Cape Informer

Tonight I am questioning the new rule of questions. A few weeks ago council made a great move forward by requiring the publication of questions and their answers from Citizen’s Input time. That is a great idea and a laudable intention.

Having 13 years of experience in the IT field and specifically with the Internet, I made several suggestions and a full proposal to the PIO about how to proceed with that. They chose a different path, one which I felt wasn’t ideal, but at least it was still a step in the right direction. Several residents stood up at input time, asked their questions and then sat down. It seems like the Residents really embraced the new tool and wanted to use it fully.

Unfortunately, Council has now voted to create a limit of three questions. That limit is also unclear. Did you mean to limit citizens to three questions per person at input time? Did you mean that Council members only had to answer three questions? Did you mean Staff only had to answer three questions per week on the website? I’ve already reached three questions, so I suppose I’ll leave it there for your clarification.

Instead of continuing to question I would like to propose a solution to this dilemma. Install a real Question Management application, much like the one I suggested. Go out to bid on the project and have a real application installed with a service to manage the questions and their answering. Don’t limit the input and don’t limit the output.

I can provide studies that will show very clearly a cost savings trend by using these tools. Fortune 500 companies embrace these technologies to reduce personnel time in dealing with customer related issues. By moving to this sort of managed system you will save taxpayer money and improve communications at the same time.

At first you will see a high volume of questions as people seek answers. Once the questions are answered and available on line you will see a reduction in the frequency of questions. This will occur because Residents will help themselves to the information that they need. Lets make a wise investment choice here. Do not throw away the opportunity before us. Embrace it and move in the direction that will best benefit the residents of the City. Thank you.

Rachel Meyers interviewed me a few weeks back. She did a good job on this story. I felt that she fairly portrayed our conversation and presented a nice back and forth about blogging and traditional media.

Full Article.

I have expressed some disappointment over the last couple of weeks over the formatting of the newly required “Citizen’s Input Question and Answer”. I felt that a real FAQ management tool would have been more appropriate. I submitted a proposal to install one. I also submitted a proposal to perform research and answer writing for the questions asked by citizens. Both of these options were turned down, in favor of a much simpler “news article” style question and answer for each week.

I didn’t feel that it accomplished everything that we could. I looked at it as a missed opportunity, but I was at least happy that the questions would receive answers.

This week, Mrs. Bertolini softened her requirement by only requiring three questions per week be answered. She made no requirement of which questions, so the Staff can now answer whatever questions they would like to answer, as long as they answer three questions. The Mayor and Richard Stevens voted against this. I feel that this is represents a total failure in improving communications.

The City has ample opportunity to answer the questions of residents. It even has residents interested in answering questions. The City has a real opportunity to harness the energy of people willing to work to improve it. Answers requiring longer research could be easily watched using software that is designed specifically for archiving questions and answers. If our city is going to grow together and grow responsibly, we need to stop running away from improvements and start embracing them.

An uncomfortable council took several moments of silence and quite a bit of back and forth about averages to finally come forward with a motion, sponsored by Mr. Boyd, to rate the City Manager as excellent. The vote passed 6 to 2 with Mayor F. and Tim Day voting against.

This was followed up by a long discussion about many facets of the City Manager’s compensation package and his job seeking. The discussion remained professional and only a few hints of hostility ever surfaced. Chris Berardi tentatively offered a motion to provide a 2.5% raise. The City Manager, looking glum, stated that he would be satisfied with only the 2% raise required by contract. The City Manager reminded council that he has had a far lower percentage increase than other City Employees during his employment. Mr. Berardi chose to allow his motion to stand at 2.5%. The motion passed 7-1 with Tim Day voting against.

I would have preferred that the rating be “Fully Satisfactory” to reflect the varied problems over the last year. I still believe that our City is lacking quite a bit in communications. I also would like to see more input received from citizens in more venues. I would like to see the City embrace more of the Internet’s available technologies for gathering input and publishing information.