 Welcome to Rational Politics though today we should probably call ourselves Rational Promo. I'm joined at the table by Marsha Martin who has been on the Longmont City Council for four years. I'm also pleased to announce that Marsha is going to be doing her own show coming to you straight from the CIT network about Council and I didn't realize how much of an idiot I really was when it came to the workings of how a town functions, how all the groups fit together. Marsha is going to be explaining a lot of this to you in her show. Marsha, welcome to the table, so nice to see you down here. Thank you Nigel, I'm really delighted to be here and have a chance to explain what you are talking about. Yeah, I mean some of the things that you mentioned like I know that a lot of people think a council has the ultimate power and you explained to me, no it doesn't. No it really doesn't. So what Longmont in particular is organized is as a weak mayor system. That means that the city is really organized like rather diverse corporation whose CEO is the city manager and the city manager has all of the power of hiring and firing the city staff, the people who get things done in the city and of carrying out the statutes of the city, the statutes that we inherit from the state of Colorado and the statutes that we inherit from the federal government. He's in addition charged with carrying out the policies that the city council makes from time to time. Most of the time the power is here even then because his staff does stuff brings it in the form of a justification and a statute to the council and only then does the council decide. Now council can also introduce policies of its own but no matter what it takes four votes on the council to make any new policy go into effect. Interesting. So Marsha tell me when it comes to the city council what are their top priorities because I don't think people really understand how the infrastructure all fits together. So what does the council really look for first? I think that the council I've never heard of a council who did not share the same essential priorities of making the city work that the city manager has. That's keeping the lights on keeping the water running when you flush the toilet whatever's in there goes away and it does not poison the river right you know all of that stuff making patching the potholes which is always you know what cities do the worst and in this climate there's really no way to do it well and the city council has has the thankless job of balancing those priorities. A lot of city council members or a lot of city councils really have had trouble facing the fact that they have to let the infrastructure fall apart or they have to raise rates that the residents pay for the maintenance of that infrastructure or they have to ask the residents to vote for a tax for themselves to pay for a bond issue on the to pay for updates on the infrastructure and neither of those none of those are nice choices right right. Langmont is a really well run city the internet never goes out the electricity never goes out the water didn't go out during the flood of 2013 and um and when you flush the toilet whatever's in there goes away permanently permanent yeah and it doesn't poison the river and the waste treatment plant is being upgraded right now and that's why we people we had to raise some fees that's right and unfortunately the council has to make those decisions. Langmont is a really green city a majority of the voters are concerned about climate change they're concerned about wildlife and and preserving the wildness of the area that we live in preserving a wild life um and some of those people don't care how much it costs they just want that to be the top priority but at the same time we have a really large number of people who you know who don't get to the end of the month with five dollars more to pay on their utility bill right so the kind of policy decisions that the city council makes the most often are well how do we solve that problem we could for example charge a low electric rate to people who use only a little electricity and a higher rate to people who use vast amounts of electricity because presumably if they're using vast amounts it's because they can afford to right or they can afford to insulate their house or you know there are those people have agency and options whereas the people who are at the low end of the income spectrum don't have options right and that's what we did for example the last time we considered upgrading or updating our grid and increasing the electric rates to pay for it we did it on a on a tiered basis and then we put in a special rebate so that really low income people got paid back at the end of the year right for some of their utility fees to be honest i'm really happy to be living in this town because i think you're doing a tremendous job as a city as a city i'm not going to say city council as a city there is a difference and there is a difference and i'll tell you why i cannot remember the last time my power went out i can't remember it it stayed on solid next light our high speed broadband i i it's never dropped out in in oh how long have i had it now three or four years absolutely remarkable yep um let's quickly talk about 15 minutes with marsha martin okay this is going to be your new show yeah um the hourglass is looking really good why don't you give us just a very very brief introduction to your show all right okay what you're going to be talking about it really frustrates me when i don't know how things work and what i have found oh as as a city council member is that lots of people don't know how things work and when you don't know how things work it's sometimes hard to tell what the right approach to making them work is and i would say that in in not just in longmont but in most cities and and at all levels of government for that matter the thing that government is worse that is communicating with the public and giving them the understanding they need to get along with the system and that means people don't uh don't get access benefits that they're entitled to get um they get tangled up in in some system you know where they incur a fine that there was no reason for them to incur a fine just because they didn't know they were doing anything that could be could cause a fine you know um and if somebody is infringing on you know their personal territory their property rights whatever they don't know what their recourse is and most people care you know most people will say oh well this doesn't seem bad enough to call the police for so what do i do and a big part of the city council member's job is responding to those people and say well you know this is what you do and it's going to take about this long if you are patient and you tell them these four things you should get a satisfactory response it's really hard to do you know that going to the city website and searching for yeah whatever you're searching for it's really often very hard to find and so i really have tried to make a mission out of communicating those things to people one-on-one when it's the only way i use social media a lot and i hope that 15 minutes will be another outlet for that kind of information i'm really looking forward to hearing you discuss the topics that you've just covered because after four years on a council i'm sure you've got some rather interesting little stories to tell i'm sure you've got some rather interesting little stories you cannot tell but we'll talk about that privately no actually we won't because even when we're not rolling i cannot tell you cannot tell oh i know yeah anyway marcia thank you so much for coming down for cutting this promo with me oh it was been fun it's been a lot of fun talking to you like this you're not an idiot you know oh trust me when it comes to government in america i'm an idiot i understand the parliamentary system i could give you a rundown of that top to bottom i've lived here since 81 i haven't got a clue what they do in washington well i would rather be in parliament because then i could say anything i wanted and hit people with sticks oh prime minister's question time you'd be absolutely dynamite anyway order yeah um so everybody look for the new show coming to the c-i-t network 15 minutes with marcia martin you're gonna learn a lot about how local government works and i think you'll also discover that what marcia talks about also filters up to the top look for this new show i'm niger leaves your host signing off marcia thank you very much bye everybody it's been great talking to nigel thank you