According to legend, while Rome burned, Nero fiddled. More than two millennia later, while Atascadero sinks, its City Council dithers. During its February 12 meeting, the Council procrastinated further about rebuilding the Historic City Hall. Even though $10,000,000 of FEMA funds are available to start rebuilding, without prejudice to the City’s appeal to FEMA for additional amounts, the Council refused to use the funds to start rebuilding. In so doing, it followed the advice of the City Staff—who are widely suspected by the public of back-burnering this matter because they want never to return to the old City Hall. Meanwhile, the City’s centerpiece stands in waiting. While the Mayor advised those in attendance to be patient, patience would come easier if the Council showed a sense of urgency about the crucial matter of rebuilding the City Hall and if there were some action proving that it really is dedicated to reviving the Downtown.
Later in the meeting, the Council’s dithering escalated. At its January 22 meeting, the Council went into punt formation on the subject of Atascadero’s economic development, when it decided to spend up to $120,000 for a study. In the February 12 meeting, however, the Council one-upped itself by postponing its planned punt. Following the anti-Wal-Mart forces, who sounded the alarm that the consultant selected on January 22 might favor the Wal-Mart proposal, the majority decided to revisit the question of which consulting firm should do the study. What had appeared to be a Wal-Mart-neutral issue suddenly fell into the great Wal-Mart Divide. Now the plan is to re-interview the four candidates, and vet them for pro- or anti-Wal-Mart leanings. Only after that will the study start. The study’s pendency, meanwhile, will rationalize for the Council several more months of inaction. Ultimately, if history is any guide, the study will yield a list of goals paralleling those produced by prior studies, and the Council will have another document to use to justify itself. Nothing of consequence will have been done. Atascadero’s “sprawl-town” appearance will remain unimproved and the drag of a down-market identity will continue to depress its commercial sector. At least fiddling can provide entertainment; dithering does not offer even that redeeming feature.