What stirs passion in Napa County politics?

This week’s health care reform forum sure did.

The reaction we’ve gotten from readers who were witnesses suggests that no two people had the exact same experience at the forum. Or, rather, that people had one of two very distinct experiences.

One set of people saw an ugly unraveling of what promised to be an enlightening political event, with five speakers, including Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, addressing the topic of health care reform.

The other side saw the inevitable deconstruction of what looked to be a sham event that only played at illuminating the complexities of the reform proposal.

In the last few years, Napa County has seen other public displays on national issues — immigration marches in Napa and St. Helena come to mind, as do the more modest displays of the anti-tax Tea Party people outside Thompson’s Main Street office in Napa, the anti-abortion activity on Jefferson Street and the gatherings against the war in Iraq staged in and around Veterans Memorial Park.

But local matters often draw the crowds.

Busloads of Pacific Union College students, as well as carloads of skeptical Angwin residents, descended on Chardonnay Hall in Napa and the Lincoln Theater in Yountville for meetings on the proposed Angwin eco-village a year or two ago. The county planning commission more than once has had to redirect overflow crowds out of their meeting chambers for hearings on the eco-village.

It is notable that after all that activity, almost complete silence has descended over that topic in recent months.

A major meeting on Napa County’s proposed stream setback ordinance drew huge crowds to a Napa County Board of Supervisors meeting at Chardonnay Hall in 2003. That meeting was a harbinger of what eventually came at the polls, as the ordinance that would have outlawed development near streams and seasonal waterways was defeated by voters.

Five years ago, I was at Donaldson Way Elementary School in American Canyon for a city council meeting addressing the proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter. The meeting had been moved from the cramped council chambers to the multimedia room at Donaldson Way.

But the multi-purpose room was overflowing with multifarious people, many of them clearly agitated that the Wal-Mart was apparently on its way to town.

Fire officials picked their way through the crowd, saw people where exit aisles and access routes should be, emptied the building and forced the city to reschedule the meeting.

All these years later, not only does American Canyon have a Wal-Mart, but it also has a much bigger city council chambers and even a new elementary school with a bigger multi-purpose room. American Canyon, it appears, is ready for the next hot potato.