Table of contents | Previous chapter Introduction | Cast of characters   Playing with Fire A novel by Scott Lazenby   Chapter 23 s much as I wanted to detach myself from them, I couldn’t ignore the events that were going on around me. The six weeks before the election brought out the worst in our community. People were polarized. To some, what the city was doing amounted to an attack on truth, justice, and the American way. To others, the issue boiled down to a greedy union exploiting the taxpaying public. The rhetoric only inflamed the situation.       Even Betty Sue Castle, I learned, came under attack. Ken Longstreet told me that he had walked into her office and found her staring vacantly at the screen saver on her computer. He asked her what the problem was, and she wordlessly handed him a sheet of typewritten paper. It had come in the mail, anonymously. It was shocking, Ken said, one of the most spiteful examples of personal invective that he had ever seen. He told her it was terrible, that she didn’t deserve it, and that he would have Simon investigate it. She had just nodded silently when Ken took the sheet, and he said that a tear had rolled down her cheek.       Hundreds of signs appeared in front of the homes of Trillium. One set, painted in stark red letters, urged “VOTE YES FOR PUBLIC SAFETY.” Another set, in red, white, and blue, was emblazoned with the words, “YES FOR EFFICIENCY IN CITY GOVERNMENT.” They both had their respective ballot measure numbers printed in small type, but I wondered if people would really know which was which.       Red Rogalsky leased some space in a storefront office for the International Association of Firefighters. The windows were covered with banners and posters, exhorting the proletariat to break the chains of the bourgeoisie. They used the office as the headquarters for their PR campaign, and in the evenings it was filled with volunteers getting their marching orders for the door-to-door campaign. Rogalsky held a series of press conferences out on the sidewalk, but the business owners across the street observed that fewer and fewer reporters were showing up. The message probably wasn’t changing much.       I noticed with a sort of dull detachment that there wasn’t any local backlash against the outside intervention in the campaign. In other issues, the voters had resented it when outside forces attempted to influence local elections. The city council had seized on that fact when a Washington, D.C.-based group came in and pushed a city anti-tax measure. It wasn’t a secret that Rogalsky and his minions were part of a national organization with no long-term ties to Trillium. But it didn’t seem to matter — maybe people just bought into the concept of the “brotherhood” of firefighters, like they were Boy Scouts or something.       The other odd thing was that, as hard as they tried, the City/County Fire Service folks couldn’t get people excited about the cost of annexing to the Willamette Valley Fire & Rescue district. A few of the bigger businesses caught on, and in a panic, raised the issue. But the fire union just shrugged it off. “People are willing to pay for what’s important to them,” they said. “To us, there is nothing more important than saving the life of a neighbor or loved one.”       Two weeks before the election, I walked to the end of our driveway to pick up the mail, and found a glossy brochure that had been sent by the City of Trillium. It was an attractive piece — I could see Betty Sue’s handiwork — but the bizarre restrictions imposed by the State Elections Commission prevented the city from providing much useful information. There were some bland columns of numbers, and even I had a hard time concentrating on them.       The “Concerned Citizens for Good Government” had just managed to meet the deadline for the council recall petitions, and there was some campaigning for those measures too, although there didn’t appear to be as much money behind them. McTavish, Seth, and Hank didn’t appear to acknowledge the recall petitions and came across in the press as being utterly indifferent. But they were only human, and I suspected that the statements against them in the voter pamphlet and in the letters to the editor must have weighed heavily on them.       The election wasn’t the only arena for a good fight — Pete Koenig called me at home to give me the sordid details. Oregon Ambulance Service was pressing on with its complaint about contract violations, and Pete was afraid that the city might be vulnerable. Even though our own franchise agreement was non-exclusive, the state legislature had slipped in a bill that allowed a city to have only one ambulance company at a time and even prevented a city from providing the service itself without buying out the remainder of the contract. I asked Pete how that had gotten through a Republican-controlled legislature, and he just laughed and said that the ‘whereas’ clauses in the bill played up the safety of the public. If the legislators have been consistent in anything, he said, it’s protecting us against ourselves.       But that wasn’t the worst of the news. Although the Business Leadership Committee had apparently lost interest in Nova, they had one more shot to fire at me. Pritchard’s attorney had called Pete to say they were going to sue me personally for violation of the open-meetings law. They were claiming that I had met privately with the council on the City/County contract, which was true, but I had met with them individually, not as a group. There was nothing legally wrong with that. Pete agreed, but informed me soberly that he expected that they would run me through all the steps of discovery and depositions, if only to make my life as miserable as they possibly could.       I speculated that, while the TBLC was no doubt glad to be out front in suing me, it was probably Fire Association money that was paying for Terry Judd’s legal fees. Pete commented dryly that the union would want to keep their involvement quiet — they would want to be seen as the good guys in the election. Their PR machine was nothing if not pragmatic. •      •      •       At the same time that my city seemed to be showing its ugliest, most dysfunctional side, something else was going on that I watched with more than passing interest. People in the community — many of them strangers I had never met — were coming out in support of me.       It started with a few letters to the editor expressing outrage that the city council would discipline me for just doing my job. Sabrina Chan had picked up on it, and started running a series of interviews with people who echoed this sentiment. The president of the chamber of commerce said she was mystified as to why the council would throw away a decade of solid progress in building up relations with the business community. A disabled veteran said he had met me at Memorial Day ceremony and felt it was unfair for me to take the bullet for the council. A community college professor stated that if the city ever needed strong executive management skills, it was now, and that it was suicidal for the city to be without a CEO.       Rob Titus had tried to force the issue, and the rumors were that he wanted the council to convert my administrative leave to full termination. In a perverse way, I almost hoped he was successful, since the administrative leave was a form of purgatory with no clear end in sight. My contract provided six months severance pay if the council fired me, so I would at least know what I was dealing with.       The rumors inevitably leaked into the open, and the escalation of the issue kicked the TV stations into gear again. It gave me some guilty pleasure to know that Titus faced a barrage of criticism when he turned on the evening news. The chamber president commented that she was disappointed that it was too late to get Titus’ name on the recall ballot along with the others.       The council made a hasty retreat and convened another executive session. Seth called me afterwards and said that the consensus of the council was to reinstate me, but they couldn’t figure out a way of doing it and still save face. In the end, they decided to let the election settle the issue. I agreed with Seth that it wouldn’t be worth coming back anyway if he and the other two were recalled. It would take a few months to schedule a special election to pick replacements, but Pritchard had let it be known that he and his slate were the only real alternatives. He was probably right, as much as the thought disgusted me. Next chapter: election night Copyright © 2001, Scott D. Lazenby. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the author is prohibited. Illustration: Paul Salmon