site visits

One of the most interesting things about my work assignment here is going on site visits to the partner municipalities. This happens about two times a week and it might involve a walk through the city or a trip out into pristine farmland to see a place where a new residential development is being proposed.

These field trips invariably leave me feeling wistful. Despite this project's best efforts to push for better land use decisions, the population growth here is so rapid and the changes to the landscape are happening so quickly in real time, so much will happen before the plans come into effect. It is hard to look at those ancient olive groves and know that within a year, they will be no more.

The visits with municipalities also might involve meeting with local staff to answer questions, dig for information. The team I am with invariably learns new, surprising, unanticipated facts that we never imagined and which send us in new directions. We also, quite often, get to spend some time with the local mayors.

I like these opportunities when I get to watch the mayors in action. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to spend time with these local leaders and see first hand the pressures they face. Until quite recently - 2007 - mayors were appointed to the position and not necessarily from the municipality they were governing. This is the first mandate for which elected mayors have been in position, and they face the same problems that are familiar in Canada but with greater intensity: unfathomable budget constraints, crumbling or non-existent infrastructure for playgrounds, schools, water, sewers, transportation, waste management - you name it - and never ending demands for more services as populations grow. It is much trickier to govern when one has to keep voters satisfied!

The mayors I have met so far bring widely varying experiences to their new elected positions. One is lawyer by profession, poet by avocation, and has a calm, philosophical approach that reminds me a little bit of Vaclav Havel. Another is a man of prodigious energy with four wives, thirty-two kids and many, many familial and friendship ties. All these people are knocking at his door wanting something from him in his role of mayor - a very delicate balancing act. A third has spent a lot of time in the States and has a clear vision for his town and a innate sense of PR that is serving him well.

Invariably these sessions with municipal partners never quite go in the way one expects: what you think will be a quiet meeting with three people, suddenly turns into a briefing for forty.... Or a television crew enters the room and starts filming... or sometimes our field visits turn into a convoy as more and more local folks join in, and then the police start to follow. No one really blinks when these things happen.

After spending years in my job back home trying valiantly to manage and choreograph stakeholder meetings so that they work to everyone's advantage, I have come to terms with the fact that anything can - and probably will - happen here. Chaos reigns. It is kind of great. A British woman I met recently told me - to my considerable astonishment - that I have the air of a yoga teacher - "always totally chill"! I think this is because my daily mantra has become that little alcoholics anonymous ditty about knowing when to give up control. Serenity now!