Engage

You probably have noticed that the city government is going to try to encourage citizens to be more engaged with their city government. They've announced programs they are calling COSA university, Citizens 101, and lunch and learn. Looks like they will be spending lots of time of on what city government does and how it does it. This is good and probably necessary. The stated goals are to train people for membership on the various boards and commissions the city has and to "cultivate some well informed community ambassadors for municipal government." I think they are overlooking something very critical to achieving these goals. Why should citizens even bother to engage?

I could get very long winded here but the simple answer is that people engage with the city government because of beliefs, values, and feelings. They engage because they are emotional, even passionate about community beliefs and values. They engage because they feel it's the right thing to do. They believe they can make a difference. Frequently, it's not very logical. It takes time, energy, and resources to be engaged. It won't pay the bills or put food on the table. Without an emotional connection it's hard for someone to justify the tradeoffs necessary to get engaged and stay engaged. Why be on a board or commission instead of working extra hours, going back to school, or volunteering in church?  People engage where they feel they can make a difference. They engage with others they trust to achieve shared goals.

Right now I think the city government has a couple problems getting citizens engaged. First off, they don't do a very good job explaining the why of most decisions. They will have slides and spreadsheets and dollars and cents comparisons. They will explain what they want to do and how they plan to do it often in great detail. They have problems when they try to explain the why. The why is what connects the what and how to community beliefs and values. That creates trust, which is key to engagement.

Our city government needs to work on building trust. They haven't been very good at it lately. We could start with the lack of transparency on "furnituregate." Yes, an internal investigation was done and it was finally sort of  made public but it hasn't been publicly discussed or explained. It falls far short of what was promised. Throw in how the Hickory Aquifer project, especially radiation and cost concerns, has been handled. Add in the hiccoughs with the new "smart" water meters. We could mention recent budget workshops which have had council and senior staff backs to citizens/observers. What about the budget workshop that was taken completely out of the county and no video recording was made. The public information office routinely records meetings, like CIP hearings etc., for broadcast later so why not this budget session?  I've heard it said this was because the citizens could be distracting. Truth is the citizens aren't a distraction, they are the reason you are there to do the budget. What about the disconnect between the planning and zoning process and the concerns of the residents close to Lamar elementary. The real issue was not zoning. It was growth and its affect on traffic and safety. And do we need to go into how the bidding and review process on the landfill contract damaged public trust? Do I need to say that failure to answer basic, obvious questions (like what are our current costs/expenses) that would not have given any side a competitive advantage made it look like the city was trying to hide something? I could go on but I don't need to because this is just a list of missed opportunities for the city government to build trust and connect with the citizens of San Angelo. There will be plenty more where these came from.

I know I said I wasn't going to get long winded. Sorry. Could have been worse. In the end I welcome the city managers attempt to get citizens engaged. Hope he and the rest of the city government will do what it takes to get positive citizen engagement. Frankly, I'm not optimistic. If I was a betting man like my friend Jim Ryan, I would probably place the odds at 10 to 1.

Tangled Web(site)

Council meetings are usually entertaining and last Tuesday's was no exception. Sat through the morning show and left during the intermission (executive session and lunch break.) Didn't make it back before the afternoon show had started and I missed one of the most entertaining parts. An issue that I really have issues with: the City website.

The contract for the current city website was approved back in 2004. The current site is based on a proprietary system from GovOffice.com. It took a while for the site to get usable and I have several emails back and forth with city staff on problems and suggestions. Today, 8 years later there are still problems with features such as credit card information handling and keeping the agenda packets on the website. Public information staff has done a lot of work like connecting the city website with social media sites like facebook and twitter and work arounds like using slideshare to hold city council packets and information that won't fit on the website. City staff has done a lot of work to get information out and overcome the limits of the current website. I've also heard from staff members that use the system that it's a royal pain to deal with. I'd heard and seen enough problems with the site that I have been trying to get the city to change system and philosophies for several years. Earlier this year the city finally went out with an RFP for a new website.

In May, they came to council with a request to authorize a contract, not to exceed $40,000 to Vision Internet of California. From the memo in the agenda packet "Financial Impact: The costs for the website design, hosting, and training staff will be $40,000.00." A bit high but not totally unexpected. I remember this being presented to the city council as a complete, turnkey operation. Vision Internet would design and maintain the site, migrate everything from the old site to the new one, train staff to operate it, and host it on their own high availability servers. City council approved the following from the memo in the agenda packet.

• "a. Approving a recommendation from the Evaluation Team to award RFP: PI-01-
  11/Website Design contract to Vision Internet, in an amount not to exceed $40,000.00
  for design of a new, custom website for the City of San Angelo, and authorizing the City Manager to negotiate and execute a contract with the recommended vendor
• b. Authorizing a budget amendment for the project funds in an amount not to exceed
  $40,000.00 to cover costs of designing the new website, training staff, and hosting the
  newly designed site."

Looked like a done deal, and I  was hopeful a new website, at least a beta version, might be a Christmas present for the citizens of San Angelo. Last Tuesday, Nov. 20th, there was a budget amendment on the agenda that included $90,000 to negotiate a contract and amend the budget for the new website. Wait a minute. Hadn't this had been approved back in May? All of it including the budget amendment? And what was the extra $50,000 for? Simplest explanation would have been that too much time had elapsed and it needed re-approval. And maybe the $90k was just a typo and $40k was the real deal. I watched the video, and no, staff was saying that $90k was the true amount and that the $40k  was only for website design. The extra $50k was needed for training and new, upgraded servers to host the website. Like I said I wish I had been there but the replay on channel 17 was very entertaining. You could tell that staff was caught completely flat footed. The excuses they gave for the increase don't make sense when you look at what was in the May 1st agenda packet and what was recorded in the minutes. Training costs were included in the original proposal, and there was no need for additional servers at the city because the website would be hosted on Vision Internet servers. Package price, tax title and license $40k as approved in May. One further point I found out is that Vision Internet doesn't sell hardware. If there were additional servers and equipment required, that would need to be an additional contract, probably as part of the city's normal server upgrade program.

