Show Time: Political theater at the Missoula City Council
Story by Justin Franz - Published on Missoula Night Vision Spring 2010
Her stern face says it all. She is dreading this, each and every tense moment passing like a ticking clock. One by one, Missoula’s city council members deliver quick, mostly pointless comments. With each passing comment, time is closing in on her and the statement everyone is waiting to hear.
Mitchell…. Rye….
As she has been all night, she tries to listen intently, tries to seem like she is serious, that she is giving her undivided attention to what is being said. Like she really does care about the need for election officials or some fundraiser. Like she really does give a damn.
Jaffe…. Houseman….
And then it’s her turn. Journalists quickly grab their notebooks and turn on their video cameras. Council members lean in, people in the audience sit up.
“This afternoon I pled guilty in municipal court of a charge of amended DUI per se,” Councilwoman Pam Walzer said, without looking up from her prepared statement.
“I was wrong and fully accept the consequences.”
“I don’t think my lapse in judgment will affect my ability to represent my constituents.”
Once she put down her paper, everyone could have left. No one cared what else had to be said. And in reality, there wasn’t anything else to be said, as Mayor John Engen looked over his paperwork and said, “That’s it,” and ended the meeting.
Walzer didn’t stick around. She didn’t stay to be bombarded by the waiting reporters who made up most of the small crowd.
Clutching her paperwork, she stood up, turned around and exited from the stage, through a back door so fast that if you looked away, you would have missed it.
Meanwhile, other members milled about, shooting the shit, talking about heading next door to Sean Kelley’s and grabbing a beer.
It was just another night at the Missoula City Council.
And while it looked like nothing got done — they did extend the lifespan of the Downtown Business Improvement District for a decade, set up a hearing about discrimination, and approve the permit for a new ground sign on South Reserve — that is normal. Most of the work takes place in open, but less-publicized committee meetings held during the day on Wednesday, according to City Clerk Marty Rehbein.
Rehbein has been working for the city for almost 20 years and has been city clerk since 1994. She’s the in-between for the council and the mayor, and keeps track of city records.
She also runs the Monday evening meetings as well as the committee meetings on Wednesday afternoons. All take place in the generic city chambers. A room in the back of an unnoticeable building next to Sean Kelley’s, it has tall ceilings, marked with large arching wood pillars. It’s surrounded by a pastoral yellow wall dotted with floral paintings of the city. In front of a group of chairs set up for the audience stands a massive half-round table where 12 council members, the mayor and the city attorney sit.
The meetings in the middle of the week produce the decisions about various items in the city — public works, education and so on. But though the decisions are made, they don’t go into effect until they are formally approved Monday night.
“It is where the rubber hits the road,” Rehbein said.
But the most important thing, she said, is that the Monday night meetings are where the public can view what the council has done. What direction the city is taking. A showing of democracy.
“The important thing about Monday nights is it’s the public and official view of our work,” said Jason Wiener, a councilman from Ward 1.
Like Rehbein, Wiener is one of the cast of characters that make up politics in Missoula.
But Wiener isn’t just another member of Council. Some see him as the future of politics in this city, the man who could replace Mayor John Engen. That’s not to say Engen is going anywhere just yet. The second-term mayor ran unopposed in 2009 and remains wildly popular in the city, with many believing he could and will take a third term in a few years.
But in political circles in and out of City Hall, Wiener’s name has been tossed around as a possible successor, including on Missoula Red Tape, a prominent political blog in Missoula.
“Wiener comes from the worlds of finance and academia, and he’s carving a sure place for himself in Missoula’s political arena,” Keila Szpaller, a Missoulian reporter, wrote on the blog in late February. “He’s a skilled strategist when it comes to shepherding legislation over rocky terrain.”
Wiener, however, denies that he is interested in being mayor, constantly reminding everyone that Engen is still the man who holds that office.
“I didn’t get into this with the intention of it being a stepping stone for something else,” he said. “The people speculating are so outside of the job I have to do.”
Except he then adds that, even if he were to only serve one term on the City Council, which ends in 2012, it would not be the last time people see him in a “public life.”
“I want a city that looks like the best city Missoula can be,” he said, in a typically thought-out answer. “I want the same for the state and country.”
