[Op-Ed] Arnhelm, A Mayor's Perspective






Arnhelm, A Mayor’s Perspective
An op-ed on Arnhelm, written from the Mayor’s perspective

Written by Forilian, current Mayor of Arnhelm




When the Citizen’s Assembly was replaced by Arnhelm, I was not around in Europeia. I wasn’t there either for the writing of the Charter of Arnhelm, nor was I here for the first four months of Arnhelm. I joined right before the Drew boom: I was here for the entirety of the surge in Arnhelm’s activity. Suddenly, there were a lot more City Councillors; suddenly, there were more ordinances being written; and suddenly, there were a lot more contenders in the Mayoral election. Before the Drew boom, I was the only one who had shown any interest in running. After the boom, I was one of four.

The election was by no means an easy ride, but I learned a lot from it. I learned how to campaign in Europeia, and I learned how to GOTV. At the time of the election, no platform was on how to increase activity: Arnhelm was at an all-time-high, and if anything, Arnhelm was getting so active that no one, and I mean no one, thought of how to retain these newcomers.

Then, the crash. Arnhelm, seemingly overnight, was sucked of energy and activity. Despite the writing of various ordinances, mainly by myself, Arnhelm remained at a very low activity level. There were days where Arnhelm had not a single post. Worse of all, then-Mayor Cara had real-life issues, and became inactive. While she did all her legal requirements (for which I applaud her for, as she managed to do that despite so much going on in her life), she couldn’t introduce any contests or events to attempt to slow the plunge in activity. There were attempts: I ran a Symbolisms Contest for Arnhelm, and the Mayor, after an Inquiry, did launch one small contest. This, despite our best efforts, did not amount to much activity.

May came and went, and June rolled in, with it another Mayoral election. By a margin of 12-7, I defeated SkyGreen24 and became the 6th mayor of Arnhelm. During this time, perhaps conveniently, some older citizens began to join Arnhelm, and this contributed to a small rise in activity. After removing some inactive Councillors, a lot of pinging, some ideas being rolled out, and the Starter’s Handbook’s Part I being released, it appears that Arnhelm is slowly coming back to life.

In my experience, Arnhelm has been a nice place to contribute to. It gave me a sense of accomplishment magnitudes more than finishing an EBC article or finishing a recruiting dose. In Arnhelm, I could come up with an idea that hasn't been done before, and see it through to its completion! Arnhelm has also taught me how to write laws, something that I would not have learned otherwise. I can safely say that joining Arnhelm was one of the best decisions I made in my Europeian life.

In this Senate election, various candidates have brought up the idea that there should be an investigative committee into Arnhelm. While I think there should definitely be a review into Arnhelm, the time is not now. Arnhelm hasn’t existed for even a year right now, and we’re already launching an investigation into it? Arnhelm has not had the time to prove itself, nor had the chance to become a fully-developed system. I say we give Arnhelm a few more months: if we see that activity is consistently low, perhaps we should consider something else. And if we see that activity goes up and down in a pattern? Europeia also has an activity curve, and we have activity ups and downs as well. A lull followed by a boom is natural, and as Astrellan said, it is impossible to expect Arnhelm to consistently be very active. Arnhelm deserves a chance, and we should be viewing it with the same lens as we view Europeia. After all, does anyone expect Europeia to be active all day, every day, 24/7/365?

 
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