This highlights two problems our new city manager must deal with. First, staff has developed a habit of bringing parts of projects to city council piece meal and without complete project information. This time they tried to say that what was approved in May was just a portion of the total project and it was only last Tuesday they were providing information on the rest of the project. Earlier in meeting a similar situation happened on an agreement with SAPAC. The rental/lease agreement for office space was brought forward as an isolated, stand alone item. There have been some concerns about this agreement expressed at prior council meetings, and without some big picture information on the entire auditorium/city hall renovation project and SAPAC's involvement and contribution commitments it's hard to make a good decision. As presented to the council Tuesday the agreement does look and smell like a giveaway of a major city asset to a politically connected group. Add to that the cost overruns and confusion over whether or not the HVAC plant and landscaping were included in the original package voted on as part of the city hall plaza project and it's easy see how council might be getting a bit irritable. I'm sure they feel like they would if they were buying a new car and as the sales manager is handing the keys he says "Congratulation on your new car. I think now we might want to talk about putting tires on it." 

Now that I've wandered into mistakes made in handling the website contract so far, let me make a couple of suggestions. There needs to be a shift in philosophy by the city about the internet. Functionally, the city doesn't have "a" website. The main sanangelotexas.us address is effectively a portal into a series of other internet applications and sites. I could get long winded on this (actually did but erased it) but the city doesn't need a Swiss Army Knife type of website. What the city needs is a functional toolbox that allows people to exchange information and do business using those internet tools, and visible website is really just the box that keeps all these specialized tools where they can be used efficiently and effectively. This needs to be an open standards based toolbox so that as new tools are needed and developed we don't have to keep going back to a single source and hope they have an adequate tool.

Let's get ASU and their computer science department involved. They have expertise and equipment. They might be interested in doing the city's internet projects as a research and training vehicle. 

Get the city involved with projects like Code For America and see what they can surprise us with. 

Go with an open solution, preferably open source, that can help drive down the cost of government and give us greater flexibility to respond quickly in a fast changing world.

We need a new website for the City of San Angelo. We need an updated philosophy on how the city and its citizens use the internet. We need an honest, accurate, and complete plan for the projects that will get us where we need to be long term. What was put before council would barely serve us today and is not what we need for the future. We also need to get staff to keep up and do their homework before they come before city council and keep their story complete and straight.

Advisory Boards

It has been almost a year since Council agreed it would be a nifty idea to exercise some oversight as to the 20-plus advisory Boards/committees/commissions we have here. As I recall, we were going to start with Civic Events and move forward about one per month.

The idea was that each Board would be reviewed at least once every two years or so (surprisingly co-incidental with Council terms) for: let's short-circuit this; What have you Done for Us Lately.

I have served on one Committee, testified before several. I applaud the theory of opening access, I am all for Open Government / Open Records. San Angelo is ahead of the pack there. Nonetheless, comes a time we need to look back and see what is or is not actually working. We have Boards which routinely post cancellations due to lack of business; we have boards with overlapping areas of interest; (how many Downtown/Hysterical District Boards do we have: 6-8, a dozen?)

It is not a huge budget item. No Board member is paid; some meetings provide maybe pizza or finger sandwiches for a mid-day meet, BUT as to city staff support, someone has to open the door, record the minutes, provide staff advice and lock up after the puppies get done meeting. Not a huge item per meeting, but we have mid-twenties, 12 times a year times a few bucks per? Doesn't take long to move into 6 figures. Not saying Staff is overpaid, but they get paid more to supervise than I miss in pay when I show up.

I am a patient man, but a persistent one. I'm not going anywhere, when do we start Board Review?

Christmas Surprise

There is an interesting item being brought back on next weeks City Council agenda. It's a letter of intent with Siemens to “design and implement a land fill gas project.”

I'm a bit concerned this is an attempt to resurrect a project that was tabled indefinitely in 2007. In 2006, Siemens brought a proposal to build a waste to energy gasification plant at our landfill. There are similar projects all over the world. Some seem to be successful, some have been dangerous failures. By 2007, a number of questions were raised about the safety, true operational costs, etc. and the item was “ tabled indefinitely.” Now, the last meeting of the year on a date that was changed when everyone is busy with Christmas and travel plans and the end of the year, etc. this is put on the agenda with almost no real public discussion for several years.

It could be this is not the gasification project proposed in 2006. It might just be a way to capture the natural methane the landfill produces and then do something useful with it. That could be a good thing, but shouldn't a project such as that be put out for competitive bid? When was the RFQ put on the street? How many bids were received? Did we go to Siemens about this or did they come to us. Would be nice to know if good background information is in the agenda packet, but that didn't make it to the city website yet so who knows.

This issue needs public input and discussion. Sneaking it in the last agenda of the year is not the way to do it.

Animals, Boards, Commissions, and Communications

I was pleasantly surprised Friday to find that once again, the city website has the agenda packet online and usable. Last meetings packet is also still up. Progress. Thanks Alicia and the staff that helped you get this done. It's appreciated. 

A quick scan of the packet shows a couple of items that really interest me. They are revising the Animal Services Board ordinance, and they are discussing city boards and commissions again, hopefully so we can have the first review in the near future.

We've known for a while that the Animal Services Board ordinance, 2.3800, and the ASB Bylaws were in need of revision. At the minimum, they were out of sync with each other. There questions about how well it tracked Texas Health and Safety code chapter 823, which governs animal shelter advisory commissions, which is one of the major functions of the ASB. There were questions about whether health director and animal services director should be voting members. The Bylaws were last approved in 2000, while the Ordinance was last updated in 2007.

