I hate corporate meetings largely because 1) people say stupid things, and 2) you’re stuck in a room listening to it. Which is why I stayed home and watched the Huntington Beach city council meeting on HBTV while my neighbor valiantly attended to oppose the resolution for city-wide address changes.
In our case, the change is relatively minor, changing our street suffix from Street to Lane, so minor that it begs the question why it’s being done at all. The postcard announcing the change stated that there were discrepancies among databases and thus it’s a public safety issue that needs to be rectified, since the city uses an automated address system. When I inquired which databases were inconsistent, as I found none among any of the utilities, vendors or tax agencies I deal with, not to mention the authoritative Thomas Guide, I received clarification that the change for my street was to accomodate a city specification that north-south minor streets be labelled “Lane”, and then an additional plug on the public safety issue. When I pointed out one more time that since everyone else was consistent, even if there was one mystery database used by the city that wasn’t, changing the street name now would certainly generate more inconsistency, not less, the responder finally shut up about the public safety spin and said she’d forward my comments to the planning commission. I appreciate the responses, but I would have felt better if I hadn’t discovered everyone else who inquired received the same responses, word for word. Cut-and-paste is a god-send for bureaucrats.
In any case, it’s possible our complaints had some effect – the powerpoint presentation at the council meeting showed the resolution split into two parts, or perhaps two resolutions (I thought it was two resolutions, but it seemed there was one vote), the first part to resolve discrepancies among databases and the second to make addresses conform to the city specifications. But then the fire chief, police chief and former police chief touted the public safety issue again, saying they knew their way around but they rely on agencies in neighboring areas to help out and they might get lost. So, a fire truck from Long Beach is going to cruise right by my condo because they see an “St.” on the end of the street sign? To confuse issues further, councilman Hardy assured my neighbor that for a simple suffix change, the post office won’t care, because they use an automated addressing system. And then she went on to explain that we had to make the change because the public safety addressing system required it. This is one of those situations where I’m thinking I’m talking to an idiot, or they’re assuming I’m stupid enough to believe what they’re saying, or we really do have the worst IT system ever. Hey, this really is like a corporate meeting.