Comments To City Council, 10/18/05
================================================================
*In response to Joel Landau's request (below), the City Manager ordered new software that allows the linking of all agenda attachments to the City website. You can now access all the loan and grant requests, as well as see all other info attached to agenda items.
================================================================
Joel Landau, 854-2728
Candidate for City Council, At-Large
Mayor, Council Members, Mr. Manager,
I’m Joel Landau, I live at 6 Collwood Court.
I have 2 requests. The first has to do with voting.
The low voter turnout in last week’s primary election was an embarrassment to our city.
Some people just didn’t care enough to vote. But there were also many people unaware that last Tuesday was primary day.
So my suggestion is simple: send out postcards informing people of Voting days.
The card can simply state the date of the Primary and include the Board of Elections website for anyone who wants to see the ballot or get more voting information. We have about 100,000 households in Greensboro, so the total expense would be only around $25,000. This is a small price to pay for a healthier democracy.
An alternative would be to lobby the County Board of Elections to make it a countywide project, and we’d pay our share of it.
Yet another option would be to put an insert in the water bill. This would reduce the mailing costs. A drawback though is the water bill goes primarily to homeowners and not renters, but we would still be informing a large portion of the city.
You all may have a better idea and might want to brainstorm. The point is: getting more people to the voting booths is a matter of importance and deserves the Council’s attention.
Whatever strategy you decide on, you could do it through a couple of municipal elections and then evaluate its impact.
So that’s my first request: for you to consider a strategy to better inform people of voting days.
My second request has to do with the issue of open and accountable government.
At most Council meetings, there’s an agenda item for loans and grants to be approved. The loans and grants are not listed. I realize if somebody wants to see the list, they can ask and have a copy sent to them.
But as a taxpayer, I think citizens should have easy access to seeing how our money is being used. My suggestion is that when the Meeting Agenda is posted on the City website, have a link to the attachment listing the loans and grants. Ideally there would be links to all the Council agenda attachments.
So my second request for you, in the name of open, accountable government, is to put links on the website for all Council agenda attachments; or at the least to do so for the list of loans and grants being considered.
Thank you.
