Democracy Dies in the Dark

I had another interesting experience in democracy last week. At Metros Capital, we own a large 357-unit multifamily property in Athens, Georgia and are in the process of applying for a zone change that would materially increase our by-right density. We have a very good case for our request—our 18-acre site is in a key, central location along major transit lines and proximate to all the big job centers in the city. Plus, we are proactively offering to set aside 15% of any new units as deed-restricted affordable housing. The planning commission already voted 5-0 in favor our application but I wanted to come to the public meeting just so the Mayor and Commission could see there are real, genuine people behind our application.

The meeting started at 6pm, Athens’ time, so I got up in the middle of the night—pretty much my usual so not too painful—and caught a 5:45am flight to Atlanta. After 4 hours of flying plus a few hours of waiting and a few more of drive time in the blistering heat wave sun, I arrived at the Athens-Clarke City Hall. I was pretty tired by then but excited to hear what the elected officials had to say about our project.

When I picked-up the agenda and saw our project listed as 24 out of a 36-item agenda my heart kind of sank. I knew it was going to be a long night. Then, when the first 3 agenda items took over an hour, I slipped into a kind of light despair, like that feeling you get standing in line at Disneyland. After obsessively checking my email over and over again, playing all the daily word games I could find, and doom scrolling a bit, I wrested control back over my consciousness and thought to myself, “Hey Nick, why don’t you wake-up! You might actually learn something here tonight if you just start paying attention.” As usual, that’s exactly what happened.

I was at the meeting from 6pm to just after 10pm. When I finally got a chance to speak, I talked for a grand total of 90 seconds and my architect spoke for a minute. We answered just one question but discovered that the mayor and council seem super supportive of our application, maybe even unanimously so. In this game, you never know until you know though, so I’ll wait for the official vote on August 1^st before celebrating. For now, I’ll count it as a worthwhile and successful trip. And as a bonus, by actually paying attention,
I did manage to learn a few things:

When it comes to democratic function, smaller is better.

Athens-Clarke has a far more sensible structure for representative democracy than what I’ve seen in the big cities. For a population of just over 125,000 they have 10 Commissioners (1 per every 12,500 citizens). Los Angeles, by way of comparison, has 3.85M people and only 15 city council members (1 per every 257,000 citizens). I could tell from the quality of the conversation that the Commissioners had a much better understanding of the true needs and wants of their constituents. There was more nuance and civility to the discussion and far fewer moments of political grandstanding. At one point, for example, they were talking about what kind of vehicles to purchase for the police force and the group had a healthy debate examining the tradeoffs between their desire to go green, the actual needs of the police, and the risks and dangers to the residents. Apparently, there’s only one vehicle on the market that is both hybrid and pursuit-rated and it’s an SUV and the problem with the SUV’s is that they are far more dangerous to pedestrians and motorists in crashes. Similarly, when debating potential locations for a new library and park, the commissioners demonstrated an intimate familiarity with community needs, traffic patterns, and neighborhood dynamics. It was clear that they had enough real information to form a good opinion about what might be the best option. This level of analysis is something you almost never see in a place like Los Angeles. Something to keep in mind for sure as we try to fix our democracy.

At the local level, things in America look surprisingly similar.

Substantively, the debates of the evening were indistinguishable from what you would find in a big liberal dominated city like Los Angeles. Judging by public comment and the deliberations, the citizens of Athens-Clarke are really worried about things like public safety, the effectiveness of bail reform and alternative policing, gang violence, the effectiveness of public spending, and of course, development.

While there wasn’t any public comment about our project at this meeting, during our planning commission session, some 15 or 20 neighbors came out to speak against it. Their fears? That we would build something “out of character with the neighborhood,” “cause more traffic,” or, God forbid, “block people’s views.” These must be the standard arguments from the NIMBY playbook because this is exactly what we hear in Los Angeles. Sadly, this carefully constructed language of opposition is mostly based on classist and/or racist fears. People don’t want to come out and say “I don’t want more poor (or Black, Latino or Immigrant) people in my neighborhood” but that’s often what they are thinking.

Interestingly, I did notice one striking qualitative difference. While there were plenty of impassioned comments from the public, everyone kept it civil and on topic. This is in stark contrast to the City of LA meetings I’ve been a part of where public comment has become a joke. In LA, public comment has become a time for hate, vitriol, and usually off-topic diatribe that is more about the speaker’s undiagnosed psychological problems than any real sense of civic engagement.

While there’s a huge bear market in attention to local political matters, these legislative bodies are doing critical, pro-democratic work.

That night, it struck me that while democracy might be hard, it’s absolutely still worth it. There was hardly a person in the room that night and only one agenda item involving a partially constructed new stadium struggling with delays and overruns (sound familiar?) that garnered any real public attention. And I get it. After 45 minutes of debate about where to put the new library, part of me wanted to just step in and pick the site myself! Anything to get through the agenda faster. But that’s not the right attitude. The local elected officials there that night were doing exactly what they are supposed to do—they were taking their job seriously and trying to make decisions in the long-term best interests of the community. That requires data, analysis, and rational public debate—in other words, a lot of hard work. As Martin Wolf said so eloquently on the podcast, “democracy is a moral venture” and it’s moral because it challenges us to prioritize what is right over what is expedient.

Because there’s so little civic engagement beyond voting, we have a system where our leaders are elected by a majority but end up representing a tiny minority.

I used to think that the biggest problem in our democracy was the serious lack of talent we see in our elected officials. To be sure, this is an issue but to elevate it to the top of the problem list is an overly cynical, unproductive reaction. What I witnessed there in Athens-Clarke was a good reminder of this, for the elected officials and public servants in the room that night were all serious, passionate individuals willing to accept a greater responsibility and to do the hard work of democracy. It’s easy to see the memes going around of politicians giving nonsensical answers to questions, behaving bizarrely, or getting arrested (a very common occurrence these days here in Los Angeles) and just write it all off but that’s the not the whole truth. There are still good people out there, even among the elected.

If there’s a problem with our democratic functions it’s this: because most citizens engage in the political process at a high, rather removed level, our elected officials feel compelled to / end-up responding to the perceived needs of the tiny minority of people who are actually in their ear every day. This is only human nature, right? For some reason, we are psychologically programmed to respond to the squeaky wheel. However, in democracy, this can be problematic when the squeaky wheel manifests only as powerful concentrated interest groups like business and unions or hyper self-focused, impassioned citizens—both of which present a far too narrow view of the world.

Every time I engage in democratic function, I see this phenomenon and it was there on display as well. For who was in the room that night? No one really. Just a handful of property owners like myself, a big contingent from the development team building the stadium, who disappeared promptly as soon as it looked like they were going to get what they need, and a few concerned citizens. As I was taking all this in, it occurred to me that if our democracy is going to die, it’s going to die in the dark. For now, we may be safe, supported as we are by the momentum of our great institutions and the integrity of individuals like those in the Athens-Clarke city government but we better not keep our eyes closed for too long. 🇺🇸

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