (remember when they just started out with an innocuous “urban garden”) casually brush aside that fact with a “That was then; this is now” response.  They point out that there are vaccines and antibiotics available if disease breaks out.  Mind you, these are the same folks who rail against the use of antibiotics on corporate farms.  Guess if you vaccinate 2000 chickens, that’s animal cruelty; if you vaccinate three in your back yard, it’s honorable.

Sometimes I think we maybe need another big controversy, but then I come to my senses:  boring municipal government is good; polarizing government—not so much.