A workshop was held by the ASB on March 10th 2010 to address these issues. I was invited to that workshop (which was, of course, an open meeting) to help with the discussion. It was requested that City Legal have a representative at the meeting, but none were present. The meeting lasted a couple hours, and at the end, they had a good revised set of documents the hoped were ready to go before City Council. Just needed legal review and possibly some tweaking before becoming an ordinance.

That was 7 months ago. Tuesday a new ordinance is finally on the agenda. Unfortunately, this is a mostly new ordinance to replace the one we currently have. First off, it changes the name to Animal Shelter Advisory Commission (although the new 2.3810 still uses “members of the animal service board”.) Then it reduces the number of members from 9 to 5*, all of which now have to be involved in some animal related business or activity. No plain citizen or property owners are on the board. It requires 2 veterinarians even though we've had trouble getting even one to serve. It limits the scope of the commission to just the animal shelter, ignoring the larger question of animal welfare throughout the city.

I have a number of problems with this. First, why did it take 7months for this to come before council. As far as I knew, outside of some minor tweaking, the only open question was whether or not the staff members on the board should be voting members. The proposed ordinance doesn't make it any clearer. Next, this is a very major change to the duties and the responsibilities of the board/commission members. Staff, in their briefing to council in the agenda packet, states that the ASB has "historically been called upon to provide advice beyond  the scope of the law authorizing their creation and duties." If they are referring to the Health Code, section 823, then that might be the case. The ASB was not created by section 823, but to be in compliance with section 823. It was created by a city ordinance that gives them the animal shelter advisory role as just one of its duties. A review of several other Texas cities animal commissions finds that several of them use their commission for general animal issue advice. Lubbock specifically requires their ASAC to "advise on the city's animal services program." Midland requires their Animal Control Advisory Commission to "advise on animal control issues referred by council." This pattern is common.

The proposed ordinance changes the make up of this board/commission significantly. Any change this large should be addressed as part of the board and commission review process that has still to get off the ground. At the minimum, it should be done during a joint session.

This brings us to a problem that goes to the fundamental reason we have boards and commissions. Boards and commissions work for the City Council, not city staff. They are appointed and removed by Council. They are accountable to Council. They are subject to Council guidance and limitations. They are supposed to be the expert advisers to Council, and in many cases they are councils representatives. They are an extension of City Council into many areas because there just aren't enough council people to be everywhere. They are not just auxiliary, unpaid staff.

Unfortunately, our boards and commissions are being used and treated like low level staff. They are isolated from council, their boss, by staff. With the exception of statutory appeal boards like the planning commission and the zoning board of adjustments, you never hear about a boards input on an item before council. Many board members, especially on the animal services board, don't know who appointed them. Start and end dates for their term in office are often unclear. Boards have almost no contact with the council, and are often left to fend for themselves on critical issues. What guidance they get doesn't come directly from council. Instead, it's filtered through several layers of staff. Some times staff does a great job of getting the word down to boards. More often than not, it's like the old game of telephone where the message to the boards bears little resemblance to the guidance from the council.

Boards and commissions need to have good, unfiltered lines of communication with the city council. Their recommendations should be heard unedited by the council. Staff needs to be in the loop, and the staff representative needs to make sure that the council is given staffs input on the issues. The city legal department need to be in the loop to make sure that the city stays in compliance with the law, but that is no reason to delay input to the council by half a year. If nothing else, all board decisions should be presented to the city council for discussion as a draft work in process. Even if staff has concerns, and needs to do further research the council should always know when a board votes to send something forward. That's just basic communication.

The board and commission review process the council adopted last spring will help address these problems. I think it is very premature to do a major restructuring of a state required commission before the council has done a fair review of that commission using the process they approved.

*Made a mistake on the number earlier. Was caught by a sharp eyed reader.  Sorry for the error.

Openness Followup

My last post was on the cities website and agenda packets. Time to do a followup. First, the city clerk is trying to work out a solution to this issue. Not all of this is under the city's control. They are using an outside service to host the website. What was a good, forward looking solution just a few years ago is now difficult to use and too limited for what the the city needs. One of the limits is how the space is allocated on the website. There is also an issue with uploading large files. As a temporary patch, they will be putting the agenda packets online in pieces. This will mean some internal links will not work but all the information will be there. You will just have to manually search for it. A reasonable trade off until a better system can be put in place.

It is time for the city to look at a different approach and different system for their website. Based on my experience they can have a better website with more flexibility and fewer limitations at a better (i.e. lower) price than what they have today. We will see what it looks like in a year. I'm hopeful.

Openness and modern technology

If you've been following us any time at all, you know we have been after the city government to put some additional information on their website. We have been very persistent about getting the agenda packets, which we consider an essential part of the agenda and minutes, online. They have recently been putting agenda packets up sometime the day before the council meeting recently, and taking the old one down before putting the new one up. There have also been a few problems with some of the packets not reading properly. Thought we were making some small progress towards more openness.

This weekend, I saw this notice in small print under a heading called 'New Feature' in its original type size

"As a courtesy to our citizens and the media, Agenda Packets are posted along with the respective agenda.  Due to limited space on our website, the packets are only available for that particular meeting and will remain on the website until replaced.  Every and all attempts will be made to post the packet in a timely manner before the actual meeting; however, due to the size of the packets and any related technical difficulties, we cannot guarantee this service for all meetings.

If you are interested in receiving a previous or current meeting agenda packet on a compact disk (CD), please contact the City Clerk.  Related charges will apply for this service. "

 or at a more readable size

"As a courtesy to our citizens and the media, Agenda Packets are posted along with the respective agenda.  Due to limited space on our website, the packets are only available for that particular meeting and will remain on the website until replaced.  Every and all attempts will be made to post the packet in a timely manner before the actual meeting; however, due to the size of the packets and any related technical difficulties, we cannot guarantee this service for all meetings. 

If you are interested in receiving a previous or current meeting agenda packet on a compact disk (CD), please contact the City Clerk.  Related charges will apply for this service."

