In making my rounds today, talking with people in the 3rd district about the upcoming elections, I had a real-time opportunity to expand on the topic of political pressure. The essential fact of it is this: the pressure needs to be constant.
For example: sidewalks. If a neighborhood subcollector street is slated for sidewalk installation in the 5-year plan or in next year's proposed budget, the property owners can circulate a petition to oppose it. Then they bring it to City Hall, contact their aldermen with their concerns, appear at the budget hearing when sidewalk budgets are discussed, and make presentations before the entire Common Council. The pressure is more effective and directly proportional to the percentage of people in a neighborhood that sign the petition. Also, the more neighbors that show up at a public hearing or a committee meeting, the greater the impact on the aldermen.
But one petition doesn't do it. The city, in this respect, acts like an amoeba surrounding food: if the food is a bit too hot to handle, the amoeba -- acting on the old stimulus-response survival mode -- flows past it...but it'll send out a pseudopod later to see if the food has cooled down.
Well, maybe that wasn't the greatest metaphor in the world, but the point is: once a sidewalk is drawn on the neighborhood map, it tries to become an actual sidewalk over and over again. Therefore, property owners that don't want to see a sidewalk in their neighborhood have to keep up the pressure on their aldermen and the Council to postpone the installation time after time.
There is no civic political decision that can be made once and for all. Citizens must remain vigilant and keep pumping, sometimes every year, sometimes every other year...but it's never-ending. That amoeba is ready to flow back and engulf the neighborhood again sometime in the future.