COLUMN — This column will have a very narrow sector of interest, I know. But here goes.

To start, I have to quote the former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York, Michael Battle, when he told me that, “Upon meeting most of the politicians in Western New York, I have come to but one conclusion; and that is, if they were not in politics, then they would be in some other criminal activity.”

While what Battle said is likely true throughout the country, I don’t think that even if they were in “some other criminal activity” the results would have been much better — or even much worse — for our region than what we have now. After all, they are a part of a system whereas both the criminal and political mind has similar characteristics that we, ourselves, have created; and only we, ourselves, must change. Again, we must change.

Back in the early ’80s, I started to read Robert M. Pirsig’s best seller, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” I don’t remember finishing it because, like most people, philosophy bores me to tears; that, and notwithstanding the fact that I had little to no interest in motorcycle maintenance. But what I did read must have had a profound impact upon me and my thinking because, after all of these years, I still refer back to it. Today, here in Niagara Falls, I have come to understand that it has more impact than most can imagine.

Pirsig wrote, “To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as ‘the system’ is to speak correctly, since these organizations are founded upon the same structural conceptual relationships as a motorcycle. They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a [motorcycle] factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no ‘mean guys’ who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless. But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible.”

Here is where it starts to come home.

Pirsig further writes that, “The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself; and if a factory is torn down, but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.”

People ask me why I battle city hall so much. I guess that it’s easier to battle them than it is to battle the people and to change their minds — though that is the reason that I write these columns: Hopefully, to change people’s minds, to change their government, and subsequently, to change our outcomes.

To further explain, let’s look at a recent mix of seemingly unrelated stories in your Niagara Gazette, and you’ll see what I am talking about. They represent a series of regional governmental actions and a disjointed body of public thought, to which Pirsig and “Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” alludes.

What does the systemic mix of Jayne Park, Orchard Parkway, Jordan Gardens and Packard Court, street gangs, landlord licensing and the HOPE VI project have in common? Nothing locally better represents Pirsig’s thoughts than does their common threads. 

In HOPE VI, the city initially spent $3 million tax dollars to create 148-additional units of public housing stock in what the housing authority claimed to be an $80 million investment. Do the math. To do so, they took away a community park from an under-employed neighborhood that sorely needs recreational areas, and paid an additional $2 million to rearrange the environmental contaminates once buried safely in the old park. Except for the people who hoped to initially benefit from the project, most of the disempowered neighborhood didn’t have a clue as to the scope of the project.

Things were the opposite in the upscale Cayuga Island neighborhood on the other side of town at Jayne Park. There, when nearly fully employed residents were not informed of the city’s plan to improve their park found out about the plans, the city withdrew those plans and sent back to the state $145,000 in environmental grants funds; perhaps the fifth and final grant that the city sent back and may never receive another.

Concerns were likewise in the designation of historic designation to the mayor’s Orchard Parkway neighborhood. The city moved forward without informing those middle-income residents of their plans but is now taking careful steps to educate and receive consent from them prior to moving forward.

The city did this while instituting a landlord registration scheme to raise $100,000 from both the fees that the landlords who would register would bring in and the fines from the landlords who they claim that they could not find to notify them of the scheme. They said the purpose of the ordinance was to improve the housing conditions of some local tenants thrust upon private property owners. This, while the housing authority, the supposed “landlord of last resort,” have screened out 800 of a 1,000 perspective tenants for its project, and will screen another 85 that they do not deem worthy of public housing. Like the residents of both Cayuga Island and Orchard Parkway, the landlords were not made away of the changes. But, unlike those empowered areas, the landlord’s results were identical to those of the citizens of the disempowered HOPE VI neighborhood.

As Pirsig said, the establishment of governmental rules does little to change the outcome of a system when the rules are directed at the effects, rather than the causes of those effects.  The housing authority’s Jordan Gardens and Packard Court project will be receiving 3,500 feet of sidewalk repair for which the authority will have to pay. They are responsible for all of their utility and infrastructure repairs because of their layouts. By taking away a park and installing streets, utilities and the likes in the way that they did, the city is responsible for all future infrastructure outlays, as well as for those that remain in front of the abundantly abandoned homes and vacant lots that the city now owns, which $5 million in funding could have much improved. And as for the rules changing systemic thinking; then how could it be that two of the last few people that police arrested and claim to be members of gangs that carry illegal weapons and deal drugs have Packard Court and Jordan garden addresses when the housing authority has strict rules against that kind of behavior?

I guess Pirsig was right. You need to read his book. And that is why Ken is interested in the “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” and he battles city hall.