Too bad the politicians at City Hall don’t get it.

Consider this picture. Monday night a public meeting was called by city council’s community and protective services committee to consider whether we ought to abandon giving seniors a 25 per cent discount on their bus fares and blind citizens free bus passes in favour of a discount system available only to those with very low incomes.

As you can image such a meeting drew a crowd. The committee anticipated this and moved the event into committee rooms 1 and 2 at City Hall,which together form a long, narrow space on the second floor of the west side of the building.

The room can hold about 100 people when it’s full – as it was – but if you’re sitting at the back the front of the room is so far away you can barely see the folks up there. And if the sound system isn’t working properly – and it seldom seems to – then hearing in the back rows is impossible.

The standing room only audience was made up mostly of seniors, many of them hard of hearing, and people with disabilities, many of them blind.

So in those circumstances you would have expected chairperson David Winninger, councillor for Ward 11, and his committee members to at least have equalled the preparatory efforts of the afore mentioned pop music stars, if not gone a few steps better.

Nope. At the beginning part of the sound system failed to work. Compounding the problem some councillors neglected to turn on their mikes. When people in the back rows – where I was sitting – began to grumble loudly a technician moved to fix the problem.

Mr. Winninger started the meeting as if it was a gathering of his lawyer pals over lunch. “Does anyone have a pecuniary interest?” he asked as his opening salvo.

Say what?

There was no explanation of either the issue or the process about to unfold, save for mention it was outlined in a written report. Problem, there were insufficient copies for the large turnout; most people didn’t have the written report.

As the meeting bumped along some members of the public who wished to speak had to move from the back to the front. It was awkward for the seeing impaired given the large crowd. There were few city hands to ensure safe passage.

No one on the committee asked a single question of members of the public who presented their views. No time, said Mr. Winninger. The public portion started at 5 and was rushed to a conclusion shortly before 7. Why the rush? Apparently the committee needed to eat, although that didn’t seem to be a concern of the audience, most of whom had been sitting longer than the committee.

After the meal break and seemingly without spending a moment contemplating what they’d been hearing for the past two hours, the committee plunged right into its debate, an obvious affront to the public. Surely taking a week or so to think about what had been said would not have mattered.

And it was quickly clear that some members of the committee had no idea what they’d heard or what it meant or what options were possible and had public support.

Now I know the members of this committee and I know in their minds they have the best interests of the city and its citizens at heart. But that’s not the image that comes across at public meetings such as this. Council members consistently give the impression they are above the rest of us, smarter and more important, that their time is far more valuable than ours.

Don’t think so? Just look at the way the meeting rooms are arranged. The councillors are way up there and we peons are way down here. They control the meeting and the mikes, the pace and the process and we’ll speak only when spoken to and be damn quick about it too.

That is not the way of accountable, transparent and accessible government. Our council members don’t seem to get it. Maybe it’s we gave it to them.