From The Classroom: Seth Handles The Budget

From The Classroom: A Practical Suggestion For City Hall

Posted on 10. Mar, 2010 at 12:47 pm by Seth Perry in COLUMNS, From The Classroom

Last Friday, for our school’s celebration of Black History Month (postponed into March because of the snow. That’s what’s called white oppression. Zing!), we saw a screening of the movie Pip and Zastrow: An American Friendship about former Mayor Roger “Pip” Moyer and former city council candidate Zastrow Simms, two friends who bonded in a time of racial prejudice and helped each other through hard lives.

Not only was this an inspiring and wonderful film, but it opened my eyes to something:

We have a truly rich and diverse culture here in Annapolis, something that the average teen, with unnecessary distractions such as Halo and girlfriends and sleeping, has little or no time to experience.

To rectify that, I came up with a solution: we drop out of school and immerse ourselves in the rich and unique culture of Annapolis.

Then, I realized that we probably needed jobs. Real, paying, full-time jobs.

Where, I wondered, could we find jobs that required pretty much no education, experience, talent or skill whatsoever?

And then it hit me–the Mayor’s office.

With all the criticism the Mayor and his staff have been taking lately–I’m not sure how much truth there is to it, we teenagers generally limit our knowledge of politics to what is parodied on Saturday Night Live, but still–it might be a good thing for him to have an overhaul of his staff, and, of course, replace them with teenagers.

Hiring from our generation would have significant benefits, which I will present below. People may recall me doing a comparison akin to this around Election Day, where I showed the good folk of Annapolis that the average freshman was better-suited for political office than current politicians. My advice was not taken and, as you can see, there are still problems with the budget, snow removal, and Billy Mays still being dead.

Still not convinced? Let’s see how teenagers stack up against city hall employees on a few major points:

Budget

Current Employees: Can’t balance the budget.

Current Annapolis Teenagers: Can’t balance a budget either, but at least you can take the credit card away from them.

Edge: Teenagers

Superfluous Mayoral Security

Current Employees: Wear sunglasses and frown intimidatingly so as to scare off wannabe assassins and provide seriously disgruntled employees with a mild challenge.

Current Teenagers: Will stand near the Mayor and dance in a suggestive manner, thereby frightening each and every would-be adult assassin from ever going within 500 feet of the Mayor.

Edge: Teenagers

Public Relations:

Current Employees: No one has confidence in them.

Current Teenagers: Their grandparents have confidence in them.

Edge: Teenagers

Speechwriting

Current Employees: Can write speeches.

Current Teenagers: Can write speeches, though Mayor Cohen may wonder why he is quoting Taylor Swift lyrics in the middle of a speech about the budget.

Edge: Current Employees, unless the Mayor is a Taylor Swift fan

Experience:

Current Employees: Have extensive political experience.

Current Teenagers: Have extensive BSing experience, as anyone who has read a high school English essay or asks a teenager about a party they went to can tell you.

Edge: Draw

Advising:

Current Employees: Can direct the Mayor towards the best solutions for our city’s problems.

Current Teenagers: Can direct the mayor towards the best Youtube videos.

Edge: Teenagers

Taking up space in the parking garage:

Current Employees: Will do this often.

Current Teenagers: Do not own cars. Those that do will probably end up parking them on City Dock while texting.

Edge: Teenager

Payment:

Current Employees: Are part of a staggering payroll that is crippling our city’s budget.

Current Teenagers: Will work in exchange for the city government completing their math homework and/or supplying them with lewd pictures of Megan Fox.

Edge: Teenagers

Snow Removal:

Current Employees: Are adept at designing PowerPoint presentations that outline Mayor Cohen’s plan for snow removal.

Current Teenagers: Cleared more snow that one wintry week than any lousy PowerPoint.

Edge: Teenagers

Potential for screwing up everything as we know it in Annapolis:

Current Employees: Enormous.

Current Teenagers: None. They’ll be texting.

Edge: Teenagers

So, Mayor Cohen, you have the facts. Now hire us, or we will be indentured forevermore to menial jobs.

You don’t have to promise a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage, Josh. That’s just asking to pay for a lot of new garages, unless you know how to successfully park two cars in a one-car garage. But wait, that involves building permits and..well we know how that goes. Instead, just hire the most innovative, energetic, and hip workforce available to you. We’ll never let you down. And if we do, it’s only because that text was really important.

Politically yours,