I've been playing with computers for a few days, and know a little bit about space and websites. The maximum size of any agenda packet so far has been 25mb, which means that 40 of them will fit in a 1 gigabyte space (gigabyte is 1000 mb). Walmart is selling 4 gigabyte flash drives for under $10. That would hold about 160 agenda packets, which is a bit over 6 years with space left over for workshops and special sessions.  I would gladly donate a thumb drive to the our city website so than store a reasonable number of packets.

Seriously, the SAISD School Board has their agenda packets online from 2005. They also have their packets and agendas in a much easier to use format. Doing it like the school board does will take a lot of effort that should wait until the website redesign but until then I find it hard to believe they can't find the space for at least a years worth of agenda packets on the city website. Frankly, it comes across as a very lame excuse to get out of some relatively simple work.

Get involved

I have written on this before, but Independence Day brings it up again.

I spoke to the Tea Party group Saturday, following a lady who suggested going to Council or County Commissioners or SAISD meetings. As a "been there done that" person, I reminded the audience, ALL these bodies are open meetings. Anyone can address them in favor of or in opposition to whatever is on the agenda, in fact if your topic is not on agenda, there is a "Public Comment" opening where any citizen can suggest a new topic for the next meeting.

Texas may still have a "redneck" image, but it is perhaps the most open state in the Union. Things that twenty years ago I would have had to take a day off, physically walk from office to office, file Freedom of Information forms and wait for the beauracracy to find a reason to deny my request: I get that now at 3:00 AM in my bathrobe and slippers: literally.

You need to look at an ordinance or city Charter? Online, two clicks of a mouse. You want Texas Statutes, same thing. You want Federal Statutes, well it may take a while to download unless you have the bill number handy, but it's there. A Supreme Court decision you heard about, it's there. Maybe you don't trust the press as it reports the new Arizona immigration statute; it's there.

Recently, San Angelo even started posting what is called the "Agenda Packet", in short, all that stuff the Councilmembers have on their laptops, you can have it too, before the meeting. It's a lot of reading, tomorrow's is 360 pages+, last week was only 297 pages, BUT if you want it, it's there. Someone, I suspect Alicia Ramirez, went in to put that up today on a holiday, it was not there yesterday.

I mentioned to our Tea Party crowd, San Angelo has at least 20 Boards and Commissions advising Council and they are all open to the public. Some of them are so seldom used they might be slightly shocked to see an actual citizen, but they will also give you a hearing, probably feel complimented someone bothered to show up!

Last but not least, check any agenda lately for Council. There are ALWAYS open spots on advisory boards. Doesn't pay anything, some of them buy you lunch, but toward bottom of agenda we always have "appointment of soandso to board xyz" which in my memory is always unanimously approved.

Don't sit and bitch, get in there and make your case. You won't always win, God knows I haven't, but if you don't play you sure won't win.

Me, in a world full of wolves, I'd rather be a shepherd than a sheep.

Whole New World

As a side issue to the smoking petition, I mentioned that the Council Agenda Packet had been posted before the Tuesday meeting. As a part of open government, this is HUGE! It means that everything a Council member has before them is also public record; me, thee, and the rest of the world can read it prior to meeting. OK, not a lot of people are going to read 297 pages of "stuff", but it's there if you want it!

My friend Jim Turner did a bit of online research: best he can tell, we are one of 4 or 5 cities in Texas that have this info posted!

I have never been bashful about calling staff down when I thought they had let us down. The flip side of that, when they go "above and beyond the call", I should be equally free with a pat on the back and a public "attaboy"

My opinion, staff has a great big "attaboy" due, and I'm happy to give it.

Stormwater Surprise(s)

I recently got my first water bill with the stormwater fee included. That was a surprise in itself, I was at a few of the public hearings held prior to passing the ordinances, and I recall hearing the fee would be assessed on property owners. As it was finally passed, that is true for commercial properties, but on the residential side, the fee goes to whomever has the water meter at the property.

Take my case as one example: the property I rent (since '92) includes a detached garage/storage building I do not rent, owner uses it exclusively. The building I do NOT rent moves me from Tier Two to Tier Three based on footage of roof area.

The first thing I discover, when I called the "customer service number" on the utility bill, I was told all stormwater questions had to go to another number. I call it, and get a recorded menu and first try, I end up back with the water clerk who couldn't answer my questions to begin with. I navigate the robo-menu, get a recorded invitation to leave a message. I finally end up talking to the City Engineer, Clinton Bailey, who it turns out is the first line and only line of response to stormwater questions. Minor point I suppose, but if we are going to include the fee on the water bill, shouldn't customers be able to get answers to at least basic questions from someone at the phone number printed on the bill? If nothing else, is having Mr. Bailey as first-and-only first response a good use of the City Engineer's time? I have come to respect the man as a competent employee, but surely he has better things to do.

Here I need to digress into the enabling ordinances. These coincidentally appeared online about the time I'm getting the bill, but they are now up online. Sec. 8.1900 sets the fee itself and the different residential/commercial Tiers system of setting fees. Of more interest to the rate-payer is Sec. 11.800 which has to do with collections and billing.

Under 11.807 "Appeals" I find that all appeals will go through [cut a lot of verbiage] Clinton Bailey, and as he pointed out, burden of proof is on the rate-payer. If I appeal, and do not like his ruling, I find under 11.807(d) "any landowner..may appeal to City Council". I had to point out the landowner language to Bailey, but it's there. In short,I am priviledged to pay the bill, but have no right of appeal to Council as I rent.

In fairness, this sounds like a leftover from when City intended to bill owners. If unintentional it needs amending; if intentional it is outrageous and probably unconstitutional.

If I were to convince my landlord to appeal (why should she, it would increase her bill) the result would be the total revenue to City would go from $4/month to $5, as my bill would drop $1, but the lowest Tier is $2, her share. I will not do any such absurd thing, I'll pay the $4/month, but it is an unintended result of the ordinance.

