So, you’ve got a gripe with RP’s City Council. OK, write ‘em a letter. Your retort might be, “Why should I? City Hall doesn’t wanna bother with ‘em.”

Hold on a minute.

Rohnert Park City Hall takes a serious view of letters from residents, even anonymous ones and e-mails they get. They’re sort of a barometer of the community, for no one knows if one letter expresses a gripe or an opinion from an individual, but how many others hold the same viewpoint?

Checking with Beth Lidster, secretary to Interim City Manager Dan Schwarz, we discovered she’s the designated gatekeeper for letters to the city council. “I log in all letters, real ones and all e-mailed ones, and make copies.

“We get letters on both sides of issues so we’re kind of caught in the middle. Some need a response, but most do not. The city council gets copies of all of them in their council packet before every meeting.”

Judy Hauff, deputy city clerk, backed up Lidster. “We’re required to distribute all letters to the council and if they pertain to certain departments like building or development, or public works, they get copies, too,” she said.

“We seldom do responses. It would be nice if we could acknowledge each letter, even with a form reply, like members of Congress do. But we just don’t have the staff here to do this.”

Letters to the city council arrive in wildly varying amounts every week. In calm periods, now mostly vanished, it might just be a trickle about ruts in a road or truck or a big RV parking on streets.

But these days with the proposed tribal casino and hotel, the expansion of Wal-Mart to include a grocery market, layoffs of police and firefighters in the Dept. of Public Safety, and the talk about closing Spreckels Performing Arts Center, the amount of letters to city hall has increased. Lidster’s job has gotten busier as a consequence.

What triggered this probe into how city hall handles letters from citizens was a letter from a resident of Joanne Court off Copeland Creek Drive asking why the city cut down two palm trees near his apartment complex where two screech owls were nesting. It appeared in the city council’s correspondence packet at their Feb. 23 meeting.

The bottom line is Rohnert Park City Hall takes its letters from citizens very seriously. That old cliché “you can’t fight city hall” has its weak point and all it takes is a letter to city hall. Every city council member has his or her copy of it.