Dear Eric: A year ago, a former councilmember campaigned for someone who had barely lived in my city of 35,000 a few years. That person won a seat on our five-member council.
Now, a year later, this new councilperson has proven himself to be inept and without even having the basic skill set to do the job at the council meetings.
Basically, it’s become embarrassing. For instance, at the last council meeting, he did not even know how appeals work and kept asking really dumb questions, which revealed further he was not prepared and well-read on this issue.
I called the former councilmember who pushed for this guy to win a seat, and the former member had a meltdown at me and was really angry and told me the new councilmember was doing an excellent job.
Other residents and I are concerned about what we are stuck with. How can we get this resolved as soon as possible?
– Stuck Resident
Dear Resident: Take a look at your council’s by-laws. Find out what recourse residents have for a recall, if any.
Perhaps it’s as simple as getting enough signatures on a petition. Perhaps it’s more complicated or not possible. You won’t know what checks and balances are available to you without doing a little digging.
This should be publicly available information. The city council, like every other elected body, works for the people. So, they have a duty to perform their jobs with transparency. If you can’t find the by-laws or the answer to your question on the council’s website, reach out to the secretary of the city council or the president of the city council.
It’s important for every citizen to remember that even though elections might seem byzantine or beyond the reach of regular people, it’s possible to educate yourself and get involved in local, state or national politics at every level, whether as a volunteer, a staffer or a candidate.
If something is happening that you’re concerned about, you should contact your elected officials and ask them to advocate on your behalf. If they don’t do the job in a way that’s satisfactory to you, find out what the term limits are and cast your vote for someone else in the next election. That someone can even be yourself.
Dear Eric: I have two daughters. One is in a long-term marriage with an established career. The other, who has less stable employment, recently moved in with her boyfriend of five years.
I am widowed and elderly. Rather unexpectedly, I find that my income, especially the required minimum distribution from my IRA, exceeds my needs by a substantial amount. So far, the account continues to grow annually by more than the distribution.
Each year, I have been giving the established daughter and her husband each a check. I have been putting money in a retirement account for the other one.
Do I grant son-in-law status to the boyfriend when distributing money? They are in a committed relationship.
The boyfriend is a bit sensitive about money. He’s still struggling to pay off debts from his first marriage. My daughter makes more than he does, and they live in her house. He contributes a set amount financially and does much of the upkeep of the house. He bristles at any suggestion that he is not carrying his own weight financially.
If they are going to be a long-term couple, I would like to contribute to a retirement account for him, but don’t want to cause problems.
I don’t feel that I know him well enough to ask.
Any suggestions?
– Retirement Gift
Dear Gift: This is really thoughtful and quite generous.
So, I hope what I write next doesn’t come across as too curt. If you don’t know the boyfriend well enough to ask him if he’d accept the money, you shouldn’t give it to him.
True, you don’t need to know someone to give them money. But, as you point out, it has the potential to cause issues in your daughter’s relationship.
The way to sidestep those issues is communication, but if that’s not possible, the money should stay in your account.
I like to say money talks, but it mumbles sometimes. This is especially true when it comes to inheritances and gifts passed down from one generation to the next. Because you and the boyfriend don’t have a relationship in which you can comfortably talk about money, putting a large amount of money into that relationship is going to cause an issue, if only because you haven’t established a way to talk about it.
What you might do, however, is talk about the situation with your daughter and ask if there are ways you can help her that will benefit the household in general.
Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram @oureric and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.
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