That brings to mind billing for duplex/triplex rentals. If the renters have separate meters, how is the impervious surface divvied up? Do $4 properties end up paying $6?

One thing I recall well from the public meetings was one session where staff actually showed us overhead images of properties. It wasn't GoggleEarth, but something similar with more up to date images. These were to be used as the stormwater assessment is based on "impervious surface". Especially for residential properties roof footage is the major component. A two story house with 3,500 sqft would likely fall in the 1-2,000 Tier for stormwater purposes. Unless the city is relying completely on Tax Appraisal District records, which do not state one/two/three story. Which the City apparantly does now. What happened to the overhead views? Again, burden of proof on the rate-payer.

While I'm looking into this, one person added a concern on the commercial side. Here we change to billing the owner. Regardless of whether individual businesses in a multi-use property have meters or the whole building is on one water meter, bill goes to the owner. Many owners are now being "stuck" with $100-$500/month fees they cannot pass along to long-term lease holders.

One other beef I have with 11.800: Let's say you have an appeal, filed and in process. In the interim, you pay the rest of the utility bill, but withhold the stormwater fee. This is commonly allowed in property tax cases without foreclosure. Under Sec. 11.808 "Failure to pay promptly shall subject such user to discontinuance of any utility service". Well, it's certainly a hammer, but I would prefer to see such actions move through a Municipal Court action brought by the City against the landowner.

I have to give points to someone for dividing the ordinances. It would be a hard sell to reopen the Tiers structure addressed in Sec 8.1900, don't see that happening. However, there are inequities in the 11.800 language, I suspect unintentional, that can be addressed and amended, and they should be.

I'm not by nature a fan of unfunded mandates, and this is the "poster child" definition for that term. Reality, City has no viable option save to comply. That is covered in Sec 8.1900, I leave quibbles over fairness of the Tiers for the review down the road. The inequities of the billing portion in Sec 11.800 can be re-examined without disturbing the core issue of City's compliance with State and Federal Regulations. It should be.

San Angelo has been surprisingly tolerant of the capital improvements addition to the water bill. People assign responsibility to different sources, but after the Christmas Debacle and a few geysers around town, we are willing to pay for dependable service. A couple of things that helped acceptance was selling people the idea there was a "new sheriff in town", we would manage and maintain the system better, AND the additional billing would have some semblance of fairness to it.

While not free, (there is staff time to consider), tweaking an ordinance by amendment is an inexpensive option compared to losing trust with rate-payers. The Monday Standard-Times article (which dropped off the radar in record time) mentioned there had been about 1,000 calls on the issue. Aside from eating up the City Engineer's time, that's a lot of people with questions, and doesn't count those who shrug in resignation and write the check, mumbling imprecations under their breath. Fairness in billing is essential to trust. Council should look at amending Sec. 11.800.

Another Sunday Ramble

As I write, it is beginning to rain after a beautiful February full moon Saturday. I know it is virtually illegal to cuss rain in West Texas, but working construction, I'm on the verge of it. I suspect the folk tearing down the Carnival tonight would share my opinion, just cold enough to be miserable work in the wet. BTW, did I read it wrong or did a Grand Champion goat get a better bid than "Rock Star" the Grand Champion Steer? I know which I'd rather have in my freezer.

I have not seen much of the Olympics, but I took time to watch the hockey finals. Worth it on several levels. The IOC couldn't have scripted a better match-up, underdog USA v Canada, ratings must have been through the roof. Great game, surpisingly few penalty minutes, overtime game, Canada won, and good sportsmanship post-game by both teams. Perhaps next Winter Olympics the IOC will choose a location where they don't have to truck in snow.

I won't trouble City Council this Tuesday, I will be busy at the primary elections, been in the election-judging business for a long time. I do read Council Agenda. Conspicuous in its absence is an agenda item Accepting the Smoke-Free San Angelo petition. I was at last meeting, Council and City staff were assuming this pro-forma bit of business would be done March 2. I have to assume the item was pulled at request of the initiating committee, I also have to wonder why.

Two Agenda items that are there: #19 would give Council members access to the City's insurance plan as a Charter Amendment, subject to voter approval. There is a rather tangled history here. I was on Charter Review Committee a bit over two years ago, Prop 5 would have modestly increased Council pay, but it failed, by a small margin. Only then did it occur to City Legal staff that an obscure provision of state statute made it illegal for us to give Council members the same health insurance all other employees get, something they had received since the memory of man runneth not. I hope we can correct that error, if it takes another Charter Election, so be it. The vote will be on a regular election date, not much extra expense to City.

Since there is a two year period between Charter elections, if we are to have one, let's cover any other Charter items while we are at it. One that comes to mind would be amending Sec 47 on Initiative and Referendum to comply with case law we recently had pointed out to us so as to avoid future confusion.

I also look forward to #18, Work Session Criteria for Council and Boards. San Angelo has over 20 Boards and commissions, a good thing. These bodies range from Animal Services to Zoning, and give the average citizen a means to be heard. Over time they have grown without much oversight. All of these are volunteer appointees, and they are to be commended for their service. Still, City ought to look in on what they are doing every couple of years, just to stay in touch.

Some Boards are doing a great job, some are not doing much at all. Most of them could improve their accessibility by brushing up the website provided by the City. A list of who is on a board would be a good start, a clear statement of long-term goals wouldn't hurt. Most of these boards could benefit by regularly looking back and re-focusing on the original mission of the Board and how well they are doing in that mission.

No one wants to make it hard on Board volunteers. A once every two year joint session with Council would help both bodies understand one another, and what is expected and what has been done. There are a lot of details to be worked out, but that is what agenda item 18 hopes to start doing.

