Given global events, it’s indeed quite a time to tender a call for civility.
But here we are; and with the Islands Trust’s Executive Committee (EC) now echoing the Governance Committee’s concerns about the way trustees choose to interact with one another –– and with staff –– during public meetings, one might ask how many warning flares need to hit the skies before we send in help.
September’s meeting of the Islands Trust Council might have had its particularly toxic moments, but they were nothing if not predictable; the glide path down from respectful dialogue into quarterly harangue has been well-charted for months, if not years –– and by trustees themselves.
The EC is now investigating whether it can call for a moderator-led facilitated discussion among all trustees about the body’s Code of Conduct –– what it expects currently, and perhaps how it can be updated to address the increasingly dispiriting conduct in meetings.
The proposal to bring in a professional facilitator and all island trustees for what is essentially an education session on civil behaviour will have its detractors; knowing each day of a Trust Council meeting costs about $10,000, one might argue the money is better spent elsewhere.
And the mere act of lamenting the state of public discourse can be an indiscriminate cudgel, with a long history of being used dishonestly to tamp down unpopular opinion under the pretense of promoting civility.
But that does not seem to be what is going on among trustees. They truly need help, as one trustee put it, with the practice of speaking to issues rather than personalities.
The ability to respectfully disagree is a critical skill for all elected representatives –– a muscle that needs exercise, lest it atrophy. And if our local body needs a professional tune-up, we support a special facilitated session to get them back on track.
Who knows — the outcome or results may end up acting as a model for all of us as we try to buck the unfortunate trend towards uncivil and disrespectful behaviour in person and online.