View RSS Feed

Flinn

The Dude goes into politics! - Many defeats, and many fruitless victories...

Rate this Entry

The "Molino S. Susanna", which makes part of the Park, it still works with water to grind wheat

Last chapter.

You'll pardon me if I quote Elrond of Rivendell, but somewhat what I'm experiencing here is so old and rooted, that quoting an Elder Elf seems the right thing to do.. to be honest is not even "many fruitless victories", it's very few fruitless victories, but still..

So how's the situation today? Cold, to say the least.. Covid issues of course slowed everything down (yeah, like if we really needed that, because you know our bureaucracy is so efficient..), but this is not really the point: that was always the issue with new enthusiastic public admins in Italy.. they soon get bored of having to wait and get pissed off of seeing their efforts being wasted by the inefficiency of the system and of those who run it (really, a plague).

However, on the "not so good" side: my main concern at the moment is that some of my "colleagues" seem to have lost the interest in contributing, or at the least in contributing with the same commitment and enthusiasm of before.. I myself I'm not very happy in general, so much things to complete and so little results (this is due, as said, to the inefficiency of the system for the most, but also to the way things are managed internally in the administration of the Municipality...) that one has of course the tendency to focus on other things.. luckily for me I'm used to this kind of issues having worked for long with small companies (which are generally speaking less efficient as per their nature), so I'm managing the stress better than the others, though of course I'm not going to last long if I'll be alone.. In any case, it's a struggle to keep the enthusiasm, much more than having to deal with people.. definitely I wasn't expecting this, but the system car stress you quite a lot, though I know understand why most of the professional politicians do focus on people exclusively (since they know that even if you fail to win against the system, you can still win for yourself if you keep the people voting for you...).

Just an example, we have like 11 or 12 "approved projects" (in various stages), 3 of them are an heritage of the former administration.. however, we are talking about close to 2 millions (main projects are reconstruction of the kindergarten, construction of an hostel, construction of a new multi-purpose center, construction of a new house for the local associations, betterment of the parks connected to the two natural monuments we have..), and if we are lucky we will see the start of the construction of the very first of this project (the kindergarten) sometimes around April 2021.. if we are lucky eh... this is frankly disheartening, especially considering how much of efforts we put in those projects..

Another thing I don't like about the actual situation is how the equilibrium within the members of the administrations is changing more and more towards some individuals.. this has very little to do with the actual commitment people put in what they do, and very much to do with political stuff... I guess this is somewhat inevitable, but since I'm still learning on that side and it's worth a discussion by itself, I'll post about in a dedicated blog sometimes in the future....

Now, on the "not so bad" side: luckily, people seems to be appreciating our efforts, we got some small victories so to say (most recent ones are the inclusion within the "Spighe Verdi", an important recognition on national level for virtuous municipalities, in particular on the "green side"); the other one is the installation of a new Post Office with an ATM (which surprisingly was still missing, in 2020... ).
Another positive thing is the fact that people, all the people, recognize the good work we have done during the Covid crisis, and that's good per sé.. it is also helpful, since when we got into trouble again few weeks ago (that was due to a Funeral too many people attended.. and one of them resulted positive to the Covid, so more than 400 people were involved in that!) everybody just listened with what we told and asked them to do (swab tests, active surveillance) and luckily it solved itself without further infections.. though I have to admit that this have to do more with people being afraid of their health, that the respect they might have for us .

But the most important success we had was related to an event we organized together with Regione Lazio, The Natural Reserve of Lungo and Ripasottile Lakes and Slow Food. The event was in the St Susanna Spring park... remember the natural monument I mentioned many times before? Well if you do, you will also remember how much we are focused on promoting and expanding it, hence you can understand my enthusiasm for what we achieved with that event... few figures and facts: this was the only authorized public event in the whole Province for summer of 2020; more than 1500 people from all around Italy (about 50% of locals and 50% of "invited" people) attended it, plus about 200 people between the exhibitors and the organizers... consider that our Municipality has a population, on papers, of roughly 1300 dudes!!; the Vice-president of Regione Lazio, the President of the Provincia di Rieti, the President and the Director of the Natural Reserve of Lungo and Ripasottile Lakes, together with various Majors from almost all the neighboring Municipalities were all present; national TV was present as well, together with local TVs and other News. The big fact though is that we managed to organize the very first event of this kind where we exactly wanted it to be.. and in the way it should be, is to say with all the 3 elements (public administration, local entrepreneurs and volunteers) of the local community working together with a common goal. Whatever it will be in the future, that was a great day for me.

a video loaded on Watch about the event; sorry I cannot provide any YT video since the dude that made this, a friend of mine, has a web TV but does not use YT
link to the official page of Slow Food presenting the event.

A due clarification: there's a clear political motivation if it was possible to organize that event, and honestly we have been lucky that they picked our Natural monument for it.. but it did not come out of the blue of course and in any case we have been very good at organizing and running it.

Next chapter I'll probably talk about how much politics influences everything related with the public administration, as I hinted both in the line above and when I spoke about the equilibrium within our group.. until then, if you have any comment or question, feel free to comment

Updated September 07, 2020 at 05:54 AM by Flinn

Categories
Hobbies & Interests

Comments