Remember to vote Tuesday, if you're really interested, don't forget the precinct convention at 7:15 after the polls close. If you don't vote, a five dollar fine for whining about the results. Voting, win or lose is your license to bitch about it.

Open Government 101

Open Government is a term being bandied about quite a bit lately. Add in terms like transparency, Freedom of Information, Open Source Government, etc. and you have quite a bit of noise. Hopefully, this and future articles will help cut through the noise and get to the core of what open government is, where it's going, and why it's important.

For much of human history, most rulers thought like Bismarck "... that laws are like sausages - the less you know about how they are made the more respect you have for them." People were kept in the dark about how government worked, laws were made, and often even what the laws were. Eventually, ancient rulers figured out that a set of standard laws was useful in keeping the rabble in line so we see the emergence sets of laws like the Ten Commandments and Hammurabi's code. Government and religion were tightly interwoven at this time, so these laws were said to be divinely inspired (whether they were or not), and as such were beyond question. In reality, most people knew that laws and government had less to do with divine inspiration than power, greed, patronage, and control. Still, it was several millennia before it was safe to question how government functioned. You had the beginnings of the democratic process in ancient Greece, and republican representation in Rome, but the "divine right" of rulers wasn't really challenged until the renaissance. The sausage making process was carefully hidden from view.

By the time of our countries founding, there was a fledgling movement for more openness in government. Our founders felt that an informed electorate was necessary for a representative government to function properly. Many of them still felt the electorate should be limited to educated property owners, and that many parts of government just shouldn't be discussed in polite company. The smoke filled rooms, machine politics and patronage systems needed to be hidden from view to thrive and reach the level of power they eventually had. Scandals occurred frequently and various reforms were tried, but opening up government processes to outside scrutiny didn't really catch on until the dawn of the information age. We see the Freedom of Information Act in 1966, and a number of state laws at about the same time, that made it easier to obtain information and at least get a glimpse into the sausage factory. Add in the emergence of investigative reporting like that on Watergate and media sources like Cspan and you start to get access to the way government works. Government was getting more open. The idea of open government was in its infancy. It still needed two developments.

The whole idea of Open Government was changed forever with the birth of the internet. Not only can information be shared quickly and easily, the cost of doing so is remarkably low. Internet access is everywhere. Few businesses don't have it. Most libraries and schools do have it, and basic dial up service can be had for as low as $10 per month. You can get basic internet functions on a prepaid cell phone. There are many projects out there to make sure the poor and disadvantaged don't get left on the wrong side of an insurmountable digital divide. The potential for information exchange is tremendous and the amount of information available on the government and its day to day operation is huge. It's to the point that many are arguing that there is too much information and we need to limit the openness of government to prevent information overload, which brings us to an important development made possible by the internet: Open Source.

The term Open Source was originally coined to describe a particular way of developing and distributing software. In the earliest days of computers, software and the source code (plan) to create it was shared openly. Eventually some companies figured out that keeping their code secret and selling or licensing the resulting software might be a good way to make money and today companies like Microsoft that are making more money than automobile manufacturers. The idea of sharing software and related ideas didn't disappear, it changed and adapted. It was kept alive in universities and large computer users groups. Free projects such as Linux grew around the concept that free access to software and its source code could develop great software. They were right. The code was produced relatively quickly and remarkably bug free. This was ascribed to the " thousands of eyeballs" that could look at the code and find errors. It seems that " given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Pretty soon, people started thinking that maybe this might apply to government.

Open government advocates are realizing that not only should government be open and transparent, but information flow should be in both directions.

We are still in the early stages of truly open government, but I have great expectations. In the future, I will be commenting on how open government is working locally. Personally, I like being able to watch sausage being made. It may be a bit disgusting but at the same time you end up with fewer cigarette butts and floor sweepings in you sausage. I find the same thing true with government and laws.

Privacy; Not So Much

I quote here from the Standard-Times Privacy agreement offered to all posters on the gosanangelo online site, "III. We do not share personal information with any third party without your permission".

There is much more than that, but the rest is legalese ruffles and flourish, that sentence captures the promise the newspaper made to posters. That promise has been broken and the newspaper's reaction to the situation has been late and negligent at best. The print edition article in Sunday, May 4 edition is the first print acknowledgement the problem existed, and it was not only inadequate, it served to compound the error.

For those who do not follow the online version, a little background. The online edition has a feature that allows posters to register under a screen name and comment on articles or editorials in an ongoing forum. It has been a lively, close-to-real-time open comments back and forth, for the most part lightly moderated. Comments are subject to being removed for libel, obcenity, cuss words and such, many such comments have been pulled. A few posters have been outright banned for repetitive violations. In my case, the anonymity was never an item, I self-identified during the Charter Amendments debates as "barkeep". I posted often and enjoyed the free exchange beyond what deadlines and ink-on-dead-trees could possibly provide.

On April 25, I was told that lists of posters' real names were being bandied about in the Police Dept. and that officers who had posted for or against certain candidates were in fear of reprisal. Frankly, I knew that several officers from various candidates' camps had been posting under screen names, but I simply did not credit that the Standard-Times would give out a list, I blew it off as overly paranoid. That weekend, I heard from several sources the same story. Depending on which candidate a source supported, these people had varying ideas as to who had engineered this opening of user profiles, but the basic facts were congruent and stand without resort to conspiracy theories.

A change was made to the content management system that allowed, for about a day, any viewer, from any internet connected screen, to click on a screen name and get the registering user profile (real name, for those who didn't bother to lie when they registered) and complete posting history for that user. While my informants were concerned with Police Department posters, it worked for any poster, any topic, full history. One person expressed concern for teachers' privacy over a performance review topic that had been hot a few months ago. I wondered aloud had anyone bothered to check on true names of some of the FLDS posters. To be sure, blame notwithstanding, this leak was common knowledge by 4/24 PM. Personal note: by the time I heard of this, the barn door had been closed, I do not have the list so many people obviously do have.

