Ed Murray’s plan to add thought diversity is well intentioned and bound to fail

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray believes the city’s long-time model for community governing needs a new look. More specifically, Murray wants a more diverse, younger group of people that include renters to be heard.

The response from the “Tom and Curley” show: Good luck with that.

“Murray is talking about how immigrants and refugees and low-income residents aren’t well reflected,” Tom Tangney said. “Well, they’re not going to have time to sit on neighborhood councils and weigh in trying to keep their head above water economically.”

Murray signed an executive order Wednesday to that takes the power from the 13 district councils that have been advising the city of neighborhood happenings since 1987. The city tracked the meeting attendance of the 13 councils in 2013, finding that the majority of participants were over 40, white and are homeowners, according to The Seattle Times. The city’s demographic has a median age of 36, with 34 percent people of color and 52 percent renters.

Related: Maybe it’s time for the Seattle Mayor to get himself a mentor

The Department of Neighborhoods has been tasked with developing plans for a new community-engagement model by Sept. 26. The Mayor says the city will establish a Community Involvement Commission – the members of which he will choose – to oversee the engagement efforts by January 2017.

Tom Tangney said the mayor’s idea for change is noble, in theory.

“These neighborhood councils were quite, maybe not revolutionary, but progressive at the time,” he said. “They were actually trying got encourage people to actually get involved with city government who just lived their lives out in the neighborhoods. And at the time that seemed like a good reflection of who we were and as a positive. Now the mayor sees it as maybe we need to rejigger things because we need a different way to see if we can get more community outreach.”

But in practice, this might be hard to pull off.

Co-host John Curley, a former Snohomish City Council member, says the people who want to serve get in line and those who don’t fall back and let council and committee members take charge.

John Curley: “You ever gone to one of those things?”

Tom Tangney: “No, I don’t have time to do that.”

JC: “Absolutely, most people don’t. Having served on a city council, the same six people show up every Tuesday.”

TT: “Yeah, that’s the main knock on all this – I would think most of the people who have time to sit on these councils are retired, white homeowners who think, ‘Well, I’ll do my civic duty, I have time on my hands.’ It tends to attract people who have time on their hands.”

JC: “That’s what I used to say about the city council in Sammamish — the collective age was 6,422. They were all old. Get young people in there who have kids. But you know what, young people who have kids are too busy. They can’t hang around for six hours and talk about stuff. This is the same sort of thing. The people who want to be involved are involved and everyone else sits on the side and lets you take care of it. But the mayor is not happy because it doesn’t reflect well. It’s an open system and anybody who wants to get in can actively be part of it, those who actively want to be part of it, that’s great.”

It’s like the old joke: Democrats are passionate about serving and Republicans are passionate about not having them serve.

JC: “The only reason I’m gonna get in is to stop you from getting in.”

TT: “Like Hollywood Squares. They’re just there to block.”

Follow @http://twitter.com/Mynorthwest