Laughter in the aisles....

Responsible Development. What a novel concept. For houses to be built in Riverside, which actually adhere to growth control laws including Measures C and R. and respect natural habitats including the Allessandrio Arroyo. It makes sense or does it? That actually depends on who you are and where you are sitting at weekly city council meetings.

Say these simple words to city council members and you will be looking at faces that grimace, contort in distaste and impatience or look pained as if the last bowel movement were a distant memory. Bodies will twist in chairs and fingers will restlessly engage in activities including doodling, flipping through super-important reports or smoothing one's hair back. Eyes will look up, look down or side to side, anything to avoid looking directly at the person addressing them at the podium.

Observing the body language of city council members is always the highlight of every weekly meeting because there is not anything else that happens which will provide much pleasure for the average city resident. Often times, people say one things while their bodies scream another. Yes, we will vote for this, the voices collectively say, while the bodies groan, only because you are making us!

It's more fun to write about it, if only in a blog that no one may ever read. Because there is no attempt to hide incriminating body language, then there must be no awareness of it. No inner knowledge that some part of their bodies are trying to tell the truth, while they spin, what they believe to be true.

Everyone has their favorite council member. Whether it is the one who represents their district, or not, everyone has one that they believe is the one true "real" elected official among the hubris. Everyone seems more intent to find the "real" council member in the pack, especially during election year, which is filled with tired incumbants who perhaps, were "real" once.

The white middle/upper class moderate liberals of downtown cleave to Dom Betro as the Great Hope...but if you're outside that clique, it's hard to see him as anything but a slightly idealistic newcomer who will be fodder for the machine before he hits mid-term. Each compromise made to the ruling faction of the city council chips away at qualities like integrity and honesty and committment, that after a successful grass-roots campaign, you can bring into office, but when you leave, those qualities will not leave with you. Just like fashions which were hot once but are not passe, they were tossed into the recyling bin to make room for a closet of new suits. Though, he has held up pretty well so far.

The conservative republican families who hail from Riverside's "white flight" section of town had their idealist in Frank Schiavone, but three years after serving as council member, you can not even recognize the person that he once was, before he decided to merge with Ed Adkison into the analagous entity nicknamed FRED. Instead of being his own person, he's now played by Ed and both of them routinely play the other members of their voting faction, to an audience of people experiencing a strange combination of amusement and dismay at what passes for theater in the Inland Empire.

Occasionally, amidst usually dull proceedings, the two councilmen who constituted the original idealists, Betro and Schiavone, merge into something that at least is more interesting, though there's no official nickname for this duo. It is difficult to say at this point who is playing whom, when and for what. Then again, perhaps they might actually agree on what they are championing, well at least at that moment in time. Uusually, the best ideas to come forward involve the combined alliance and efforts of these two council members. Abeit, you could fit a couple visits by El Nino into the duration of time expended beween treatises.

The only thing you can say about Art Gage is that there's a better than even chance he may be running for election at mid-term. For months, he proved to be a well-oiled cog in the majority voting bloc, until he started mucking up the works with his flirtations with power during his stormy stint as mayor pro tem which caused FRED to distance themselves from their unpredictable colleague. Richard St. Paul, one of his main backers was at TalkRiverside.com stating that he believed Gage should run for mayor. Although he has not announced plans to run, the rumors are flying that he might take a stab at Mayor Ron Loveridge's throne.

However, those aren't the only rumors currently flying about Gage. Whispers of RECALL have plagued Gage during the past six months. Whether residents of ward 3 have the determination and stamina to pull off a recall election remains to be seen or not.

It would be interesting to see if a council member could pull off running two election campaigns in one chronological year. Entertaining as hell too. Of course, what would the city charter have to say about that?

Of course, you did not read it here.