Vibe Check: City Council? More Like Shitty Council

Vibe Check is an ongoing series of guest-written reviews of Iowa City locations and venues, because we simply cannot be bothered to write them ourselves. Today’s Vibe Check comes from guest writer Melissa Jefferson, a UI transfer student who’s new to Iowa City.

I’m out of new stuff on Netflix and I’ve been streaming City Council. Have you been keeping up? You can watch everything go down on this drama channel on Youtube called “City Channel 4”. Most of it’s pretty boring, but at least they upload regularly.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago, Iowa City City Council had this meeting where they voted on suspending the Truth and Reconciliation Commission they set up in response to the protests from last summer. Seemed like an absolutely dogshit move to me. What a great way to lose viewers! The community was really invested in that commission. They had to have an extra-long episode because there were like three hours of guest appearances from members of the public defending the TRC.

Council ignored all of them and went through with suspending the commission. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m unsubbing from these goofs. The Iowa Freedom Riders, who led the protests last summer, seem to agree, since they’re peacing out and starting their own commission.

I’ll say this for City Council in case they’re looking to play more to their strengths next season: if they’re not gonna listen to the public, at least they have the good grace to let them know they find them deeply annoying. There have been reports of individual councilors complaining about what their viewers post on Twitter, and if you watch closely in those livestreamed meetings, the mayor’s face droops the longer people log on and tell him how wrong he is. If you’re not gonna walk the walk to make your city safer for its most marginalized populations, the least you can do is provide a little schadenfreude. Thank you, Shitty Council.

If you would like to submit a review for Vibe Check, too bad.