What is the local political drama in your state/city/neighborhood?

30 comments

1. A crypto millionaire from another state moved in – basically a compulsive gambler who got really lucky as an early Bitcoin adopter. And he’s also an election conspiracy theorist, so he’s paying tens of millions of dollars on lawsuits and recounts whenever one of his favored candidates loses.

2. So the city I live in apparently bought a Dairy Queen for 20 million…Also the neighboring city I was born in has been in the news uncharacteristically frequent these past months. Latest news is about a satanic club in a primary school.

3. People are incensed with our mayor but more than usual I suppose

4. One of our state’s most famous sons is in trouble for working with the governor to siphon welfare funds into building a new volleyball court for a university (this governor is already relatively unpopular even among Republicans in the state, but not nearly unpopular enough to lose to a Democrat)

5. The whining losers of the last election are trying to sue their loss away. This is what happens when name recognition is how candidates seem to be chosen. As opposed to integrity, intelligence, and maybe even a little experience.

6. A bunch of people are running for mayor in Philadelphia, which will trigger several special elections for open seats on the city council.

   As for where I live (suburbs) I couldn’t tell you one way or another. Local news in my town is pretty quiet.

7. Our police department merged with another police department. It’s a major controversy because we’ll be very unsafe now or something. Nobody seems to realize that nothing happens here

   Several VFDs have merged and split again and done it several times for the same reasons.

8. Confederate street names

9. Our states affordable housing law. It permits developers to ignore local zoning laws if they’re building a complex where 30% of the units are affordable. If a town has a percentage of it’s housing (I think it’s 10% but idr) then they are exempt. However, developers put up buildings where 70% is market rate, which basically ensures that the 10% won’t be met.

   It’s a big issue cause they can ignore local zoning. A lot of our towns are quintessential new England villages, and the developers come in and build multi story apartment buildings. We have all kinds of laws to make sure new buildings fit with our historic architecture, but they can ignore those. It’s sad to see a lot of stuff they throw up and it’s changing the way some towns look. We’re also getting a ton more people without concurrent changes in infrastructure. Some people are supportive of it because things are really expensive here, but a lot of people don’t like it. It can get pretty heated at town meetings and on the town FB page lol.

10. There is a homeowner’s insurance premium crisis here in Florida. Floridians are, on average, spending 3 times the national average for homeowner’s insurance and people’s premiums have climbed as high as their mortgage payments. Dozens of insurance companies have ceased doing business in the state, amplifying the problem. State politicians like to pretend that weather is to blame, but fraud and frivolous lawsuits enabled by weak laws are the real culprits. Florida accounts for 9% of the country’s homeowner’s insurance claims and 80% of its lawsuits. Auto insurance is also very expensive for some of the same reasons.

11. Our state house and senate leaders won’t bring bills to a vote unless they’ll pass with majority Republican support.

    In other words, if a bill has enough bipartisan support to pass but not the majority of Republican legislators backing it, they won’t bring it to a vote.

    I don’t think most Kentuckians know this.

12. There’s an abandoned railroad track that the city wants to turn into a bicycle and walking trail.

    Pros – would connect us with a neighboring cool small town and possibly promote business in both areas

    Cons – people whose backyards back up to the tracks are not happy about the loss of privacy. Spending money when there are plenty of other bike trails and parks nearby.

13. one guy running for city council was spotted (and caught on tape) stealing yard signs for other people running for city council.

14. The gov decided to ban tik tok on all state owned mobile devices.

15. There’s a proposed light rail line which would connect South Charlotte to Uptown. Project is progressing at a snails pace.

16. NIMBYs vs YIMBYs

17. This was a few months ago, a local 120 year old historic house was being demoed for an apartment complex and people were angry about it. The mayor was being railroaded on Facebook since he bought the property and is having the apartments put in along with several investors. Lots of shady stuff like the permits being approved in record time. As a bonus I goofed big time when I bribed the demo crew with lunch to turn a blind eye while I removed the porch railing, shutters, and gingerbread trim. Apparently the mayor was going to pull the gingerbread trim and railing for his home so now the porch railing and such is hidden in one of my sheds until after he loses in the next election.

