A 20 Minute Meeting

Elkhart's City Hall is a strange place. It doesn't have the nauseating ketchup smell of corruption I'm used to from Chicago's City Hall but there seems to be a heavy darkness that hangs in the air contorting everything no matter what time of the day I go into the place. Tonight was the Board of Zoning Appeals meeting and I was fully prepared to be bored out of my mind. Being new to town and knowing absolutely nothing about anything, I felt that it would be useful to know exactly how these things work while simultaneously making new contacts and sources for this little experiment of mine.

So, I walk into the City Council public meeting place and every head in the room turns to me. It was quite awkward. Suddenly, something that looked like a cross between a bulldog and a walking prune gets out of its seat and extends a hand to me.

"Hey! I'm Councilman Brian Thomas. I read your blog! You misspelled 'morale' as 'moral'." I ignored my first instinct to dropkick the walking prune and smiled, shaking his hand.

"At least you know we read it!" he continued in a condescending tone. I ignored the instinct again and asked him what he thought.

"Eh, it was okay. You should write more positive stuff." I sat down and took a minute alone to get over myself. I walked over and asked for his business card so I could contact him so we could have lunch sometime. This time, he was more friendly and I didn't have to fake my smile.

The meeting was incredibly short. The most exciting part was the Deputy City Attorney Amber J. Bressler going over the procedures for the meetings. Apparently, this was the board's first meeting in a while so there was no president nor vice-president to preside over the meetings. A rather young man in his 40s with nice hair and a good looking suit named Jordan P. Williams reluctantly accepted a nomination for president while another man in his 50s was voted vice-president.

The rest of the details are a bit fuzzy to me. There were only two petitions to be approved they were passed immediately without question and the board meeting adjourned.

I lagged behind a bit to introduce myself (again) and get business cards of people. Walking out of the dark city hall building I found myself speaking to a rather fascinating elderly woman named Mary Anne Lorentz, owner of Copys Inc and an antiques store downtown. She echoed much of the positive response I've been hearing concerning the new city administration which took office 10 days ago and schooled me on cool places to live downtown. It was pleasant.