History, politics, people of Oly WA

Month: November 2005 (Page 2 of 2)

Two ways to look at muni wi-fi

Ok, from my reading so far, there are two ways to look at municipal wireless systems: “good for Emmett” and “good for Olympia.”

Good for Emmett would include being able to go downtown and not worry about being able to find an access point, it would just be there. That example is just on the surfaces, so sit and think for awhile about the various personal use applications that you would have if you could carry around an internet device and always have access. Buy tickets on the way to the movies, carry on a real time conversation on Olyblog.

Good for Olympia would be the sort of applications that a city government would get out of a wireless network. This would include applications that would aid the day-to-day operation of government, such as checking parking meters, emergency response, etc…

Or, as the Dayton, OH IT director puts it:

You go back, I give you the work ticket, you go out and do it. Well, if I can do that while you were rolling and while you’re fixing that pothole, I can send you via the system — via the Web — “Oh, by the way, your next job is right around the corner.”

From the city standpoint, … we could do things like automated meter reading for all of our water meters so that eventually, we don’t have a whole fleet of people just running out reading meters every day, 20 working days a month, just to get all those 77,000 meters read every month to bill somebody. Well, if you take 30 people off the city’s payroll, think of how much money that saves in taxes.

The way these could tie together financially in a muni wi-fi system would be that while most residents would get the benefit of a free system (well, not really free the city would pay for it), big users (the city, county, the port and private companies) that would really see a benefit would pay subscriptions for broader access.

Holy crap Steve Klein, what happened?

Most of the folks I supported won, all except Phyllis. Which I feel bad about, I think I’ll always look back at her campaign as being something I could have worked harder on.

So, no big surprises, except (holy cow) Steve Klein getting destroyed in Yelm. Even though he spent apparently $50,000 on the race, he was beaten 4-1 by Ron Harding (I should note that us TCYD’s endorsed Harding Klein, mostly because he showed up to our forum).

Anyway, I didn’t assume that Klein would win, but I thought that his spending so much, even going to the point of burning campaign movie DVDs as handouts, would get him above 45 percent. I really assumed it would be a tight race. As far as I can tell, maybe spending $50,000 in Yelm isn’t the best idea. Maybe that was the thing that really hurt him, that he thought he could buy the seat.

Although even in Olympia being out-spent by your opponent isn’t the kiss of death, especially if you have some sort of incumbency (Harding was already on city council). Two years ago, Laura Ware was outspent 3-1 by Sandra Miller and still won a decisive victory. Ware won because she had the big issue of the day on her side (she opposed the convention center) and she raised enough to get her message out there.

Oly Muni Wi-fi update

Just about a year ago, there was a seemingly short discussion within the City of Olympia on wi-fi, with the conclusion to sit by and wait for the technology to come to them.

In Tumwater, there apparently been a larger discussion on setting up a few city owned wi-fi hotspots, with the cost at around $8,000 (scroll down to page 26).

I went down to the Olympia Library and the Community Center yesterday with my PDA, assuming that it would have been pretty easy for the city to set up small, private, wireless networks in either place. Nope, no signal as far as I could tell.

Also, apperantly, someone is setting up a cooperative wireless system (Cirgo):

Objectives of the wireless group are to create and maintain a low cost citywide wireless network for providing access to Internet services. Currently, no citywide network exists. Initially, the project will be piloted in downtown Olympia and if successful, will be expanded to the greater Olympia area and to other rural towns and counties in Western Washington.

Muni Wi-fi (in Oly)?

I’ve been interested in Municipal wi-fi for awhile, but it wasn’t until just recently when Keri and I stayed in downtown Spokane and enjoyed their free wireless access, that I really began thinking about it. Thinking about it in a “We in Olympia should do something like this.”

I’m going to be reading more about this. Here’s my first reading list:
Wired: Wi-Fi Cloud Covers Rural Oregon
Joho the Blog: Is free municipal wifi good?
Muniwireless (I know it’s not an article… I’m going to peruse their offerings)

City of Tumwater polls and calendar

Speaking of getting engaged online to foster civic engagement (see below), the City of Tumwater currently has two online polls running. One asks how everyone likes the new website, another asks for input on John Dodge’s idea from a few weeks ago about moving the old brewery whistle to the FishBowl brewery (the community’s last working brewery).

In addition to the polls, the city’s website also has a calendar with an RSS feed. Sweet.

Jeff Kingsbury Speaks! uhmm… I mean posts

Awhile back I posted on the benefits of elected officials and candidates engaging in conversations that are happening online. If there are conversations going on anywhere in our community that regards why your running or the business of the city, it pays to be engaged.

One mayor from back East actually considered such conversations as a normal part of being a mayor:

““On the street, it’s just like “‘Oh, I saw you on the cable station.”’ Now I get “‘Oh, I saw you on the blog.”” Ed points out that an appearance on a blog’’s comment threads can humanize an elected offical, and that a note directly from the mayor can temper the conversation, too. ““If I go on directly and respond, if I personify the discussion” he says, ““people are more careful about what they say.””

A few days ago, I started a thread over at Olyblog about Ira Knight’s interview on KGY. Like most posts on olyblog.net, it started a vibrant discussion, and now, Ira’s opponent, Jeff Kingsbury is getting into the mix. He’s not bashing Ira by any means, but simply discussing the merits of a downtown parking garage.

Good on ya, Jeff. I hope this encourages more council candidates and future and current city council members to embrace the growing blog community in Olympia.

Ira Knight Speaks!

Pulling out of the garage this morning, I heard Dick Pust on KGY preview his morning interview, saying something like “It’s a man who’s running for local office, but I’m not going to tell you who yet.” And, I thought sarcastically, “Yeah, I bet its Ira Knight.”

It was! Ira Knight Speaks! (this deserves exclamation points because up until this point, Mr. Knight hasn’t been to any public forums).

Dick went right into the source of the recent controversy regarding Knight’s candidacy, whether he supports same sex partner benefits for city employees. Obviously Knight doesn’t, but he wanted to stay on the mantra that “everyone has the right to pursue happiness in their own way,” but he also pointed out that gay marriage, for now, is not legal and that he would stick to the law. He went on to say that if the law pertaining to the nature of marriage changed, he would respect that.

Dick also repeatedly said that Knight “opened his mouth” on the topic of gay rights/marriage/benefits, which Knight never refuted.

Other topics that Dick and Ira covered included solving the downtown “problem,” sidewalks and traffic.

On downtown, Ira suggested the creation of a space where local residents could come by and hire for a day someone who was out of work. His central theme on downtown being that the problem was a lack of responsibility, and that giving handouts would not solve the problem. The problem being homeless people I guess.

On sidewalks, Ira said that he would be his number one issue when he was elected to the city council. If you’re wondering why Ira wasn’t involved in the Walk Olympia campaign last year (that brought in the first significant sidewalks investment in years), it was because he hadn’t walked around Olympia that much before. Ira discovered the deplorable state of our sidewalks while doorbelling for city council. I guess when you live out on Lilly Road, you don’t notice a lack of sidewalks driving downtown.

It was nice that Ira mentioned that when he was doorbelling a lot of people said they didn’t get to see elected officials all that much.

Ira said on traffic problems that the city government should plan ahead. I wonder why they didn’t think of that before, it sounds so easy.

At the end of in the interview, Dick asked him if there was anything that he wished he had been asked, and Ira told him about his time serving in the 89th Air Wing, the unit that maintained and flew Air Force One. I think this is a direct quote, but Ira said, “If you aren’t doing your job, they’ll get rid of you in a heartbeat.” That he served in that unit for 11 years speaks to his makeup as a person.

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