Last night my husband and I went to Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat’s town hall meeting. This was my first town hall meeting in Inwood…very similar to ones in Staten Island…but funnier.

There was no air conditioning in the school it was held in. I spent who whole time we were there schvitzing and fanning myself with a 311 pamphlet. I also spent a good chunk of the meeting twittering dumb comments, reading news on my phone (sooooo much going on in the world), and laughing at the mulleted conspiracy nut sitting two rows ahead of me in the front row….Ok, so I didn’t really pay much attention after the question hubby wrote on an index card (and handed to Turtle from Entourage) was read and answered…but I was definitely more aware of reality than some of the “um…can you repeat the question” (like they were on something that the guy across from my old building on Vermilyea sells) city agency representatives on the panel were. 

Anyway here’s what my (limited) attention span got from the meeting:

-The steps on  215th St/Broadway need to be repaired. The ‘city agency for that stuff’ representative started droning on about, pre-design, design, bureaucracy etc….she made it sound like we wanted the city to build the 215th street space elevator to the moon.  Eventually she admitted that nothing was going to be fixed until October 2010.

-There will be no 9pm-9am off leash dog time at Isham Park. *boooooooo*

-Someone asked about having more red light cameras because of car service cars, police cars, busses, garbage trucks, and shmucks, running red lights. Espaillat talked about the locations of already existing cameras and then unintentionally (i hope) revealed the location of the dummy red light camera. Deputy Inspector Capul shot him a *are you fracking kidding me* side glance and started tapping away on his blackberry…probably to get the dummy put somewhere else.

-There are going to be more uniformed and plain clothes officers in Inwood Hill Park (I’ve already noticed more police cars driving past the dog run)

-There are going to be more Auxiliary cops in Inwood

-The 1 train on Dykman is being fixed (so shuttle busses and stuff when that happens)

- A lot of the questions were answered with “When I go into the office tomorrow I’ll call/ask/e-mail/tell someone”

-Conspiracy nut approached me before the meeting and starting telling me this ferkakte story about former mayor Giuliani, former police commissioner Bernard Kerik, 18 million dollars, and how we can get that money by suing everybody. He handed me a hand drawn/photocopied flyer with truth written all over it in big letters and a list of nutty stuff. 3 sentences into his speil I knew this guy would be entertaining and I was right. His hand was raised the entire time and a couple of times he jumped up and started yelling and pointing. The cops eventually got him to sit down… bummer… i was hoping to see a taser-ing. Mike asked if he had a website or something… he doesn’t.

-One of the index cards asked if Espaillat was in support of same sex marriage. He is and voted for it as an assembly member …I’m for marriage equality and am happy that he voted the way he did (I knew before the meeting how he voted)….but I got the feeling that the question was either planted or asked by a supporter for applause, because if you actually care about the same sex marriage cause, you already know where your representatives stand, and how they voted. If you don’t care enough to find out…you probably don’t go to town hall meetings either. FYI this is his voting record http://www.votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=14379

-The 4th Doctor Who (who also seems to be the Manhattan borough president) made a celebrity guest appearance. He showed up 45 minutes in, shook some hands, made some feel good statements, shook some hands, hopped back in the TARDIS, and flew away.

Mike and I left shortly after the boro pres. I was hot, tired, and starving (and a little bored)


Now on to what I think can be done to improve the next meeting:
-Allow people to submit questions online before the meeting (and let the city agency people see those questions so they can come prepared with an answer better than “I dunno”) and to avoid duplicate questions
-Put sticks on the 311 pamphlets so I can fan myself better
-Tase the conspiracy nut