Calendula
Don't forget, there is a special City Council meeting tonight, 7 p.m. in City Hall Library, with just two items: Submission of a layoff plan to the state Civil Service Commission and granting permission to Edison Garcia for a festival in Lots 8/8A on Sept. 6, 7 and 8.
See background on the festival issue here.
For more on the layoff issue, click here.
The next agenda-fixing session is 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 3 in Municipal Court. The regular meeting is 8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 9, also in Municipal Court.
Quite a large crowd turned out for the Aug. 19 council meeting. Seventeen people spoke in the first public comment portion on matters up for a vote, and thirteen people spoke in the second general-comment session.
The interesting thing for me was that neither of the two main issues was covered in advance by media other than city bloggers. It proves that there is an audience for hyperlocal bloggers who are willing to sit through long meetings and spend more hours writing up what happened.
None other than Rachel Maddow stuck up for the importance of local newspapers last week, as noted here.
However, depending on who's in charge at a newspaper, municipal government may or may not be a priority. If reporters are told to skip public meetings in favor of other coverage, you will not know about what your elected officials are up to unless you yourself attend the meetings (or read the blogs).
To borrow a phrase from Dan, "rumor has it" that Gannett's New Jersey newspapers are headed this week for consolidation into one publication with some localization. If that happens, the news hole, or space for local coverage, will shrink even more and you will see more generic news or features. Even now, readers of some newspapers get four-line news stories that boil down to "something happened somewhere, no details available."
I don't have a smart phone yet, but I have several intelligent radios that keep me in touch with BBC news, both in the U.S. and worldwide. They don't get down to what people call the granular level of news, though. For that, you may still need bloggers.
The City Council is a most ineffective group. It knows how to waste time and money, and make waste of the city and its potential. Accountability in city government is virtually non-existent.
ReplyDeleteI wish the city council members would take their job seriously. Some of them treat these meeting as a night out, and show absolutely no sense of understanding or leadership. I wonder if anyone ever told them that they are to set a good example, not one of class clowns.
ReplyDeleteBut this Democratic Party tells us that they will be able to run the State House and serve as Senators because they do such a good job. Therefore the job they are doing in Plainfield is a GREAT job ... we just do not appreciate it in our mistaken thinking.
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