Don't let others define you
An issue in the recent Richardson city council election was transparency in government. Candidates were unanimously in favor of increasing transparency through steps such as video streaming council meetings. The obvious reason is that voters have a right to know what their council does. Televising meetings allows voters to keep an eye on the council, providing a check that elected representatives are doing what they told voters they'd do.
Today, we see another reason why council members might want to televise their meetings -- self interest. Destiny, in the Conserve & Protect blog, reports on Monday night's city council goal setting meeting. She complimented new member Amir Omar for his "amazing job." She dismissed new members Bob Macy and Mark Solomon for offering nothing new. She gave a back-handed compliment to mayor Gary Slagel for the whole exercise of setting goals.
By and large, Destiny was objective, but the council shouldn't expect that from bloggers in general. My advice to the council: if you don't want the public's impression of the council to be shaped by your opponents, you'd better make it easy for the public to see for themselves what you are up to. Get that video streaming system in place pronto. It's in your own best interest.
10 comments:
I would settle for an audio feed.
mp3 + torrent = podcast with very little impact on the city's bandwidth. Or just straight podcast with no torrent if the "worried grandmother" types get all afeared.
Related: the city's streaming video page is unfriendly to non-Windoze computers.
Audio would be fairly simple I think. They already record the meetings so that they can have minutes made of them later on. They could also just post the minutes, I suppose. Torrent's only work if lots of people want to download something. in this case I'd be surprised if 10 people a week downloaded the file.
Did you read the comments on Destiny's post. At least one person who viewed that meeting wasn't too impressed with Mr Omar.
Thanks for the feedback, Anon.
I agree that audio would be the simplest and most efficient way to start. It might be sufficient. Dunno.
Bittorrent "works" no matter how many people use it. Granted, it works faster for the users and with less bandwidth usage for the provider if multiple people download/seed the file.
But from the city's point of view the worst case scenario is that only one person at a time downloads the torrent and no one seeds. In that case the bandwidth usage is the same as it is now. No harm, no foul. If *anyone* seeds or downloads at the same time then the city's bandwidth goes down, potentially way down. It costs zero to publish the torrent (the actual .torrent is tiny) and could save us taxpayers a bundle.
I am not sure that the comments were really anti-Omar as much as FUD and preservation of the status quo. RC talking points?
worksessions are not recorded and that was a worksession
I don't think providing some kind of audio or video feed or stream or broadcast or whatever is a technical issue any more, nor do I think it's a financial issue. It's a matter of will. Just do it.
So what are the goals of the new council? And how is that different from their fiduciary responsibility? How did they measure up on the goals set last term? BTW, what were their goals of the last term?
"So what are the goals of the new council?" They haven't voted on them yet.
"And how is that different from their fiduciary responsibility?"
If you read their previous goals you will see the question answered.
"How did they measure up on the goals set last term?"
See below. You now have the goals so you can judge for yourself. After all, all of this "open government," televising of meetings and all that crap will automatically lead to nirvana and streets paved with gold in Richardson won't it?
"BTW, what were their goals of the last term?"
Google is your friend.
http://www.cor.net/assets/0/26/28/32/D67721CF-8551-484E-9128-A61B2F9922F2.pdf
"Anonymous" at 6/07/2009 1:57 PM, thanks for providing the link to the last council's goals. For readers' convenience, here it is as a hyperlink: 2008 Goals.
In last week's workshop, Mayor Slagel noted that he wanted to not only set up a list of goals, but also to set up a calendar of tangible targets to be achieved. That is, as you can see from the goals listed at the link above, the goals are sometimes (often) difficult to measure, so how do you (or they) know if they did it?
For example, on page 5, we see "Water and Sewer - Enable the community to depend on safe and efficient handling of their present and future utility needs in a manner that is cost effective, equitably priced, and adequately supplied."
How do we measure that?
Hmmmn, well, how about adding some tangible targets, such as (1) institute a rebate problem to help defray the cost of low-volume toilets [which is done in other places], or (2) develop a formal proposal for the North Texas Water District to separate the water fee into capital costs and consumable costs, so that the district can be assured of enough money to support its infrastructure while encouraging residents to reduce their water bills through conservation?
When you put tangible targets on to a calendar, then you have created an easy way to see how the Council did after a couple of years...so I wish Mayor Slagel success in developing this calendar, and encourage the Council to pitch in. It's a lot of work, but when you start discussing real targets, this sets a clear agenda for the Council, staff, and citizens for the next year.
Bill
William J. "Bill" McCalpin, thanks for the information about the workshop. Making goals measurable is good. But I have to wonder about the example you used. "(1) institute a rebate problem to help defray the cost of low-volume toilets" sounds more like an implementation detail than a way to measure the cost-effectiveness of Richardson's water supply.
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