SPARK CIVIC CURIOSITY: New children’s book aims to make local government as easy as ABC
When Bill McHugh served on the Leland Town Council, he often felt less like an elected official and more like an unofficial educator.
The city of Leland, like many coastal North Carolina cities, is home to a large number of transplants, and many of those transplants arrived from places where councils wielded more power. McHugh found himself explaining, over and over, what the Town Council could and couldn’t do.
Local governments in North Carolina only have the powers granted to them by the general assembly. This can include running public utilities, creating policies for city or county employees, passing zoning laws, and managing historic preservation districts. It does not include other hot button issues, such as rent control, restricting data centers, or regulating private companies.
Those differences created a frustrating dynamic – as much as McHugh tried to explain and educate, the Town Council was often blamed for things outside their control.
Eventually McHugh found a new way to address this problem: start at the beginning.
A is for Alphabet
McHugh has always been involved in politics and civic engagement. It started when he watched the 1992 presidential debate, featuring Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Ross Perot. It was an interesting choice for a seven year old, but he was rapt. He aspired to one day be on the stage. Then he grew up, and the discourse, in his words, took a nosedive. He decided politics was a losing game and found other ways to contribute to the world, including serving as a volunteer coordinator, working at voter registration drives, and lobbying state and local governments.
One day, while complaining about local government (as one is wont to do), he wished that more level-headed people with good intentions would run for office, and realized he was talking about himself. So he got on the ballot, launched a campaign, and served a four-year term on the Leland Town Council.
When his term ended, he started thinking of ways he could continue to have an impact and help solve the education gap he saw as an elected official. He began making short videos on social media, addressing commonly misunderstood topics.
“As a private citizen I can say whatever I want,” he says. “I'm not a spokesperson for the town. I can explore all kinds of topics without worrying that I’m going to anger a colleague or lose a vote.”
The videos served their purpose, but there was another faction of people who remained out of reach. Specifically, the 4–8-year-old crowd.
Let’s back up: McHugh has a two-year-old daughter, and she’s a big fan of ABC books. One night, while reading yet another alphabet book to her before bed, he had an epiphany: why not write an ABC book about local government, introducing 26 aspects of local government in one to two simple sentences that even a child could understand? As an added bonus, once a child was aware, even a little, of certain careers in local government, they might then grow up to be an urban planner, or a human resources administrator, or a news reporter – important roles that keep our communities humming.
The idea stuck, and he started filling his phone’s notes app with ideas. Once he had all 26 letters drafted, he finished editing, found an illustrator, and self-published.
The Power of Curiosity
McHugh admits that this isn’t the obvious topic for a kid’s book. “I is for Infrastructure” doesn’t have the same ring as “Once upon a time,” local government can be dry and complex, and many of the terms don’t scream board book. Yet it works. McHugh successfully strips down big concepts to one or two words – Mayor, Streets, Green Space, Development – and the brief descriptions coupled with vibrant illustrations create a lovely picture of a healthy, functioning society.
McHugh is clear that the book is not meant to be a user manual, but as a way to start a conversation. The goal is to make kids (and a few parents) aware of what local government actually does, and show how everyone from elected officials to everyday people are striving to make their communities better in at least 26 different ways. “Local government isn’t sexy,” McHugh freely admits. “We’re not invading counties, or arguing philosophical or moral issues. People tend to engage when they’re mad, and very little outside of property taxes fill people with rage.” The result? Too many people stay home.
But McHugh believes people are most powerful when they’re curious, open, supportive, eager to see their communities improve, and willing to partner and compromise with their neighbors to get there.
His advice is surprisingly mundane: read the meeting agendas and minutes. Learn which level of government handles which issue. Volunteer for a municipal board or committee. Join a civic organization. “You can do that stuff in an hour or two a month,” he says.
The beauty of local government is that party lines matter much less when you join a civic organization. Picking up trash on the side of the road, walking dogs at the animal shelter – these things don’t necessarily care who you voted for or how you’re registered.
“Even people I disagree with passionately, the majority of them are doing this because they want to make their community better,” McHugh says. “To me, that means more greenspace and more parks. To someone else, it means keeping the tax rate low. Both are worthy goals, even though they contradict each other.”
While accessibility and lack of understanding are big issues, McHugh is quick to point out that just because a thing is hard to understand doesn’t mean something nefarious is going on. It simply means constituents may have to do a little more digging, and that their elected officials need to find ways to make the issues accessible.
“People are more fearful than I realized in a lot of ways, and a lot of that comes down to feeling like they’re in the dark,” he says. “Folks will say, I don’t feel like local government is transparent. And I’d tell them, it is, but it’s not delivered to you on a 24/7 news channel like the federal government. Everything is done in public, but you need to do the boring things, read the minutes, watch a three hour city council meeting, contact your elected officials to get this information.”
Since serving on Leland Town Council, McHugh has also become a lot more sympathetic to elected officials. Council members are compensated for their service, but it’s hardly a lucrative job. For McHugh, the motivation was simple: he wanted to help make his community better.
“I know there’s a lot more nuance to the decisions our elected officials are making,” he says. “I’m also gravely concerned that people are voting for whoever is going to be making those decisions with so little information.”
A Fairy Tale Ending
When McHugh imagines a parent and child sitting down with this book, he returns to a favorite proverb: "It's a wise man who plants a tree under whose shade he’ll never sit.”
“My goal is to make kids aware, at a young age, of local government, and spark an interest in how things work. By the time they’re old enough to vote, or run for office, or own a home, they’ll be better engaged than they would be if they hadn’t read this book as a small child. The seed will have been planted. Maybe it’ll take root, maybe it won’t, but I hope it’ll help.”
And while he wrote this book for kids, he hopes the parents reading it to their children get something out of it, too. “I hope you’ll get to a certain page, put down the book, pick up your phone, and look up more information on whatever sparked your curiosity. This book is meant to be a conversation starter.”
You can support your local community by buying McHugh's book at Palouse Coffee Shop in Leland, and it will soon be available for checkout at the Brunswick County Library. To learn more about McHugh and his book, visit @bill4leland on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
