I have been musing about stuff. Sometimes I feel the need to write about something, only I have to chew on it a while or sleep on it. In this case, it’s been a few days.

It’s about the state of things locally and regionally. No not nationally. Nationally is what it is. No amount of breast beating will change anything right now. Also? Quite frankly I am tired of the excuses of state and local elected officials that everything s the fault of national politics.

It’s not.

We are here in our own corner of the country. People have to go on, but they also have to deal with local issues and regional ones and a lot of the time, the simple fact of life is Washington, DC has nothing to do with it. Neither does political party.

There are people on a state and local level who are supposed to represent all of their plurality fairly and to the best of their ability and not play favorites. But not all play that way.

Some elected officials you don’t hear from. They literally fade into the woodwork and it’s like not having anyone there, or worse, you constantly forget their names because they literally do nothing.

Some elected officials you had great hopes for. You may have even been personally invested (not financially, but personally as in you volunteered for their campaigns, etc.) in them and at first you feel happy and have a sense of hope that the right thing will happen with them in office.

Then with some of them you watch a slow metamorphosis. First it is barely noticeable, then all of a sudden they drank some Kool Aid and kind of sold out. With others, it is once they are elected, they don’t remember your name. That is not me personally, it’s whomever volunteered for them. I don’t volunteer for campaigns, and I don’t donate to them.

Next you have some elected officials begin to believe their own press releases and become rather full of themselves. And then there are those who are just obnoxious at public meetings. And in some cases as I witnessed in the past, abusive of their positions. That used to be a fan favorite in the good old bad old days of Radnor Township for example. I am actually unsure if it is happening again, but seems to appear to be so which is so sad. It’s like everything watchdog citizens did years ago to clean up. The township has been for nothing

There is one commissioner in Radnor who is being particularly pissy with residents lately. I noticed it when they announced the potential of eminent domain against a church. You have to wonder if they think so little of their residence. Why not just resign and do something less stressful with their evenings at times?

You just have to wonder.

Some of these elected officials have a basic issue with maintaining composure at public meetings. But when it’s a politician having outbursts at residents, it leaves a lot to be desired. I wrote about one such person recently. I call it meeting Tourette’s.

This supervisor that I wrote about recently is in West Goshen Township. And for someone who is the chair of the supervisors, I don’t understand why is she so insecure? Since she became a supervisor, she is prone to these outburst on occasion and she can’t handle public comment and then there’s the whole thing of where she basically was trying to apologize to people and then said they were lying and how does that work?

And again, this isn’t a once or maybe even twice occurrence over the I guess it’s about five years she’s been a supervisor, is it?

Yes, recently I wrote about this politician after I saw one of the meeting tirades. I was astounded and as a woman I was also embarrassed that as another woman she lost control like that. I understand being human, but she’s held to a higher standard as an elected official. She’s also held to a higher standard because she is a female politician, so when she throws her little temper tantrums in the public view she makes it harder for the women who come up behind her no matter what the political party because that’s what people remember. And again not a new meeting occurrence for this politician is it?

So this female politician first reached out to a friend of mine. Asked her to take down her post and then asked her to have me take down my post that she was having a bad day. My friend lives in municipality and decided that she would be the bigger person and take the post down. I told my friend I was not taking the post down because it wasn’t the first time it had happened not even the first time in almost 5 years that it had happened.

I thought this was the end of it.

Apparently not since a few days ago this politician then reached out to me singing a very sad song of having a bad day, etc. etc. and she wasn’t a bad person. I never said she was a bad person. I said she can’t control herself in public meetings and is a shrew to the public she is supposed to be serving. The public who elected her to office.

But the best part was, she said she had never read my blog post, but she was asking me to take it down anyway. I mean HUH?

I am choosing not to share what she wrote to me specifically although I could. And again, if this was the first time she had meeting Tourette’s I wouldn’t have written another post, but last time I wrote about her, it was because she was telling a resident who was calm and polite that she would have police remove him and how is that normal? Was that just another bad day?

I asked that politician if she was contacting a reporter working for a or a newspaper or a TV station, would she have contacted them to ask me to take something down?

I think we know the answer to that question don’t we?

And to this politician, I will say a lot of people have bad days, actually truly awful days and don’t act like that do they?

And then another township that has been on. My radar of late is West Vincent again.

And in West Vincent, I really don’t understand what is going on. You have one supervisor who the last time they were at a meeting was in a wheelchair and has not been seen for a bunch of weeks? And then there is another supervisor there who also must have other health issues and the last meeting they were seen wearing a mask as in a medical mask and then left like 20 minutes into a regular board meeting looking scary gray on camera? Then another meeting was canceled because they didn’t have a quorum wasn’t it?

And what’s going to happen at the next meeting which is like Monday? They are literally putting the business of a municipality in Pennsylvania at risk and what’s the endgame? Will they try to slide in politicians that people voted out of office as benchwarmers? It’s a valid question since the manager whose contract they didn’t renew a few years ago is suddenly back as the interim manager, correct?

Something’s definitely got to give there and you have to wonder like when does the state come into municipalities to clean up messes?

And then down in Oxford, they seem to want to get rid of their police force? What kind of politicians want to get rid of the people that serve and protect the public?

These are but a few examples of messy politicians and messy municipalities and the thing is they make it more difficult for other municipalities and other local politicians don’t they?

Face it, for the most part the public trust is broken. And it’s broken also because of the shenanigans at the county level in various counties. Maybe this is just my opinion. Maybe they’re all going to think I’m imagining things, but I don’t think so, do you?

Eventually, for these people, there’s going to be a reckoning. Pick a county and municipality. It can be Delaware County. It can be Montgomery County. It can be Chester County. Note, I left Philadelphia county out because Philadelphia County is a hot mess all by itself and has been for decades.

We all have to want better for our communities then just going along to get along. But you have a lot of social media misinformed armchair quarterbacking and you don’t have a lot of people that go to meetings regularly or even have a clue what’s going on in their own municipality regularly and that’s on the plurality.

I’m sure there are politicians who will read this post and say they haven’t read it (of course) and think they’re being singled out or picked on. They’re not. They’re just part of the problem as far as I’m concerned.

We elect these people in good faith to look after our communities and represent all of us equally and fairly, but do they do that?

My last word on this is if they were doing that, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation, do you?

These politicians need to be better or make way for people who can be better. However, as the plurality the people out there in these communities, we also have to want better.

Do you want better in your community?

Thanks for stopping by.