Local politics always provide healthy dose of entertainment

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 16, 2002 | by Stephen Goode

It's been a long, hot summer in much of the country, which may account for the following two stories. In the college town of Manhattan, Kan., home to Kansas State University, a house that previously was valued at a modest $59,000 was reappraised for tax purposes at $200,059,000, an increase that no doubt would have come as something of a surprise to the inhabitants of the home, had they received the bill. Riley County officials caught the error before the notice was sent out--but not before county and city officials based future budgets on tax receipts from the overevaluation, a problem that's still being sorted out.

Meanwhile, in the tiny town of Telluride, Colo., population 1,309, a famously cantankerous town council, whose meetings often last as long as 10 hours, took unusual measures to calm contentious members: It called in a shaman to cast a positive spell on the town hall and rid the place of all negative vapors and spirits.

Shaman Christopher Beaver examined the meeting place of the Telluride Town Council this summer and found a basement room full of what he pronounced to be "violent energy." Beaver then conducted in various rooms of the building a "smudging ceremony," which included burning menthol.

Council members told the Associated Press that they've since been more in agreement, but that they're reluctant to attribute their milder attitudes to Beaver's ceremony.

Mayor John Steel says the shaman's ritual probably helped focus people's attention "to seek higher ground." Nonetheless the mayor, who noted that town-council meetings were opened with such ceremonies as poetry readings and a moment of silence long before the council resorted to Beaver, adds that the local government is open to anything that might bring harmony. "We haven't gone to a sweat lodge yet. Maybe that will be next time," Steel says.

STEPHEN GOODE IS A SENIOR WRITER FOR Insight.