Most boroughs can survive an argument, but few can survive when arguments are their principal business.

That was the general idea of an uncomfortable message consultant Ben Kafferlin delivered at Lansford borough council’s last meeting.

Hired to help develop a strategic management plan, he found himself addressing something no spreadsheet can fix: a community that’s spending too much time and energy fighting itself.

“The oxygen in this community has been eaten up by your conflict,” he said during a 30-minute presentation.

Those are the kinds of words that should sting. They’re also words that should prompt something more useful than another argument about who he meant.

Certainly, council was his target.

But the words echoed past the council table and rained down on the public and the relationships among them.

What he described wasn’t one bad meeting or one bad personality.

It was, instead, a primer on the way the borough conducted business and how that became an obstacle to conducting any real, productive business at all.

Kafferlin, who spoke to council in September in the cadence of a Sunday homilist, offered a fable penned by Edwin Friedman, a Washington D.C. based rabbi, family therapist and leadership consultant.

As he told the story, Kafferlin explained it was about a man headed somewhere with purpose who encounters another man who was carrying a rope. The stranger asks him to hold one end, then jumps over the side of a bridge.

Suddenly, the traveler is responsible for supporting someone who insists his fate is now firmly in the traveler’s hands.

The traveler offers to help him climb back up, but the man dangling insists the traveler just keep holding on.

Eventually, the traveler refuses to surrender his own purpose to a responsibility the stranger has imposed upon him.

Applied to Lansford, the point is not that struggling people should be abandoned. It is that help requires participation.

No consultant can make council cooperate.

No state grant can purchase good faith.

No management plan can succeed if the people expected to carry it out remain more committed to their grievances than to their community.

Solutions

Kafferlin offered alternatives: Resign, and let a judge replace council members with folks who want to move forward; or dissolve the borough in the hopes that a neighboring community would be willing to merge.

He suggested mediation, but only two of eight invited to participate agreed. The others declined, or didn’t respond at all.

There’s a difference between saying you want things fixed and agreeing to do something that might fix them.

And through it all, residents need to keep asking questions.

They deserve understandable budgets and explanations for decisions and honest answers about how their money is spent.

Council members don’t get immunity when they take their seats.

At the same time, holding them accountable needs a purpose larger than keeping an accusation alive.

What went wrong? What needs to be changed?

Those are questions that from the public that command accountability from council members.

“Who can we target?” and “Who can we embarrass next?” are a different story.

Social media can cloud that distinction in a hurry. A small disagreement turns into a scandal. A mistake becomes proof of something illegal.

And before the facts have caught up, the keyboard commandos are demanding resignations, lawsuits and consequences.

There’s no doubt that consequences are sometimes warranted.

But when the volume is turned up for every little disagreement, nobody can tell the difference between something that can be fixed or a genuine abuse of power.

And the argument never ends. The thread of online comments just gets longer.

The cost of it all

That atmosphere comes with a cost without spending a dime.

Consider the message it sends to someone interested in helping the borough.

They bring enthusiasm and offer their time, only to have their motives questioned by people they don’t even know.

How long before a willing participant decides the borough isn’t worth the aggravation?

Ask George Gilbert, who resigned as council president in January.

Ask Jack Soberick, who left his seat via a one sentence resignation letter.

Ask Bob Yurchak, who resigned as borough solicitor on Oct. 14.

Ask Maria Ahner, who left her post as treasurer amid a cacophony of constant questioning.

And ask Shane Monk, who took a job as Pottsville’s code officer days after a hearing about a hostile work environment in Lansford.

A judge will decide Soberick’s replacement because council couldn’t agree on any of six or so who expressed an interest. Another who expressed interest withdrew his name before any vote.

There aren’t any law firms lining up outside borough hall to fill the solicitor’s spot.

Council on Oct. 14 offered a Tamaqua woman the slot to fill an open secretary’s position. They’re waiting to hear if she’ll accept.

And Pottsville has allowed Monk to represent his former employer during magistrate’s hearings regarding unfinished code business. Council’s advertising to fill his post.

Moving forward

The danger isn’t that Lansford is still hanging onto the rope of its old, stale arguments.

Instead, it’s that people who might help move the borough forward walk away from a frustrating, exhausting scheme.

It’s a good bet they cared when they got involved.

But caring turned into combat that turned them away.

No community can keep driving people away then wonder why no one wants to step in to help.

Its energy should focus on something that’s useful.

Talk about issues that might move the borough forward instead of debating a personal grievance.

Might a borough manager help?

Which streets need fixing more than others?

What can we do about battling blight?

Where might partnering with one of the other towns improve services or save money?

Reasonable people can disagree about those issues. Debating them are what council meetings are for.

That falls firmly on council’s shoulders. They need to set rules and procedures and be able to explain them.

Above all, they need to show that a disagreement doesn’t need to become a personal war.

Residents need to help, too.

Double check a claim before repeating it. Challenge a decision without suggesting a motive.

And even admit that even sometimes, someone they’re not particularly fond of can be right.

Lansford doesn’t need every vote to be unanimous. It needs people to stop treating every issue at every meeting into the latest round of a years-old grudge match.

Being responsible is not the rope council should be dropping.

Instead, everyone — council and constituents — needs to let go of the one that ties the borough’s future to every grievance and grudge of its past.

ED SOCHA | tneditor@tnonline.com

Ed Socha is a retired newspaper editor with more than 45 years’ experience in community journalism.