I’m back for another ride on the acountability/transparency train, not because I like the view or because I’m a train guy, but more because I feel as if I lost my wallet on a previous trip and have hopes that it might turn up.

Fat chance.

Today, I’m going to rant a little bit about agendas, as in meeting agendas, as in the ones that are released out of the Clerk’s office a few days before any general council meeting that’s open to the public.

Agendas are important, not because they’re road maps for discussion, but also because it gives the boys and girls at home and on our ships at sea an opportunity to get some idea as to what the topics for that meeting are to be.  It does double-duty as an informative and handy reference for anyone attending a meeting in person or viewing the process via the YouTube Livestream service offered by the town.

We all know, or ought to know, that accountability of public officials, whether elected or staff, is something more than merely the mouthing of words.  Words are cool and everything, but for accountability to have any meaning, those words have to be consistent with deeds, with real and appreciable evidence that efforts are made, and things done, to ensure that those words and deeds match up.

As it goes for accountability, so too does it go for transparency.

We can say transparency is a matter of critical importance to us, but then go about our business in such a  way as to render our lofty ideals as being practically useless.  No good idea is a good idea unless it’s backed-up and followed-through by good action to implement the good idea.  Anything short of this is lip-service, window-dressing, chimera, fool’s gold.

Take your pick, they’re all bad.