Two items of interest today that may seem worlds apart, but to my mind are wonderfully resonant:
1)
Last night, the Madison City Council voted 15 to 5 to support the refinancing of the Overture Center for the Arts (see my entry yesterday for details). I sat through all five hours of the public testimony and council debate, and was struck again by the exceptional challenge of understanding and assessing potential risk.
For the refinancing proposal, the city was asked to serve as third in line to support bond interest payments over the next six years…capped at $2.5 million per year, and protected by $7.5 million from the donor and the district. Total exposure to the city in the absolute worst case: $7.5 million. Without refinancing, the most likely result would be city ownership and operation of the facility for the long term, without an endowment or trust. Total exposure to the city: perhaps an additional $1 million to $1.5 million a year for the next 50 years in operating and capital support, perhaps more.
As expected, the bulk of the debate and the disagreement focused on the risks of the next six years, rather than the long-term exposure to city taxpayers. After five hours, however, the long-term concerns seemed to win the day. As ever, it’s horrifying and revelatory to watch the public process at work.
2)
With that process in my head, I stumbled onto SwarmSketch, a web site that allows collaborative drawing on a common canvas, framed by a different subject each week. According to the site:
Each user can contribute a small amount of line per visit, then they are given the opportunity to vote on the opacity of lines submitted by other users. By voting, users moderate the input of other users, judging the quality of each line. The darkness of each line is the average of all its previous votes.
[take a look at the evolution of the drawing shown above]
The result is a collective construction around a selected topic, built from individual lines, and completed by each visitor’s assessment of the value of the lines already drawn. Remarkably similar, I’d say, to the public process of the City Council and other deliberative elements of our world.
The process demands that we all add our line to the picture — both figuratively or literally — and that we all look hard to see the evolving image. Not to be overly dramatic, but: what will your line be?
