What do you do on a typical Monday night? Well, there's certainly some football to be watched. Maybe you go out to dinner. Or rent a movie. Maybe the mere thought of four more days of work drives you straight to the bottle. Whatever it is, chances are you don't spend Monday nights learning about the inner workings of your local government.
Unless you've enrolled in Clearwater's Citizen's Academy, that is.
For 10 weeks every fall, the 20 participants in the free course take a tour through the various branches of Clearwater's government. Some nights are more exciting than others — the police department usually trumps the library — but each class provides a glimpse, even if a bit manufactured, into the programs that eat up taxes.
The students show up clad in their complimentary baby blue Citizen's Academy golf shirts for their seminar at the police department. Some arrive promptly at 6, others straggle in quietly after the presentation has begun. It's a carefully selected group, culled from a pool of over 60 curious citizens. For the first two years of the program, which was inaugurated in 2002, applicants were chosen on a first-come, first-served basis. But this year, a selection committee met to ensure as diverse a class as possible. In other words, they wanted a class made up of more than just retired white folks.
And they got it. Mattie Whitson makes sandwiches at a Hess station. Brian Schuh runs a garage door company with his mother. There's a retired military officer, a housewife and an AARP worker. And (we're in Clearwater, remember) the director of public relations of the Church of Scientology.
That means a variety of stakeholders — and some who don't hold much stake at all.
Clearwater isn't the only city to think of opening its doors to a handpicked public. Largo was the first city in Tampa Bay to start an academy, followed closely by Clearwater and Pinellas County. Diane Fitzgerald, the academy coordinator in Clearwater, says she has traded information and curricula with city governments across the country, all of whom see the program as an innovative approach to connecting with the community.
Douglas Matthews, Clearwater's director of public communications, says the city started the Academy for two reasons: to engage citizens from different parts of the city and to recruit for city government.
He doesn't mention that the Academy can also be a vehicle for citizens to ask the tough questions. In fact, that's why many of them enroll.
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Wearing his full uniform, Police Chief Sid Klein has let his lecture to the students run overtime. He's tossed out a few surprising facts (did you know that $557K worth of narcotics were seized in Clearwater in 2003?), and some downright scary ones (that year there were nearly 1,000 reported acts of domestic violence). Klein's seminar has covered the department's different divisions, its work with the homeless and the challenges of overseeing a unionized police force.
And then Mattie Whitson asks him if his department racially profiles citizens.
"No," he says sharply. "Absolutely not."
She asks him again, and he repeats his answer, this time with a little more substance. The department does training, he says. His officers are taught not to profile. It's not the answer Whitson was looking for — maybe the only one she would've accepted was a yes — and she rolls her eyes.
The class falls silent — Mattie Whitson is holding her government accountable. It's an uncomfortable moment.
But then Paul Jones, who's sitting just behind Whitson in the small conference room at Police Headquarters, breaks the tension. "Is there some kind of physical fitness requirements for these officers?" he asks. "'Cause if there is, some of these guys wouldn't pass it."
(There are requirements, Klein says, but they're not as strict as he'd like.)
After the lecture and a tour of the communi-cations department, seven of the students meet Sgt. Joseph Young, head of training.
Before demonstrating the interactive crime simulator, Sgt. Young wants to talk current events, specifically the recent tasering of a 6-year-old boy in Miami. Unlike everyone else, Sgt. Young wants to defend the officer in question.
While jolting a little kid with 50,000 volts of electricity may seem pretty drastic to most people, Young argues, most people weren't there. The kid was wielding a piece of glass. He was out of control. He'd already cut himself three times. A piece of glass, Young says, can kill you.
"We're not getting paid to get hurt," he says.
Some members of the group protest. Paul Jones asks why the officers didn't just take the glass away from the kid. He was a 6-year-old, after all.
"Six-year-olds are a scary lot," says Nanette Angelone, a student whose husband is a former police officer.
"We're not gonna fight fair," says Sgt. Young. "We're gonna fight to win."
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Each of the students has a different reason for enrolling. Some want answers. Others want to know more about the city they call home. Letty Guzman comes because she wants to take the information back to her community.
Guzman moved to Clearwater four years ago from New York, where she was a foreclosure protection counselor — a mediator between lenders and families. When she got to town Guzman worked for Bank Of America, setting up members of Clearwater's Latino community with checking accounts.
And while she left that job to spend more time with her kids, Guzman still wants to bridge the gap between her community and the surrounding power structure.
"Most of the Latinos in Clearwater work in agriculture or construction," she says. "They were professionals in their home country, but that's what they have to do here. It's because of the language barrier."
But Guzman isn't taking the class just to cajole city government into dismantling the barrier. Instead, she says that the two sides — the community and the government — have to take steps. Latinos have to take English classes, just as government employees should be learning Spanish. "Americans are willing to help you," she says. "But you have to take the initiative."
That's why she's here on a Monday night.
This article appears in Dec 1-7, 2004.