Don Stratton: Dealing with city council can be a challenge

One of the hazards of being in an administrative position in a police agency, part of the executive branch of government, is that you have to deal with the elected officials who handle the legislative functions — in my case, Lima City Council. Don't get me wrong, it is not my intention to belittle those people who perform a necessary and often thankless job, but there have been some real doozies who have somehow managed to get themselves elected through the years.

In my 18 years of “upstairs” duty at the Lima Police Department, I was fortunate to have dealings with Lima City Council only occasionally. Sometimes, I had the dreaded duty of having to stand in for the police chief at a council meeting. Although at that time I was paid extra for it, I would have preferred to have been elsewhere. Usually, my dealings with them involved some request by a council member, and I always tried to bend over backward to cooperate, even with requests that sometimes greatly exceeded their area of authority.

Through the years, I saw a lot of truly dedicated people serve on the council — people who would have done it without the meager salary, just to try to do some good for their city. Unquestionably, they were in the majority. But, there were a few others whose presence only made things worse for the dedicated ones. I saw everything from a hopeless drunk to people whom I figured ran for the office primarily because they needed the few hundred dollars a month of extra income. Worst of all were the ones trying to support a $400,000 ego on a $4,000 salary.

Once, I received a phone call from a Christian coffee house located in Town Square. They had a singing group coming in with a tour bus on Saturday night, and they needed a nearby place to park it. My first choice would have been for them to park it behind the Civic Center, but the city had recently deeded that lot over to the county. I gave them permission to park it parallel to the curb in the normally angled parking spaces on Main Street, and notified the shift supervisors.

At about 6 p.m. that Saturday, I received a call at home from one of my sergeants telling me that a city councilman had called, one with a huge ego. He was irate about the location of the bus, and wanted me to call him. I went to my Police Department office to make the call on a tape recorded phone line; I knew that the call would be contentious, and I didn't need for there to be any question about what was said.

When I called him, the councilman immediately went into a tirade about the bus taking up too many parking spaces that were needed by one of the nearby businesses. I told him that made no sense, because there were at that very moment, empty parking spaces much closer to the business. He then yelled, “You should have told them to park behind the Civic Center.”

I replied, “I couldn't, you just gave that lot to the county.”

His response was, “Well, I don't think you have the authority to let them park on Main Street, and by George, if you do, I'm going to see to it that the authority is taken away from you come Monday night.”

Somehow, I actually remained fairly calm, replying, “OK, if that's the way you want to play the game, let me tell you what I'm going to do. In the future, if you need something from me, make sure that you have the legal authority to force me to do it. I have always tried very hard to cooperate with council members, but that cooperation just came to an end. In the future, I will do only what the law requires me to do.”

The change in his attitude was amazing. He immediately said, “By George, you're right, and I apologize.”

The strange thing was that he was still yelling, very loudly. It's the only time I ever heard anyone apologize for yelling, while still yelling the apology. I still keep that tape in my office for an occasional laugh.