    I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to actually put the railing on my house like I planned because, as the story goes, the fellow that built the house spent copious amounts of time carving a unique pattern into the spindles and the pattern will be very recognizable to local residents. Even though the house I’d be putting the railing on is 20 miles away from the town it’s risky lol

18. We are missing over 3 million dollars that somebody embezzled. The FBI has been here auditing our small city.

19. Californians (Austin)

20. It’s about 4 years old, but the pretty well to do suburb I grew up in was almost in danger of needing a Emergency Financial Manager from the state to sort it out because nobody wanted to raise taxes to pay for increased services and kicked the can down the road for 25 years.

    Keep in mind that other towns in Michigan that had EFMs were picture boys for deindustrialization and/or white flight.

21. Our city is bad with money and they charge us about 8 times more than all the other places I have lived. Stray cats issues. There is a wedding venue in town that brings a ton of money here, but the town has a weird anti alcohol group. There is more, just a lot of dumb shit, really.

22. A church is filing bankruptcy to avoid the payouts from child abuse, police shooting a latino who had rocks in hands after running and suposedly trying to break into a house, Native Americans trying to build a casino but Native Americans are fighting to stop it. While one group is building homes but people fear a casino dispite thrm saying they wont.

23. My town just has a lot of CAVEs (citizens against virtually everything). Any time a decent development is proposed wealthy folks that live near downtown go full insanity with yard signs opposing it.

    It is stupid. It harms poor people. It harms the economy of the town in general. And it really is the wealthy opposing any change that might help the poor and middle class or provide services that these wealthy opposition types don’t even use anyway.

24. Super locally the elderly neighbor across the street is constantly being gaslighted by the police telling her there are immigrant gangs roving our neighborhood. She runs the neighborhood watch and is quite naive.

25. Typical stuff

    Local highway bypass extension

    School board drama as a new board fired the superintendent right after taking over.

26. Well, one of the members on the city board called middle easterners a slur…and on a live streamed meeting no less. He then insisted on saying the pledge and a prayer.

27. I’m not sure why, as I haven’t really paid attention to the political scene in Salt Lake City, but people are calling for Mayor Erin Mendenhall to be recalled.

28. Democrats won 102 out of 203 house seats in the PA state legislature in November, but three of those seats are vacant due to a death and two resignations, giving Republicans a temporary 101 to 99 voting majority.

    The leaders of both parties are claiming to be the “rightful” majority, and have both held their own competing swearing in ceremonies as majority leader.

    Both majority leaders claim the other is a fake, and both have issued competing writs for a special election and filed lawsuits to void the writ issued by the other. To make it extra petty, both writs are for the same day, so it’s not like they disagree over what day the special election should be.

    The real reason behind the power struggle has to do with voter referendums. PA referendums need to be passed by a majority of both chambers TWICE in back to back sessions before going to voters. The referendum items have already been passed once in 2021, so Republicans only need control of the house for a day in order to pass them again put the issues into the hands of the voters.

29. One of our candidates for Mayor has ties to a really controversial church that’d gotten big in town (very homphobic, anti-LGBT rhetoric beyond the normal “the Bible says don’t be gay boys”, pro trump sermons) the other candidate wants to ban abortion within city limits.

    I mean, we’re a pretty conservative area for California, but we’re not THAT conservative

30. I live in Seattle.

    Kshama Sawant, city council, supported the CHAZ CHOP zone.

    Since Covid, public safety, order, and cleanliness have declined.

    Sawant was a major proponent of defunding police. We now have a police shortage.

    Someone has been throwing dog feces in Sawant’s front yard. She is angry that the police (who are now severely understaffed which is what she advocated for) aren’t using more resources to investigate the drive by poopings. A lot of people are like “*you cannot be serious.”*