The benefit of a good museum is that it can provide insights not just into a community’s past, but

often show how little actually changes.

Visitors to our newly renovated historical museum last weekend may have noticed among the displays a brightly colored poster announcing a public forum on “The Water Problem on Bainbridge Island,” sponsored by the Association of Bainbridge Communities. The year: 1979.

“You could just change the date and put that sign out again,” one museum-goer observed drily, “and you’d probably get the same people at the meeting.”

The “critical water supply” forum made us recall a time 10 years ago when the Bainbridge Economic Council circulated questionnaires polling islanders on then-current issues. The results were relayed a few weeks later by Review editor Jack Swanson in a column headlined, “Who listens, and to what?”

A sampling of island opinion included:

• “I think if a vote were taken today that the incorporation of Bainbridge Island would never happen. It’s been a disaster.”

• “The public deserves a detailed explanation of why there are so many police cars compared to the number of officers on duty.”

• “Not all people with strong opinions are able or want to attend all public meetings and voice opinions in that way. Perhaps a public vote is the only way to find out what the majority (especially the silent ones) wants.”

• “The attempt to keep Bainbridge small by throwing roadblocks in the way of any progress is silly, will be unsuccessful and is unfair to the people who live here.”

• “I have lived on Bainbridge Island for 65 years now, and since we became a city and have a bunch of high-falutin’ outsiders running our government, the quality of life has gone downhill.”

• “Fix Vincent Road! What a mess! When I go to the recycling, I cannot believe the city leaves a road in that condition.”

• “We are all one island and must learn to work for everyone’s benefit, and not just a few. Any major expenditure should be subject to a vote and a budget. Let’s live within our means – not wants.”

• “Often, too much public input allows small, vocal groups to delay projects. Let experts and city officials do their jobs without costly studies, etc.”

• “Disrespect (contempt?) for public opinion seems embedded in the culture of the city government.”

• “The City Council members are good people, but when meeting as a council are brain dead when it comes to real community needs and spending limits. We could cut the planning department in half and do just fine.”

• “Almost every guest speaker,” one respondent said of a recent public meeting, “complained about being taxed, and then went on to complain about some service important to them that was not being adequately supplied.”

Sound familiar? You can find comments of remarkably similar tone (and similarly, gloriously conflicting viewpoints) in any current news story on Winslow Tomorrow, neighborhood street improvements, shoreline restoration. Clearly, our psychology and sensibilities haven’t changed a lot in 10 years even if some of the issues – fears of imminent water shortages notwithstanding – have come and gone. (We did fix Vincent Road.) And perhaps that is all we can ask: to muddle through one specific challenge at a time, even as our collective dissatisfaction with how we get there never wanes.

The final comment from that citizen survey of 10 years ago: “There’s a lot of grumpy people here.”

And so we muddle forward, into our past.