'Revved up' in the USA: In local politics, blood boils

• Seemingly small issues are big politics in communities and neighborhoods
• Bank branches, feral cats and school lunches are among ballot issues
• 'Think globally, act locally' is true for a lot of voters

A week from Election Day, some issues, concerns and controversies off the national campaign trial:

Citizens of Quartzsite, Ariz., wonder why it took four months for the winning candidate to be seated as the town's seventh mayor in four years.

Bon vivants in tonier precincts of greater Boston dread the appearance of another boring bank branch in space that might otherwise house an artisanal bakery or a gourmet coffee shop.

Handicapped residents of Passaic, N.J., smart over the fiscally pressed, densely settled city's decision to charge $40 to $75 annually for handicapped parking spots in front of their homes.

Feral cat lovers in Indian Harbour Beach, Fla., fight for the right to care for colonies of the wild felines.

Public school students in St. Cloud, Minn., their stomachs rumbling, demand more filling cafeteria fare.

In this presidential election year, there are disputes that the national and statewide candidates never mention because they are too local, too arcane or just too petty.

Yet communities, neighborhoods and planned unit developments care about such matters — passionately, loudly, sometimes violently.

"All politics is local," the late House speaker Tip O'Neill observed. Ed Foster agrees.

By court order, the 70-year-old retired engineer was sworn in last week as mayor of Quartzsite, a dusty community of about 3,500 off Interstate 10 in southwest Arizona. He was elected in June, but the Town Council refused to seat him.

Why? Ostensibly because Foster owes the town $2,200 in legal fees.

Why? Because Foster sued unsuccessfully in 2011 to regain the mayor's seat he'd won the previous year. He lost it in a recall election.

Why? Because he clashed with other local officials, including a police chief who arrested him for allegedly disruptive behavior at a public meeting.

Why would anyone voluntarily get involved in local politics?

"I have a famous saying," Foster replies. "No president has ever done anything for me or done anything against me. But you should pay attention to choosing someone who can tell you whether you can build a shed in your yard."

Even during this year's bitter presidential campaign, he's got a point, says Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute: "Voters by and large are most worked up about what they can touch and feel, and they don't touch or feel Barack Obama or Mitt Romney." For all the interest in the presidential race, he says, " 'Think globally, act locally' is pretty true for a lot of people."

"Local issues," agrees Ingrid Reed, a New Jersey political analyst, "get people really revved up."

Which helps explain why police in Easton, Conn., have been called three times this year to keep order at town board meetings, and why a school board candidate in Lee County, Fla., charged at a debate that her opponent had tailgated her en route and previously tried to run a campaign worker off the road.

"Two adults fighting like schoolchildren," editorialized The News-Press of Fort Myers, "is not what this school district needs."

What the city of Passaic needs is money, which is why its leaders considered requiring waiters and waitresses to pay for their own criminal background checks and charging an "emergency response fee" for putting out fires. Neither came to pass, but the city did raise or impose new fees for fire alarm permits, for responding to motor vehicle accidents, and for handicapped parking signs. An editorial in the local Herald News compared it to "using the residents … as a municipal ATM. "

"What's next?" asks Simon Grubin, 60, a local resident. "Enacting a cane fee on the sightless?"

St. Cloud's new, healthier school lunch fare has left some students feeling a little empty. The menu, which stresses fruits, vegetables, dry beans, whole grains and low-fat milk, "is really not enough to keep you going," says Cami Doman, an eighth-grader at Sartell Middle School, who plays volleyball, hockey and softball after school.

"Throughout the day," she adds, "you're really tired because you don't have that, like, kind of 'fuel' … to get the energy you need."

The high and the mighty

Arcata, Calif., has two issues to resolve on Election Day.

The "Corps Ain't Peeps" referendum would declare the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which barred government restrictions on corporate and union political spending, symbolically void in the city. A second measure would force hundreds of illicit marijuana "grow houses" to pay a premium for excess electricity they consume, or move somewhere else.

Dave Meserve, a 63-year-old contractor, has gone door to door and stood in the rain campaigning for the proposition that corporations and unions shouldn't enjoy the same political expression rights as individuals. He doesn't consider his quest quixotic: "Working from the grass roots is the only way we're going to change things in this country."

