I should preface this by saying that, for a decade, I held job in the U.S. legislative branch that required me to use strictly neutral language in any official publications I wrote.
In that job, in order to indicate that an outcome was uncertain, I was forbidden from saying “X may result in Y“. That statement, as written, is not neutral. It seems to imply that X will result in Y. Instead, I was, without exception, required to use “X may or may not result in Y“, as the only properly neutral way to convey the uncertainty of that relationship. Without exception.
So maybe I’m a little sensitive to tax-financed propaganda.
But, in fact, the Town does this all the time. They certainly did for the now-repealed MAC zoning. And, if you go back and look at the archives, at some point, the Town newsletter morphed from being a source of information, to being the official house organ of Town government, reflecting its point of view.
Again, paid for by our taxes.
And so it goes.
The deep irony is that the Town routinely runs four or more months behind, on publishing minutes from its official meetings. So if you actually want to know what’s been said, officially, so far, as a citizen, you’re shit-out-of-luck, unless you feel like spending an hour paying close attention to the video recordings of recent Town Council work sessions.
But the same Town government that can’t get minutes of its official meetings published in less than half a year can somehow manage to get a slickly-produced mass mailing, with every appearance of attempting to drum up support for a municipal pool, done in a perfectly timely fashion.
Anyway, if by magic, today’s mail brought me the following postcard. In addition to a beautiful artist’s conception of the facility on the front, it has this wording on the back, emphasis mine:
There’s no way for me to read this as anything other than advocacy. “If you like this, please let Town Council know.” (Separately: Describing this as Town Council’s proposal is also, I think, objectively incorrect. Use of citizen “wish list” was annoying in its gratuitous evocation of positive feelings.
Or, in my case, evocation of the Sears Roebuck catalog.
This in no way reflects on the merits or lack of merits of Town staff’s proposal for a municipal pool. I’ve addressed the revenue projections from that in the just prior posts. And, for sure, none of the advocates seems to stress that this will be a $1,000-a-year family membership pool/gym, similar to but with less comprehensive facilities than the many Fairfax County rec centers in this area.
In fact, if you read that postcard, it sure reads as if a temporary (not stated: 10-year-long) increase in the meals tax will pay for everything. But that’s misleading. Somehow the Town staff did not mention their consultant’s proposed schedule of fees, which, no surprise, looks pretty much like the fees that Fairfax County charges to use its similar (but larger) facilities.
Anyway, if you’re going to set yourself up running a taxpayer-financed business — which is what we’re talking about here — you need to approach it as a business decision. Not as something for which Town staff advocacy is normalized.
Conclusion.
Again, this is neither here nor there, with regard to the wisdom of the decision.
I’m just pointing out that when I worked for a government entity, if I’d manage to do what Town staff just did — use tax dollars to produce a public-directed bit of advocacy — I’d have been fired, no questions asked.
But in the TOV, this is just business as usual. We’re so used to it that I’d bet nobody in the Town power structure even gave this use of tax dollars, to sway Town Council opinion, a second thought.