Wiener presents himself as a man ready for bigger things, a pose that’s apparent talking to him or seeing him at the meetings. He appears all business as he talks with various other members, but still approachable. He is the type of guy you could grab a beer with next door and share a laugh, share a story. Similar to Engen.
But it is politics like this that Rehbein avoids.
“Whoever the citizens send is who I work for, that’s my job,” she said, adding that she will only begin to talk to an elected official the morning after they are elected. And even after she remains professional, talking shop, it seems, and not much else.
Rehbein and Wiener don’t often leave the safety of a prepared statement or safe line.
Jon Wilkins, on the other hand, is the type of guy who in his day could have kicked your ass.
A former construction worker who turned 62 a few weeks ago, Wilkins tells it like it is. Or at least how he sees it. And apparently it works, as he has gotten the support of both parties in his past election and is now entering his fifth year in office.
Wilkins wanders around the Council chambers just before 7 p.m. and jokes with other members, his booming laugh filling the room. This type of laugh can only be developed with age. It’s the type of laugh that comes deep from within.
Wilkins feels that many Council members lean to the “extreme left.” He considers himself a moderate and more of what the city needs, “what’s good for Missoula, not the party,” he said, adding that sometimes the council does more than what is called for.
“Sometimes we deal with things that the city should have nothing to do with,” he said, like giving a new DUI breathalyzer fine, which he believes is an issue the state legislature needs to deal with.
“They have to get off their dead butts and do something more,” he said, with that trademark booming voice.
It is an easy segue to the recent issue faced by councilwomen Walzer, and while Wiener dodged the question, saying, “It’s a personal issue that Pam needs to deal with,” Wilkins came out shooting.
“I’m only going to speak for myself,” he said. “I feel it’s an embarrassment to the council. She made that choice and I think it reflects on other choices she makes.”
Wilkins isn’t afraid to tell it like he sees it, adding that he wants to bring back “common sense, something that’s lacking sometimes.”
He plans to continue doing that as long as he is “healthy and wise,” he said.
One person who can’t do that, and who doesn’t speak as openly, is John Hendrickson, former councilman from Ward 2.
While council members mill about the chambers, Hendrickson takes a seat in back and talks to an old friend. When the meeting starts, he crosses his arms, gazing at the position he once held, but lost to Roy Houseman, a young up-and-coming councilman that Wiener helped elect last year.
Hendrickson now represents the Missoula Building Industry Association, a group of area businesses, and often appears at the meetings.
“I show up every Monday,” he said, in a tone that said he didn’t want to be bothered as he walked out that night, not saying a word to the people he used to work with.
But on this night there wasn’t much on the agenda that seemed to warrant his presence — that new sign at South Reserve at the most — and that was on the consent agenda which meant it wasn’t up for debate, just a vote. One might think he only showed up to hear Walzer’s statement, because a week later he was absent from the meeting.
But former city council members aren’t the only ones who make up the audience, which is usually, if not always, small.
Kandi Matthew-Jenkins is a regular, and whenever the time for public comments begins, so does she, going into another rant about what is wrong with the city.
As she stands before the council, a group that already knows her by name, the council members look bored. Engen sits there with a face that just says “really, again?” Others check their computers, as if they are updating their Facebook status to say “OMG this nut again.” Even Wiener’s eyes wander.
But if anything, Matthew-Jenkins provides entertainment, the sideshow of the circus. In fact, the police were once called in as a heated discussion quickly elevated into something else between a council member and the one-time council and mayoral candidate. Two races that she ran in and, not surprisingly, lost in 1998 and 2001.
For Matthew-Jenkins, every day is a fight with the city.
“The way the council is split it’s like I’m fighting against half the council,” she said. “It’s communist.”
It’s a bold statement that requires clarification.
“I can’t say for sure that they are card-carrying communists, but my personal opinion is that they are leftist and looking at history. That’s Marxist communism,” she said.
Matthew-Jenkins, Hendrickson, Wilkins, Walzer, Wiener and Rehbein — they’re the show, playing their roles, not all of them important, but all of them necessary in a craft that is as old as the republic itself. From the days of town hall meetings in colonial New England to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., and the lonely city chambers of Missoula: This is how our nation works, this is how we keep the lights on. This is how we keep going.