Seeing nothing in the paper, I forwarded a heads up to Ty Meighan, along with some speculation, labelled as such, on Monday, 4/28, later acknowledged by e-mail. Late Wednesday, one WhiteHorseman "outed" 9 screen names, obviously taken from this leak. 1:15 AM 4/30, I posted as barkeep and made explicit for those who had not yet heard that which I outlined in the preceeding paragraph. This set off a flurry of "I know who you are; nyah, nyah, no you don't I lied" yadayada that continues to this day.

Finally, today, Sunday May 4, the Standard-Times publishes a story letting the rest of the world know that the privacy promised to posters had been breached 10 days before. As if the delay were not bad enough, the story in which this revelation is finally stated compounds the original breach. During that interim, nearly every correspondent to the online version has become aware the loss of privacy occured, but as in my case, not all of them had access to the full list. Readers of the ink-on-dead-trees paper were likely unaware this leak happened.

In the same edition where the Standard-Times endorses Tim Vasquez for re-election, the article announcing this violation of their privacy agreement leads off by blowing the apparent screen name of Vasquez' widely accepted as nearest contender, Jeff Davis. While not specifically naming them, the article goes on to say "At least four members of the officers' meet-and-confer team also have names attatched to comments...The city and its attorneys aren't likely to forget that when negotiations resume in the fall, and the ramifications go beyond that-the City Council could decide not to negotiate." Leave aside whether this effectively outs the meet-and-confer team, on what basis does the S-T allege the Council even can, let alone is likely to, refuse to negotiate? What part of meet and confer statute allows the city to unilaterally refuse to talk to the officers' duly elected representatives on the grounds of "we don't like what you said last spring"?

It appears Davis did handle this poorly, but, so long as The Standard-Times is "outing" posters, why not supporters of other candidates? I am unaware of any screen name directly tied to any other candidate specifically, but I have been keeping up with this race, and have probably read most of them. I can tell you this; advocates for, if not the actual candidates have played the "I know who you are" game and some made comments rude enough to rate removal. While I do not endorse, just to be honest, in the heat of this I had a first-time removal; after a poster wished I had been aborted, I responded with someting rude enough to get (justifiably) removed.

Critical to understanding this issue, for those not using the online forum, is the meaning of "user profile" the actual information revealed. When a poster registers, the one verifiable field is the e-mail address. Should one care to, one can fill in name as Mickey Mouse, address Disneyworld. At least one poster was revealed to be using three screen names, different e-mail links for each. The information that was revealed consisted of these self-proclaimed user profiles. Some people gave aliases there as a second layer of identity protection, in retrospect, not unreasonably. Those immediately revealed were those who were most trusting in the privacy agreement and didn't bother to lie, or the few, such as myself, who didn't care. I went with "barkeep" because I have used it for many years on many other forums, not for concealment.

I have sworn to protect confidential statements, not necessarily to believe everything I am told, but if I tell someone I will not say where this came from, I won't. People from different camps talk to me, and I stress here, candidate advocates, no candidate personally does. I have not and will not endorse a candidate, and I try to weigh the bias of sources who talk to me. That clear, there is a huge misunderstanding about this breach of the privacy agreement. I hear from different sides "so&so outed me, everybody knows so&so is a mouthpiece for Candidate X".

Please people, the party responsible for revealing user profiles, to the extent they are true names, that party is the Standard-Times. This person or that may have taken advantage of that information in ways I would find ethically questionable, but they could never have done so had the Standard-Times not made the information available in contravention of an explicitly stated privacy agreement.

That said we move to the handling of this breach by the Standard-Times. I think in legalistic terms, my Blog partner Mr. Turner thinks in computer geek terms, I came up with "negligent", he prefers "incompetence". I only diferrentiate because negligent has legal implications in tort law that incompetent doesn't necessarily encompass.

The explanation offered in today's Standard-Times article states this was, "not a hack into the Standard-Times' site by supporters of a certain candidate, as conspiracy-minded commenters have suggested". I may have missed a comment here or there, but no one I've talked to thought this was an outside hack. By accident or no, there are people who find it remarkably coincidental that this "open door" was coincidentally tripped over by people willing to take advantage of it. I won't say that didn't happen, but I'm a fairly successful gambler and I didn't get there drawing to inside straights.

The genesis of this information leak had to be in-house, and today's article says as much. To be perfectly clear, I do not mean, necessarily, in house as to the confines of the Standard-Times Harris St. building, but corporate in-house. After that, the explanation gets thin real quick. The mistake is attributed to "new employees in Knoxville" who were in a weekly process which "reset privacy controls for newspapers across the chain, not realizing the Standard-Times wanted to keep profile data away from the public". Excuse me, but which Scripps Howard newspapers DO intend to make user profile information public? Last time I looked in on the Abilene Reporter News, they didn't. Did they last Thursday? Scripps Howard has, I believe, 19 newspapers, not all have online comments, but those which do, have identical privacy agreements.

Why did the Standard-Times wait 10 days after they say their people were advised of this breach to make a public statement alerting users it had happened? If the reader is unfamiliar with the online edition and the comments section, it has been an open free-for-all with commenters from every side calling out their opposition advocates since WhiteHorseman ID'd 9 posters April 29th. Don't bother to look for WhiteHorseman's original posts that evening, they have vanished. In fine point of fact, their reporter inquired of me had I happened to print out those comments, he could not access them. As it happens, I had, I may have the only existing copy of those comments as they originally appeared. Don't even ask which rock that is buried under.

The article states that their online director Betty Brackin "is working individually with those wishing to reclaim their anonymity". Maybe so, but even that help is limited to those posters who are already aware they were outed and ask for help. For all anyone knows, posters on say the teacher evaluation subject may not have checked in lately, may have been utterly unaware that their personal information and comment history is open to any inquiring mind who knew about this "window of opportunity". This should have been as public as an automobile safety recall. In truth, I have been too patient. The Standard-Times article Sunday says they were aware of this Friday, April 25. Give some allowance for getting the full story, the Standard-Times should have had an alert in print sometime that weekend, before I sent them my heads-up letter.

