Wednesday, January 27, 2016

BOW -- wow. Board of Works' refusal to communicate reaches bold new lows.


At the Tuesday, January 19 meeting of the Board of Public Works and Safety, Jim Ziegler of the Blackberry Ridge Homeowners Association returned (again) to speak with the board about the dangerous entrance to his subdivision, and the lack of action in addressing it.

(The BOW minutes are reprinted below as images. The weekly minutes are disseminated in the .pdf format, although certain other city boards use the far handier Word)

Ziegler first brought this to the board's attention on August 18, 2015, at a time when board's de facto dominatrix, Warren Nash, was busy seeking ways to thwart the street piano. On January 19, Ziegler noted his difficulty in keeping up with the board's apparent non-progress on his issue. In short, he's reading those .pdf files just like the rest of us.

Can there be a better way?

Following a lengthy digression, during which Ziegler tried his best to hold a recalcitrant city's feet to the fire, making the point that while the city didn't botch these safety issues in the beginning, it's the city's responsibility to correct them now, he asked who his point of BOW contact should be.

Nash replies: Why, these meetings, of course, and only these meetings, the Internet being a figment of the imagination of some geek who probably never attended a basketball game in his life.

As my colleague MC eloquently summarizes:

Yes, the meetings that always occur at 10 a.m. on weekdays. Yes, the board that has no e-mail address, no contact information for members of the board, no phone number, etc. Yep, lets make it easy for the public to communicate with the administration. Sickening.

That's right. Sickening.

The Board of Works currently exists for the convenience of city employees, not the general public. City Hall insists there is nothing wrong with BOW's non-communicative tradition.

City Hall is mistaken. Again.



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