Even though sometimes it seems as if it were just theater.
Her stern face says it all. She is dreading this, each and every tense moment passing like a ticking clock. One by one, Missoula’s city council members deliver quick, mostly pointless comments. With each passing comment, time is closing in on her and the statement everyone is waiting to hear.
Mitchell…. Rye….
As she has been all night, she tries to listen intently, tries to seem like she is serious, that she is giving her undivided attention to what is being said. Like she really does care about the need for election officials or some fundraiser. Like she really does give a damn.
Jaffe…. Houseman….
And then it’s her turn. Journalists quickly grab their notebooks and turn on their video cameras. Council members lean in, people in the audience sit up.
“This afternoon I pled guilty in municipal court of a charge of amended DUI per se,” Councilwoman Pam Walzer said, without looking up from her prepared statement.
“I was wrong and fully accept the consequences.”
“I don’t think my lapse in judgment will affect my ability to represent my constituents.”
Once she put down her paper, everyone could have left. No one cared what else had to be said. And in reality, there wasn’t anything else to be said, as Mayor John Engen looked over his paperwork and said, “That’s it,” and ended the meeting.
Walzer didn’t stick around. She didn’t stay to be bombarded by the waiting reporters who made up most of the small crowd.
Clutching her paperwork, she stood up, turned around and exited from the stage, through a back door so fast that if you looked away, you would have missed it.
Meanwhile, other members milled about, shooting the shit, talking about heading next door to Sean Kelley’s and grabbing a beer.
It was just another night at the Missoula City Council.
And while it looked like nothing got done — they did extend the lifespan of the Downtown Business Improvement District for a decade, set up a hearing about discrimination, and approve the permit for a new ground sign on South Reserve — that is normal. Most of the work takes place in open, but less-publicized committee meetings held during the day on Wednesday, according to City Clerk Marty Rehbein.
Rehbein has been working for the city for almost 20 years and has been city clerk since 1994. She’s the in-between for the council and the mayor, and keeps track of city records.
She also runs the Monday evening meetings as well as the committee meetings on Wednesday afternoons. All take place in the generic city chambers. A room in the back of an unnoticeable building next to Sean Kelley’s, it has tall ceilings, marked with large arching wood pillars. It’s surrounded by a pastoral yellow wall dotted with floral paintings of the city. In front of a group of chairs set up for the audience stands a massive half-round table where 12 council members, the mayor and the city attorney sit.
The meetings in the middle of the week produce the decisions about various items in the city — public works, education and so on. But though the decisions are made, they don’t go into effect until they are formally approved Monday night.
“It is where the rubber hits the road,” Rehbein said.
But the most important thing, she said, is that the Monday night meetings are where the public can view what the council has done. What direction the city is taking. A showing of democracy.
“The important thing about Monday nights is it’s the public and official view of our work,” said Jason Wiener, a councilman from Ward 1.
Like Rehbein, Wiener is one of the cast of characters that make up politics in Missoula.
But Wiener isn’t just another member of Council. Some see him as the future of politics in this city, the man who could replace Mayor John Engen. That’s not to say Engen is going anywhere just yet. The second-term mayor ran unopposed in 2009 and remains wildly popular in the city, with many believing he could and will take a third term in a few years.
But in political circles in and out of City Hall, Wiener’s name has been tossed around as a possible successor, including on Missoula Red Tape, a prominent political blog in Missoula.
“Wiener comes from the worlds of finance and academia, and he’s carving a sure place for himself in Missoula’s political arena,” Keila Szpaller, a Missoulian reporter, wrote on the blog in late February. “He’s a skilled strategist when it comes to shepherding legislation over rocky terrain.”
Wiener, however, denies that he is interested in being mayor, constantly reminding everyone that Engen is still the man who holds that office.
“I didn’t get into this with the intention of it being a stepping stone for something else,” he said. “The people speculating are so outside of the job I have to do.”
Except he then adds that, even if he were to only serve one term on the City Council, which ends in 2012, it would not be the last time people see him in a “public life.”
“I want a city that looks like the best city Missoula can be,” he said, in a typically thought-out answer. “I want the same for the state and country.”
