Political Almanac Local Politics

Political Almanac Chapter 1: Politician’s Handbook

Local Politics

We get most of our money from the federal government, so we should take their lead and be hapless, blind-sighted and incapable of anticipating crises.

Water & Sewer Maintenance
We don’t know how to anticipate where water and sewer line breaks might occur, so we don’t bother to do that. We usually wait until a road collapses to give us a general idea of where a break has occurred. Make sure you block off all the roads around these work areas for quite some time.

Road Maintenance
We only do road maintenance after we have a water or sewer line break.

Traffic
We ask everyone not to drive. For a while they didn’t listen to us, but lately we think we’re getting through to them. We invented HOV lanes to remove a lane from our highway systems, but the other lanes are still jammed. We also put stop lights at on-ramps; that jammed up the feeder roads.

Road Expansion
Our multi-use mall and apartment developers do most of this, so we try to approve all of their crazy schemes. We don’t like to do road expansion. We just want everyone to drive less.

Zoning
We approve zoning changes based on emotion rather than logic. We are always relieved and surprised when voters don’t show up at zoning hearings with torches and pitchforks. We usually hang out with crazy developers with zany ideas; they are generally more fun to be with.

Schools
We sit on school boards to approve whatever budget the Superintendent wants. We run and hide when the voters show up with torches and pitchforks.