As I have mentioned before in my series of blog posts featuring my local newspaper, this kind of journalism is disappearing all over the country. According to Northwestern University’s journalism school, on average two newspapers are closing each week across the country. Many of the remaining print news outlets – and most local television news shows – are now owned by major media companies that emphasize content with a more national focus.. As a result, splashy national stories suck all of the oxygen from the room, leaving little market for local content.
This is bad at so many levels. Residents of communities without a robust local newspaper are often uninformed about the issues that have the most impact on their lives – zoning decisions, local road projects, local tax rates, and school board policies, to name just a few examples.
This article features a friend of mine, Stacey Ken-Scheerer, who was elected to the Williamsburg City Council in November and was sworn in on January 6, 2023. Stacy is a law professor at the William & Mary Law School, where (among other duties) she runs an Immigration Law clinic that provides her students with real-life opportunities to help immigrants who come to the clinic seeking legal advice. In addition to her law school work, she is deeply embedded in the community, where her children attend a local elementary school.
While Williamsburg City Council elections – like many local elections across the country – are officially nonpartisan, Stacy is clearly a progressive voice in the community. During the campaign, when other candidates expressed support for building a large athletic complex at the location of the existing Colonial Williamsburg Visitors Center – a project that is projected to bring a lot of income to our area – Stacy questioned where the necessary workforce would live and how they would get to work in a community that does not provide much affordable housing or public transportation. The fact that she won the largest number of votes in winning her seat – among the four seats that were open – suggests that a good percentage of the local population shares her concerns.
As a professor at William & Mary, Stacy is also able to stimulate students at the college to get involved in the community. She meets regularly with groups of students (both graduate and undergraduate) to gain insight into their concerns. Now she’ll be able to take these concerns directly to the City Council.
This article celebrates the swearing-in of the new council, which occurred at the historical Courthouse of 1770 on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg. Any of you who have visited Colonial Williamsburg have seen this courthouse. It was used as the courthouse for James City County until 1932.
Many of us are troubled by our current political environment. The “news” is dominated by the outrage du jour, and because news conglomerates are driven more by profits than by a real interest in creating and supporting an informed community, they are eager to whip us into a frenzy so we will watch them.
But all of us also live in communities where local government is working quietly to solve local problems – the traffic lights that are out of sync, the vacant lots that attract nefarious activity along with household rubbish, the boarded-up storefronts that housed thriving businesses before COVID, local tax rates, decisions about where to build what type of housing, and so forth. In James City County where I live, the local government is the county Board of Supervisors. In your community, it might be a town council, City Council, Administrative Board, Board of Supervisors, or variants of these names. My county is divided into five districts, and each district elects a representative to the Board of Supervisors.
These groups have regular public meetings and they invite local input. The meetings are generally not well-attended, although the decisions that these groups make are frequently protested after the fact. How many times have you heard people say things like “who approved this apartment complex – it’s ugly” or “who decided to repave this road – it looks perfectly fine to me” or “why are ‘they’ building a new shopping center – the old one has vacant stores in it.” Right? The answer almost always is that your local government made these decisions after public hearings and discussions about their plans. But we don’t pay attention, because the latest shenanigans by somebody or the other in Washington distracted us from the real work of governing.
Yea, Stacy! I support her even though I couldn't vote for her. I look forward to what she will do. I write to my Supervisor and she answers quickly. I'm pretty satisfied with my county governance. I haven't always been able to say that as I lived in many different states around the country. I feel fortunate to have finally landed here, a place I've wanted to live since about the age of 12.