The Star - News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area

Governance, like life, is full of trade-offs. One of them is efficiency versus efficacy, and you strive for one at the risk of losing the other.

Such was the case at last week’s Electric City Council meeting, where the mayor and a council member slapped a mutually congratulatory high five for keeping the meeting under an hour long.

The problem is that perhaps it would have been a better, more productive meeting if they hadn’t.

As one who has spent innumerable hours at such meetings, I sympathize with the need to keep them moving. People can be repetitive, true.

But setting egg timers at three minutes, then declaring nobody can offer input for the council any longer than that, seems a bit hard boiled. City leaders need to be careful they don’t sacrifice public input and debate to an egg timer. Doing so will eventually put them in a very hot kitchen.

Scott Hunter

editor and publisher