Petrarchive – Local Politics Hell

back
No.13353 Anonymous 2026-10-14 13:14:21
Local Politics Hell
Post image
Does anyone here participate or navigate local politics as someone with socially conservative leftist beliefs? I live in an incredibly liberal college town and needless to say all local politics have been totalized into progressive shibboleths and detached from anything resembling practicality.

For context, my county has a jail that was purposefully underbuilt back in the 1980s with an official capacity of 45-50, a maximum capacity of 88-92, and an operational capacity of ~65. Needless to say, it is constantly over capacity which requires the sheriff to ship inmates to other county jails and pay for it to the tune of a couple million a year. Not to mention the jail is in disrepair. The roof leaks, the foundation is cracking, and the inmates constantly clog the drains with sheets causing raw sewage to flood the admin offices.

The county first put a bond measure to replace the jail on the ballot 25 years ago and it failed. They tried again twice over ten years ago for ~$45mil and both votes failed to cross the 60% threshold. Two years ago, they tried to bypass that threshold by proposing to merge the county jail with the largest city’s jail, but the city council and Board of Supervisors failed to reach an agreement.

Now there is a new proposal for a $95 million bond to build a replacement jail, following literally decades of kicking the can down the road. And yet, the “community” is once again deploying every progressive scare tactic and rhetorical misdirection imaginable. People are disingenuously presenting their opposition as concern over high taxes, a “lack of community input,” and technical shortcomings in the current proposal, when, in my view, the underlying opposition is ideological. They are fundamentally hostile to law enforcement and seem to believe that anyone who dares to hold public office without adhering to their worldview deserves to be ridiculed in the name of “accountability.”

I guess the point of this rant is wondering if there is any way for these communities to come back down to Earth from their obsession with all-encompassing philosophies and hostility towards governance of any kind. When every single issue becomes a referendum of your philosophy towards something as expansive "law and order", and your philosophy is diametrically opposed- or reactionary - towards the current status quo, then useful governance is impossible for anyone involved. At some point, the question of a new jail isn't about "how we conceptualize our relationship to justice and equity in our community", it's just the question of a building. How do we fix the building?
No.13354 Anonymous>>13355 2026-10-14 13:30:07
Is the antipathy toward the jail replacement based on a fear it will harm property values, or make the area less safe, or other concerns which you may (presumably) label bourgeois? My experience is that open statements of concern over high taxes don't tend to exist in the same person who has an ideological opposition to law and order; people of the latter sort tend to gushingly proclaim "I'd gladly pay higher taxes". I fear you have confounded liberal-minded wine moms with college leftist unshaven-armpit/stick-and-poke tattoo shitlibs. Or, that you are taking their philosophies at face value rather than just masks for more trivial, Earth-bound concerns.
No.13355 Anonymous 2026-10-14 13:58:38
>>13354

It's based on many things, one of which is indeed the amount of debt being taken on and the estimated interest and then the subsequent increase on property taxes (which isn't that much of a concern due to TIFs but, regardless), and it is indeed being used by the very same people that express opposition in ideological terms. That's what makes it so illustrative of this phenomenon and indicates that these people are obfuscating their motives and beliefs. You're right that they don't normally care about higher taxes, or local government spending money.

This will totally expose which county I'm talking about, but I've already given enough info so it's alright. The main voice on the cost/property tax increase criticism comes from a local councilor who voted to establish fare-free buses in the city. A good policy IMO, but it was funded by doubling parking citations and parking fees across the town and increasing the rate of parking citations, so they're no stranger to putting costs onto the citizens to pay for better services. But now they're door-knocking, holding press conferences, speaking at board meetings, etc. at all opportunities to oppose the jail. Very visible among the no new jail crowd. Not to mention her husband is in every comment section on all social media criticizing the supervisors and telling them off for basically anything he can come up with. Both of these people are very present in your standard progressive causes, and this councilor is on the left flank of the current city council.

There are a myriad of other issues that get brought up which would become just a big wall of text of the minute issues and my counters, but they go from fiscal issues all the way to the county should be working towards no jail at all. Also included in here is a frequent appeal to the fear that a bigger jail will incentivize ICE to detain and deport more locals. "If you build it they will come" type of rhetoric.

The Leftist unshaven-armpit/stick-and-poke tattoo shitlibs are unified in opposition to this jail, obviously, and many of the wine moms are going with, including the occasional Republican that just doesn't want to spend money.
No.13356 Anonymous 2026-10-14 14:16:57
Another anecdote about this whole controversy is a conversation that I overheard this morning. A conversation which kinda inspired this post. In the cafeteria at work a girl (pink hair) was talking about this volunteer group she works for, which interacts with incarcerated people. She said that she's spoken to many people who have actually been in the jail for extended periods of time (sidenote: many of the No Jail people have been arrested for protests at one time or another. This experience has given them the credibility to speak on conditions for incarcerated people) and they said the situation is "bad" and needs to be fixed. But she also said that the new jail would include a new office for the sheriff. Her conversation partner (butch woman) quickly commented that the new office was the motive behind the whole proposal, that the sheriff and the county were withholding info from the public, and that the whole thing was a scam. They both left chuckling in agreement about the corruption from the sheriff and the supervisors and how stupid a new jail is.

When the spite, animosity and distrust for law enforcement and politicians is so all consuming that even someone with personal contact and investment in the wellbeing of people physically impacted by this issue can disregard those people and those issues so quickly and without even a moment of self-doubt, where do you go from there?
No.13357 Anonymous 2026-10-14 14:36:47
> and the inmates constantly clog the drains with sheets causing raw sewage to flood the admin offices.
Clean it up janny!
No.13368 Anonymous 2026-10-15 04:08:28
Institutional inertia/bureaucratic tangle with idpol frosting
No.13372 Anonymous 2026-10-15 13:28:59
I've never interacted with local politics ever, though I do have a passing interest in land-use and urban planning, but it seems like a better use of my time to drink myself into a stupor than to interact with the types of people who decide to insert themselves into this sort of bureaucratic mud wrestling.

Do you find enjoyment from this work?