The grass roots was where Dana Crow-Smith was trying to spread the Gospel this summer. The 44-year-old Christian was handing out free bottles of water while standing next to a sign saying "Stop Here for Prayer" at an art event in downtown Phoenix.

But a city inspector told her that by law she needed a $350 vendor permit, even though she wasn't selling anything.

The City Council, inundated by messages of support for Crow-Smith, voted unanimously Oct. 3 to overturn the ordinance. Crow-Smith was surprised: "I'm not a big political activist or anything. … The whole point is to glorify God, not get attention."

God's creatures are another source of dispute. In Indio, Calif., golfers want permission to shoot coots, the migratory birds whose waste is allegedly damaging greens and fairways, clouding water hazards and dirtying golf balls. Environmentalists feel shooting the birds is, in the words of lawyer Frank Riela, "unnecessary violence."

Backyard chickens are particularly divisive. Legalization of them has "pretty much consumed my life," says Barbara Palermo of Salem, Ore., which this year increased the chicken-per-household limit to five. Palermo got involved in 2008 after her own backyard coop was busted.

What to do about beavers that felled some trees planted as memorials along a bike path near a creek in Amherst, N.Y.? What about flocks of wild turkeys in Hercules, Calif., that "land on rooftops with such force it feels like an earthquake," as a resident told the Contra Costa Times?

The year has seen brouhahas over restrictions on outdoor grilling in Bellevue, Pa.; laws limiting the number of household pets in Neenah, Wis., the smell of the state dump in Providence (and points downwind); windmills in New England; and booze in the Bible Belt.

And everywhere, there is the awesome power of NIMBY (not in my backyard). Even Star Wars director George Lucas decided to abandon his plan for a 270,000-square-foot digital studio complex on a former ranch in Marin County, Calif., in the face of neighbors' opposition (and threatened litigation).

Sometimes the local flashpoint is a person. In Tenino, Wash., it's the mayor.

Eric Strawn, 35, is known for his ponytail, Bob Marley T-shirts, arm-length tattoos and license to buy medical marijuana. His first year in office has included a no-confidence vote by the City Council; a predecessor's claim that he's leading the city to bankruptcy; and a ruling by the city attorney that his appointment of a new police chief violated civil service law.

But Strawn has not lost his sense of humor. When an artist raising funds for a community pool wanted to sell T-shirts with Strawn's face between two marijuana leaves and the inscription "Mayorjuana," the mayor gave his blessing.

Why so fired up?

Analysts cite several reasons for why local politics can be so combustible:

Issues are immediate and tangible. "It's where people are, it's in their bloodstream," says Bob Benedetti, a political scientist at the University of the Pacific. "People get excited if they feel their way of life could change."

Land-use issues may sound boring, but "people know they determine what their community is going to look like," says Alvin Sokolow, who taught government at University of California-Davis for 27 years. "It's not like the future of Medicare or Paul Ryan's budget. Those are a lot of numbers down the road."

In Brevard County, Fla., the hot button issue is feral cats.

Some regard them as pests that yowl at night, spray urine all over the place and eat wildlife. Others in Indian Harbour Beach want to register, feed and neuter the animals.

Money is tight. In local politics, much of the conflict is over finances. Municipal money pressures are making local issues harder to solve amicably, Sokolow says.

Politics are personal. People enmeshed in local controversies often "feed on each other," Benedetti says.

Sokolow says such disputes "tend to be much more bitter, because you lack any anonymity. It carries over into personal relations." Some say that passion, however excessive or irrational, is the glory of local politics.

Even if things sometimes get a little hot, "I'm all for people getting engaged," says Reed, who long observed such matters from her perch at Rutgers University. "That's what representative democracy is all about."

Contributing: Dennis Wagner, TheArizona Republic; Rick Neale, Florida Today; Michelle Mitchell, Desert Sun Media Group, Palm Springs, Calif.; Laura Ruane, The News-Press of Fort Myers, Fla.; Jon Ostendorff, Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times; Ben Jones, Gannett Wisconsin Media; Kirsti Marohn, St. Cloud (Minn.) Times; Tracy Loew, Statesman Journal, Salem, Ore.; Ron Barnett, TheGreenville (S.C.) News; Brian Shane, The Daily Times, Salisbury, Md.; Jens Manuel Krogstad, Des Moines Register; Jess Rollins, Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader; John Wisely, Detroit Free Press; The Associated Press.