Olympia Time

History, politics, people of Oly WA

Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 69 of 176)

Driving the local in civic dialogue

April 21, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Walter Neary, Lakewood’s blogging city councilman, conducted an experiment via twitter and facebook and got no comments from the locals:

The news was that the city of Lakewood’s collection of traffic fines is up 40 percent for the first three months of 2009 compared with the first three months of 2008, for total of about $200,000 more. I have to say, I didn’t get a lot of feedback, but what I got was very high quality.

…

I have to tell you … I was very impressed with the points of view.

BUT

and there’s a BUT

Not a single one of these folks lives in Lakewood.

So … great views. Great Internet exchanges. Zip interaction with Lakewood.

A simple solution could be to create a facebook account for “city councilman” Walter Neary and only accept relationships with your constituents. It could be made semi-public so anyone could see your information and what is going on on your wall, but only friends could comment. It would also be separate from a personal account, which would make it easy to divide from personal stuff.

Or, in the long term, I wonder if something like this would work:

I’ve been toying around with an idea in my mind, a sort of super public comment tool for state government on down. Each level of government in Washington at some point has a need for public comment. It would be interesting to create a system online where a citizen could create a user profile using their voter registration (or some stand in for folks who aren’t registered) and then see open public comment processes in the jurisdictions they reside in.

So, in my case, I’d see public comment for the city of Olympia, Thurston County, the local PUD and port and the state of Washington.

I’d be able to post comment to any of the open processes and either have it archived for whatever public official will review the comment or immediately accessible to other users so they could comment back on my comment.

Of course, normal rules like not being able to overuse the system (three comments a week, for example), not being rude and not using particular language, would apply.

For this system, the important thing would be to segregate people into public comment processes that they actually are involved in. So, keeping Kitsap residents from commeting on an interesting issue in Renton would be a priority.

Rediscovering Archie Binns

April 20, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Dan in Bremerton:

I was in 8th grade and was becoming interested in sailing. This book told a story of six teenagers from two families on a voyage around the San Juan Islands in a thirty two foot ketch. Even though the plot is a bit corny, the description of the islands, harbors and passages were very accurate. When the author “invented” a couple of islands, he let the reader know that he did that. While reading the book the first time, I would pull out my father’s charts to see where these places were. Reading that book probably was the one event that sparked my interest in cruising in the San Juan Islands and sailing to distant places. I started planning my own voyages to the San Juan Islands.

…

Even though “The Enchanted Islands” is considered a juvenile book, I reread it last week, but now, I can visually the descriptions of the places in the San Juans that the characters in the book visit and sail around. And his descriptions still seem accurate.

Shallow freedom blogging (stopping the next invisible city)

April 20, 2009 / / 0 Comments

The Trent at EFF makes the development moratoriums we’ve been going through around here sound like a local government government sitting on top of any sort of progress across the entire county.

Of course, the actual truth is a bit more complicated than that.

First, Trent ignores Thurston County v. WWGMHB, which casts a long shadow over development policy in Thurston County.

He also ignores the several times since 2005 that the county commission has released properties from the moratorium. This you could find out if you follow the link Trent offers:

October 17, 2005 – Board of County Commissioners released pockets of unincorporated land that are within the city limits of Olympia and Tumwater from the moratorium on subdivisions.

…

January 31, 2006 – The Board of County Commissioners extended the moratorium on residential subdivisions for 6 months. The following were released from the moratorium: 1) Subdivisions that do not create lots less than 20 acres in size; and 2) Divisions of land which do not create any additional building sites because two or more single- or multiple family homes (not mobile homes or family member units) are already located on the parcel, consistent with Section 18.04.052 of the Thurston County Code.

…

January 13, 2009 … The Board adopted Ordinance No. 14187 to renew the subdivision moratorium for another six months. This ordinance released a number of properties from the moratorium, and provided a method to be released from the moratorium if it can be demonstrated that the reason for the moratorium no longer exists. Please see the map under the section “Lands Subject to the Moratorium.

Trent also ignores the problem that is presented if you allow growth in the areas still included in the moratorium. Just like the properties above, the moratorium areas but up against a city in northern Thurston County, but are still in the county.

They represent baby “invisible cities,” urban and suburban “communities” like Tanglewild and Thompson Place that were allowed to grow and develop in a pre-GMA Washington. Thurston County’s own invisible city grew from the mid 50s until the early 80s and has filled in since then. Since growth management, it hasn’t been annexed into an existing city or become a city on its own. It remains an urban and suburban collection of neighborhoods that is governed by a rural form of government.

Because it demands a higher level of service than a real rural county, it is sucking the county government dry. Preventing the rise of more invisible cities is just good management.

Unfiltering the legislative session

April 8, 2009 / / 0 Comments

The response to the fewest number of credentialed reporters covering the legislative session wasn’t that a blogger was eventually credentialed, but rather this.

Or, a lot of stuff like that.

This winter and spring the four caucuses (but the Dem ones the most and the Senate Dems the most most) have been rolling out social media tools that allow them to directly connect with the people that would typically read legislative coverage.

  • Sen . Lisa Brown is writing a seriously blunt blog, taking issues on in a somewhat dense, but very direct way. House Dems also have a less fun blog, but its still there.
  • Each caucus has embraced twitter (SD, HD, HR, SR), though I’m a bit unsure of how this is an advancement beyond or just the use of a tool. Here’s a funny thing about caucus twitter feeds. I though I was already following the senate Republicans because I followed WASenateGOP. Turns out that is their campaign committee and the actually caucus twitters at WashingtonSRC.
  • Same thing with each caucuses use of video and audio casts. Its great to make all the stuff available, but its another thing to distill it in some form.

Does the lack of reporters covering the legislature drive the caucuses to adopt social media? Probably not, I’ve heard conversations around these topics for years, but everyone was getting hung up on rules (that you apparently couldn’t blog during session because it was campaigning? Weirdness).

Its more likely that the ramping up of caucus based social (or at least internet) media and the nose-dive of traditional state house reporting are happening on parralel, if not slightly overlapping, tracks.

The bed newspapers find themselves in

April 7, 2009 / / 0 Comments


If anyone really doubts that newspapers owners created the situation they’re in now, you should read: The Chain Gang.

Shorter Chain Gang: Instead of being happy with an industry where even the laziest newspaper with a local monopoly could make 5 percent profit a year, newspaper chains drove out local competition (possibly with illegal tactics) and borrowed heavily to buy up even more local papers.

But, now 20 or 30 years later, the model doesn’t work anymore and the pile of cards is tumbling down.

It isn’t journalism that’s broken, its the economic model of local monopolies owned by chains saddled with debt and unrealistic profit margins driven by public ownership.

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