I just got back from a Transforming Local Government conference. Many creative projects were presented and ideas absorbed.
A topic dear to my heart is called Citizen Engagement. Good government is always looking for better ways to interact with their citizens: To inform/educate; To get feedback: and To assess citizen needs. Most cities, including Big Bear Lake, find that too few of their constituents attend City Council meetings and other public forums. These meetings are usually inconvenient to attend and public testimony is intimidating for most citizens.
The City of Big Bear Lake has done a good job making our meetings more accessible to our citizens. City Council, Fire Board, and Planning Commission meetings are broadcast live (and later re-broadcast) on channel 97 and from the City website www.citybigbearlake.com . These meetings can also be viewed at a later date from the website.
Citizens can write letters or e-mails to City Hall to comment on issues. But agenda items are rarely explained in meaningful detail, making citizen comment difficult. Too frequently, citizens don’t appreciate the impact of a project until it is too late and already “a done deal.”
An organization called Peak Democracy provides a service called Online City Hall. It allows cities to give detailed descriptions of issues and agenda items and solicits comments from citizens. This information is then used by staff and shared with City Councilmembers. It allows citizens to give feedback without attending city council meetings.
There are many ways for City-to-Citizen-to-City exchanges to occur. I’d like to know what you think would be better than what we are currently doing. Comment using this blog or take the poll to the left.
Michael
2 comments:
Michael,
I have never seen a listing of what
we pay our council members or City
Manager. This would encourage us to pay more attention to what they are
doing. I also encourage all property
owners to protest the increases in sewer and disposal fees, and for our
public servants to live withing their
incomes like all the rest of us must do.
Hello Anonymous,
Here is the link to a Grizzly article that gives an account of our City Manager's pay raise a year ago.
http://www.bigbeargrizzly.net/articles/2009/08/26/news/doc4a9567a7e9e89962595428.txt
You may have to cut and paste this link into your browser.
City Council members get a stipend of $300 per month plus $50 if there is an Improvement Agency workshop/meeting. We also get a stipend of $100 for monthly Fire Board meetings. Finally, City Council members get the same health insurance benefits given to City workers. Some of us serve on external/regional committees which also pay a modest stipend. For example, I serve on the MARTA (bus) board which pays $30 for each monthly meeting.
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