Laura and lloyd wrote: > The point of Tony Scallon's comment is not that the public boards' > information is hard to get at. His point is that nothing replaces old > fashioned research and dogged tracking of information. This is a good > point. In this day of googling and quick searching without leaving home, > it does seem very difficult to do traditional verification and research > - lots of walking, calling, and talking.
But here's our (citizens concerned about the Park Board) point:
No amount of "old fashioned research and dogged tracking of information," "walking, calling and talking" has been able to dislodge the information we want from the Park Board. We have been researching and searching for and asking for this information not just for a few weeks, but for 16 months.
I have personally put in over 200 hours of my own time on this issue trying to get answers. The best information I've gotten came from a commissioner who got it by directly asking Assistant Superintendent Don Siggelkow to create a report on it. I have the Park Board's annual superintendent's reports and their annual budget reports. They're approximately useless for answering these kinds of questions. I also have all of the agendas and all of the minutes going back to 2002. The minutes are only slightly useful, because they are over broad, do not record committee meetings, and never contain any of the "supplementary materials" that the commissioners receive in their packets and at board meetings.
But why even argue about taxpayers getting the information they want when some of the commissioners themselves cannot even get what they ask for from the staff. The minority commissioners, in particular Vivian Mason, have repeatedly asked for certain simple but specific information over and over, and have been ignored.
The Bryn Mawr neighborhood association has repeatedly over the past 9 months asked for a response to a letter regarding plans for the Bryn Mawr Meadows park with respect to the city's approved Bassett Creek Valley Master Plan, and despite pressure from Commissioner Mason to respond, the majority of the commissioners have seen fit to simply blow the neighborhood off.
Tony Scallon's comments are simply an obscuring defense of his pals in the majority, that Bad Old Insiders from the previous generation of Bad Politicians in this town. It's time we rode him and the rest of his lot out of town on the rails, so to speak. Why does Ms. Wittstock defend this nonsense and its Government By Cronyism?
> It can seem impossibly obtuse, but on balance, I think we should > acknowledge that we are in the middle of a sea change in how information > is collected, stored, and made accessible. It's pretty tough to blame > the process when we are half way through the revolving door.
It has next to nothing to do with "sea change." The reason this information is hard to get is because the majority 5 and their comrades on the staff are intentionally making it hard to get. Back in the days before technology, this kind of information could have been readily available via files maintained by file clerks and by bookkeepers and financial officers who kept track of it. It was also available in the press, because we had good investigative journalism, which is pretty much completely lacking at all the major media outlets in the area.
Blaming the "process" is a faulty excuse.
> Technology, process, and new policy will all bring us toward > transparency. That is inevitable. But I certainly hope we never get to > the point where no research skills are ever necessary for good > citizenship. If that happens, we truly will not know what we do not know.
Technology is only a tool. It can be used to make government more transparent, or it can be used to hide the spending of taxpayer monies. More government transparency is NOT inevitable, especially with apologists such as Ms. Wittstock varnishing the situation with remarks like these.
New policy is precisely what we have been demanding for 16 months, and is exactly the opposite of what we have been getting.
Ms. Wittstock insults all of us, Mr. Stone included, by insinuating we have no research skills.
-- Chris Johnson Fulton
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