Wiener presents himself as a man ready for bigger things, a pose that’s apparent talking to him or seeing him at the meetings. He appears all business as he talks with various other members, but still approachable. He is the type of guy you could grab a beer with next door and share a laugh, share a story. Similar to Engen.
But it is politics like this that Rehbein avoids.
“Whoever the citizens send is who I work for, that’s my job,” she said, adding that she will only begin to talk to an elected official the morning after they are elected. And even after she remains professional, talking shop, it seems, and not much else.
Rehbein and Wiener don’t often leave the safety of a prepared statement or safe line.
Jon Wilkins, on the other hand, is the type of guy who in his day could have kicked your ass.
A former construction worker who turned 62 a few weeks ago, Wilkins tells it like it is. Or at least how he sees it. And apparently it works, as he has gotten the support of both parties in his past election and is now entering his fifth year in office.
Wilkins wanders around the Council chambers just before 7 p.m. and jokes with other members, his booming laugh filling the room. This type of laugh can only be developed with age. It’s the type of laugh that comes deep from within.
Wilkins feels that many Council members lean to the “extreme left.” He considers himself a moderate and more of what the city needs, “what’s good for Missoula, not the party,” he said, adding that sometimes the council does more than what is called for.
“Sometimes we deal with things that the city should have nothing to do with,” he said, like giving a new DUI breathalyzer fine, which he believes is an issue the state legislature needs to deal with.
“They have to get off their dead butts and do something more,” he said, with that trademark booming voice.
It is an easy segue to the recent issue faced by councilwomen Walzer, and while Wiener dodged the question, saying, “It’s a personal issue that Pam needs to deal with,” Wilkins came out shooting.
“I’m only going to speak for myself,” he said. “I feel it’s an embarrassment to the council. She made that choice and I think it reflects on other choices she makes.”
Wilkins isn’t afraid to tell it like he sees it, adding that he wants to bring back “common sense, something that’s lacking sometimes.”
He plans to continue doing that as long as he is “healthy and wise,” he said.
One person who can’t do that, and who doesn’t speak as openly, is John Hendrickson, former councilman from Ward 2.
While council members mill about the chambers, Hendrickson takes a seat in back and talks to an old friend. When the meeting starts, he crosses his arms, gazing at the position he once held, but lost to Roy Houseman, a young up-and-coming councilman that Wiener helped elect last year.
Hendrickson now represents the Missoula Building Industry Association, a group of area businesses, and often appears at the meetings.
“I show up every Monday,” he said, in a tone that said he didn’t want to be bothered as he walked out that night, not saying a word to the people he used to work with.
But on this night there wasn’t much on the agenda that seemed to warrant his presence — that new sign at South Reserve at the most — and that was on the consent agenda which meant it wasn’t up for debate, just a vote. One might think he only showed up to hear Walzer’s statement, because a week later he was absent from the meeting.
But former city council members aren’t the only ones who make up the audience, which is usually, if not always, small.
Kandi Matthew-Jenkins is a regular, and whenever the time for public comments begins, so does she, going into another rant about what is wrong with the city.
As she stands before the council, a group that already knows her by name, the council members look bored. Engen sits there with a face that just says “really, again?” Others check their computers, as if they are updating their Facebook status to say “OMG this nut again.” Even Wiener’s eyes wander.
But if anything, Matthew-Jenkins provides entertainment, the sideshow of the circus. In fact, the police were once called in as a heated discussion quickly elevated into something else between a council member and the one-time council and mayoral candidate. Two races that she ran in and, not surprisingly, lost in 1998 and 2001.
For Matthew-Jenkins, every day is a fight with the city.
“The way the council is split it’s like I’m fighting against half the council,” she said. “It’s communist.”
It’s a bold statement that requires clarification.
“I can’t say for sure that they are card-carrying communists, but my personal opinion is that they are leftist and looking at history. That’s Marxist communism,” she said.
Matthew-Jenkins, Hendrickson, Wilkins, Walzer, Wiener and Rehbein — they’re the show, playing their roles, not all of them important, but all of them necessary in a craft that is as old as the republic itself. From the days of town hall meetings in colonial New England to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., and the lonely city chambers of Missoula: This is how our nation works, this is how we keep the lights on. This is how we keep going.
Even though sometimes it seems as if it were just theater.