To make worth of the effort and attention toward a goal, people and organizations must temper their urge to wander on tangents. In order to be productive, priorities must be established. The Madison Common Council could stand a lesson in the process of progress, especially considering what members will be discussing at tonight’s meeting regarding a possible war against Iraq.

Institutions like the city council, as influential bodies, can occasionally produce meaningful commentary on complex situations. From time to time, when a perspectice prevails without a voice, it needs just that sort of commentary to propel debate and inform people whose attention has been elsewhere.

The council members and the body itself have fundamental right to free speech and an implied governmental obligation to protect dialogue.

Yet very few voters head to the spring elections ballot boxes having evaluated the various candidates’ stances on issues like an international coalition going to war against a Mideast dictator who may be in violation of various United Nations resolutions. Candidates discuss issues like affordable housing, State Street development, entertainment development, drug and alcohol policies, suburban sprawl and more.

All these issues are, of course, ones the Madison City Council has jurisdiction over and can affect directly; they are also the issues that most voters evaluate before heading to the polls.

Still, the council tonight deems it necessary to vote on a resolution that will have no direct impact on anything, months after the issue first surfaced and when there are other pressing city issues to be dealt with.

The prospective smoking ban, for instance. Recent activity by the council shows that it takes forever to pass bills, as it keeps tabling proposals and tabling and tabling until they either go away (the drink-special ban) or reach a watered-down compromise (the Section 8 housing bill).

Council is scheduled to hear and vote on the smoking ban tonight and has said it will not discuss any resolution against a war in Iraq until everything else on the agenda has been debated and decided.

Taking action on any of the various pressing city issues that are not on tomorrow’s agenda (panhandling, transportation, the city’s budget) would better use the council’s time than debating and passing a resolution establishing no concrete legislation.

Dialogue on international issues, and especially war, is sorely needed. but will the council’s dialogue tonight be as effective as real grassroots activists movements or public demonstrations driven by the concerned populace? Even if the resolution stating our city’s disgust with the Bush administration and a war in Iraq passes, the resolution’s influence will hardly carry further than a few days attention locally and maybe a handful of turned heads elsewhere.

Every bit of new attention is important and bodies of people have every right to comment on the issues they feel strongly about. But when it comes to bodies such as the city council, it must prioritize what issues need to be dealt with before others or risk getting nothing done.

The issues the council addresses should first be those city problems it can fix ? not issues such as an invasion of Iraq, where its opinion is going to change little in the scheme of things.