That aside, how well has their remedy worked? One case I have tripped over, a poster did ask Ms. Brackin for help. Sho' nuff, poster X was given a new screen name, and the old posts were removed. Unfortunately, when I went back to posts put up a week before the leak, I see this: The post by X in support of candidate Y was removed; two responses to that post are still there, only now they read "response to (new screen name X)" then in the body of the text response, the old screen name is used. In short, this poster has been retroactively "outed" a second time, backdated to a week before the original leak happened!

Make no mistake; I appreciate the Standard-Times, in this case I have often complimented the reporter who wrote the story I have objections to. I enjoy the online trading of opinion. In this case, the story, the revelation of identity, the remedy for it and the explanation of it has been poorly done. It cannot escape attention that in the same edition where the paper's endorsement of incumbent Chief Vasquez includes this: "the incident eventually led to a Texas Ranger investigation after Vasquez disclosed to the Standard-Times that the woman was an informant for SAPD Sgt. Jeff Davis. Revealing such information is a felony...", the Standard-Times compounds its own violation of confidentiality by disclosing the identity of Vasquez' most threatening opponent to print edition readers who may have been completely unaware of this tempest. I have my own copy of the "AP Stylebook" 2007 edition and its guidelines to confidential sources. If ya'll need one Hastings has them in stock. I gave you the Palmer file for free, this you can buy.

Chief Candidates Forum

We now have the videos of the candidates presentations up on our BLOG. These are from the February 26th, 2008 forum at the River Terrace. Each candidate has a separate post, and each video is about 5 minutes long.

If you have a problem watching these videos, we will be making a DVD available this weekend as well. Leave a comment or contact me if you need one.

This is a first for San Angelo.

"Attaboy" Time

At last week's Council session on the CG/CH zoning changes, I addressed Council asking once again for a zoning/permits/development ombudsman, something I have regularly advised for several years. Last week, in a comment to JWT's article, "What We Have Here", I said, "As JWT told you, I gave Mr. Lewis my card, asked him for some details, and promised that I was just as glad to give the city "attaboys" in public as to criticize. Have not heard yet, but if I do, and this is for real, I'll be the first to acknowledge it here."

I've been out of town this week and this is my first chance to follow up on that promise. I am here to give the city a big "attaboy", and eat a healthy portion of crow. If one looks to the comment following mine to last week's article, it is entered as anonymous, for ease of access I suppose, as it is signed at the bottom. I cannot recall when last I was more politely, thoroughly, and deservedly chewed out. For that matter, the embarrassment aside, I don't recall being so glad to admit, "Got me!"

The author of that comment, Amanda Fawver, is the city's Development Coordinator, a position created last April which comes so close to the "one person, one phone number" job description I have been requesting as not to be worth quibbling over details. The position she holds, complemented by the new Development Review Committee, will make the path from "bright idea" to final approval substantially smoother for business investors. As she points out, it has already helped 30-some projects.

Development Coordinator Fawver was so diplomatic, she even deleted from her public comment an especially embarrassing-to-me section of the e-mail she sent. I not only saw, and should have recalled, the April 21, 2007 Standard-Times article announcing this position, I commented favorably on the gosanangelo site. Not only do some folk downtown read my stuff, they sometimes remember it better than I do! Seriously, that was a deft touch which should serve well in a "first-contact" position.

This new approach is truly substantive. Unnecessary zoning/permits hoops to jump through are not only inconvenient for a prospective business, they cost real money in time and effort. To a business, the money saved on that end is just as real as the money on the cash-payment economic incentive end. From this forgetful author, a great big "attaboy" all 'round to staff and Ms. Fawver in particular. Talk about your economic multipliers, whatever the pay scale for this position, it is money well spent.

Open Government, Again

We have covered it here and here before, but open government is in the news again. Terry Bader resigned from the school board over the editing of the board meeting recording shown on channel 4. This is disturbing on a number of levels.

Texas has some fairly strong open government laws. They have specific requirements about how meetings must be conducted, what records must and can be kept. There are laws and rules about what must be disclosed to the public and how. They are an attempt to implement a government that is open to public inspection, and where the information is accurate and complete. This is called accountability.

The school district has been recording some sessions of the school board meetings for a number of years. They are then broadcast on channel 4 so that people that didn't make the meeting can see what happened. The implication is that this is a complete and accurate record of what happened at the meeting. The only expected gaps would be those for breaks or executive sessions. Everything else should be a complete and accurate, unedited record.

The government code in section 551.021 states in part that "The minutes and tape recordings of an open meeting are public records". There is an expectation that as public records, they will be accurate, complete, and available. They can't be arbitrarily edited just to avoid an embarrassing dialog. The public has a right to a complete record of what goes on in making policy for them and spending their money, not some sanitized feel good version that some administrator would like it to be. It is especially disturbing when the editing was done to keep information that might be embarrassing on a complicated and controversial bond issue obscured from the public view.

I have heard some comments saying that they should have at least labeled the tape as an edited version. I agree that it should have been labeled as an edited version, but it should not have even been aired. The broadcast on cable is there to give information about the workings of our elected school board officials and our hired administrators. It is a necessary closeup of the decision making process that we expect them to be accountable for. This broadcast shouldn't be a year book picture where you get to look your best. This should be a candid picture with no makeup and all the pimples and blemishes should be clearly visible. Open meetings are there so that citizens actually know how and why decisions are made, especially the tough ones. Any attempt to edit out the blemishes and put forward a false unified happy face is deceptive and violates at least the spirit if not the letter of all the laws relating to open government.

I have been told that the school board and staff have already had their mandatory open government training this year. I hope that next years training will have a better, more lasting affect.