EDITOR’S CORNER
Acouple of weeks ago the city council went into executive session.
When the council goes into executive session they pick up and physically shuffle into another room.
That’s different from the school board’s executive sessions. They stay where they are and everybody else leaves.
Now, some of my press colleagues get all huffed out over executive sessions but governing boards can’t take any action while they’re in there—or we are out there—and I think they provide an important service.
They force us in the “left behind” crowd to visit with one another.
Think about it. In our smart phone era we tend to be little universes of one in public situations and avoid interaction with people even though we may be crammed into a seat, pelvis-to-pelvis, six inches away from them.
And in a town like Rock-dale, where you are going to know everyone in the room except for the auditor from Austin who is going to put you to sleep with his report when the board comes back, your impulse is to engage them in conversation.
And that is almost always enjoyable.
For instance, at the council meeting, I learned the lady seated next to me has a new dog which she wants to name “Rumpole” after an excellent British television show that nobody on this side of the Atlantic watched but she and I.
Many years ago the city council met in the community room of the old Rock-dale State Bank, across Ackerman Street from the library.
When they executive-sessioned they would get up and go down a hall that we were sure also led to the bank’s vault.
And, of course, we talked about what the headline would be if the council discovered the vault and never came back.
We picked “Rockdale City Council Found in Las Vegas; Still Had 36 Dollars in Quarters.”
But my favorite through the years has been school board executive sessions.
This was mostly because decades ago I would just sit there and listen while a former longtime school district employee would tell us some of the stories she would never have told us under other circumstances.
Things like a certain former administrator, now deceased and probably the very last person you would ever expect, kept a rubber snake in his desk to frighten people.
He used it on her so many times she got used to it. He found other victims.
At another school board executive session—and this was many years ago—a temporary administrator spent several minutes bemoaning the fact that her daughter on the east coast was changing professions because she just couldn’t get by on what she was making.
$250,000 a year.
As I recall, I told her I was glad she was not part of the board’s budget and tax rate preparation process.
In separate eras, the city council would meet in two different locations in the old City Hall, upstairs in the south front room and downstairs in what used to be the old fire station.
After one downstairs executive session, as the council filed back in, the mayor—a good friend of mine, now deceased—looked at me and said, sarcastically “Mr. Brown, you look like you want to say something. What is it?”
If you’re a Rockdale old timer you can probably guess who this was.
I said, and I shouldn’t have: “Mr. Mayor, Plato said the only reason a just man can give for serving in public office is so that he not be governed by inferiors. Is that why you ran?”
He answered.
I can’t print it.
And now, you really know who that mayor was.
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