THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 19, 1994 TAG: 9406180078
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Bill Reed
DATELINE: 940619 LENGTH: Medium
It blew and blew in the City Council chamber on Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
{REST} The reason: Council had before it one of the longest agendas on record. Topics ranged from the sublime: a ``regional approach to economic development,'' to the ridiculous: 9 zillion proposed changes to the city's zoning ordinance.
Endless questions about each and every one of those 9 zillion zoning definitions and another 9 zillion proposed changes to the city's pay plan, also on the agenda, added minute after excruciating minute and hour after excruciating hour to a meeting that should have lasted three hours - max.
The council chamber became the NASA-Langley wind tunnel, and council members became the aerodynamic engineers, testing the endurance of even those who watched it all on public access television.
Now don't get me wrong. Council members are expected to ask questions. It's their duty. It's a means by which they can protect their constituents from the burden of unnecessary taxation, government regulation and, yes, even cheating in government.
But some members have raised questioning to a fine and deadly art, creating an endless, undulating sea of nitpicking interrogation that would test the will and patience of Mother Teresa.
The effect can be seen in the glazed-over eyes of top city administrators, who are handsomely paid indeed to endure hours of this kind of torture. But, municipal management types are sent to Bureaucratic Torture School to inure them to endless blather. Hey, these guys are tough. They can parry dull, convoluted questions with dull, convoluted answers with anybody, any day of the week.
The weekly unfolding of local democracy can play tricks on the minds of even seasoned and stout-hearted council watchers like Lou Pace, a gadfly and council candidate of long standing.
It can create weird - even evil - thoughts. For instance, has any one considered using the Virginia Beach City Council as a secret CIA weapon to extract confessions from suspected moles?
Well, picture the FBI dragging a handcuffed Aldrich Ames, a high-level CIA administrator who has been nabbed for spying for the Russians, into the Virginia City Council chamber and shoving him into a front-row seat. Next to him would be tossed his wife, Rosario, his alleged accomplice in the alleged cloak-and-dagger double cross.
Mayor Meyera Oberndorf would soften them up by reading - in their entirety - 30 four-page resolutions of commendation for Miss Tidewater, the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, the Cub Scouts, the Virginia Beach Garden Club, the Kiwanis, the Tall Cedars of Lebanon, the Fruit Pickers of America and so on.
Now squirming in their seats, the Ameses would be subjected to lengthy public hearings on each of the 60 proposed changes to the city zoning ordinance, featuring the close cross-examination of Planning Director Robert J. Scott by those grand inquisitors of the council, John D. Moss, Robert K. Dean and Nancy K. Parker.
Scott would be grilled extensively on the meaning of the city code sections governing minimum side-yard setback requirements in apartment districts A-12 through A-36. Then he would be ordered to define the words apartment and side yard, spell them correctly and use them in a proper sentence. This process would be repeated 900 times.
With fiendish glee the council, or what was left in chambers after 9 hours, would engage in a lengthy bout of bickering over a resolution calling for an end to funding for future studies of a light rail transit system between Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
The scenario would end with the Ameses dissolving into tears and begging FBI agents to remove them from the council chamber. Newspaper headlines the next day would reveal that they had gladly confessed their mole roles, and justice and the American way would prevail.
by CNB