[Winona Online Democracy]
OK. Here's my shot at a reasoned
response. I have contacted Paul offline regarding the tone of his recent
posts. I consider that to be private communication between myself and a
member and won't discuss it.
However, I will say to the entire list that there
were specific phrases that I thought crossed the line of civility. One
that was to me a clear rule violation was the reference to "the master's
plan." The "toll bridge" reference seemed sarcastic which I believe has
been frowned upon both on and off list.
If we want to get technical about the rules,
though, Keith's post was also a violation. According to http://e-democracy.org/rules/
(which is my reference for decision-making)
"Member Complaints - Forum members may send
informal complaints privately to the potentially infringing participants to
encourage citizen-to-citizen accountability. Any forum member may also file an
official complaint about a specific post directly with the Forum Manager.
They may not post their complaint publicly to the forum - this fundamentally
distracts a forum from its purpose. The Forum Manager will respond to complaints
in a uniform fashion and maintain records of all official warnings
given."
Indeed, all of this dealing with the rules is
distracting from the issues we should be discussing--What are the facts and
rationale behind the city's proposed actions and how do these actions fit
with the city's mission and strategic plan?
So I will ask all of you to in the future contact
me directly if you have a concern about a particular post. Also it would
be best if there are rule or facilitator concerns to be discussed by the
membership, please address them on a thread specifically dedicated to that
topic. Then those of you who are totally tired of the "debating how
to debate" issue can simply delete the messages and save yourselves the
frustration!!!
At this point in time there are 2 members
who have expressed displeasure with my list managing skills (and I'm sure
there are other more "choice" words they might have for me as well). At
last count there were 202 subscribers. So unless I hear otherwise from
about 100 more, I'm going to assume that the membership in general wants me to
continue in this capacity, warts and all. Maybe we should vote? That
would be the democratic way, yes?
Regardless, I hope this doesn't mean that one
should not try to "fight City Hall", but rather it means that we can question
respectfully our city officials (or any government officials for that matter)
and expect sincere efforts to answer our questions in return. That's what
I'd like to see in this forum. What do others think?
Kathy Seifert
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 3:28
PM
Subject: [Winona] 25 Million and we need to think
of ways to spend it!!!
[Winona Online Democracy]
Thumbs up for the Council being kind
enough to let us vote on a proposed 15
year 1/2% added local sales tax plus a
vehicle surcharge!
Thumbs down for proposing the new taxes that at best
will show why Wal-Mart
was important in the "master's" plan. Their
revenue projections, according
to the radio, are based on data that is two
years old. It has so many
projects thrown into the proposal on how to spend
it they are now looking
for more ideas. The council wants something for
everyone so that it will
please us or at least enough of us to give them
another slush fund to dole
out the money.
Is the real plan to throw
another tax issue on the next election cycle so
that any proposal by the
public schools will be shot down? Will be the
city's intent to sweeten
the number and type of projects so that it will
pass and allow Winona to not
only take money from all township residents but
now we get to tap the
Wisconsin residents as well. Will the city propose a
toll bridge next
that way Wisconsin employees and shoppers can also add to
the city
treasury?
When will city government understand
that if the investments into a
community can not be drawn from the private
sector the reason just may be
they are bad ideas or serve special interest
groups. If they were good
ideas private investors would welcome
the opportunity to be in on the ground
floor.
The so called success
of Dubuque, IA was explained in an article last week.
It is called casino
gambling. The tourist attractions were money losers
until the casino
was brought to town.
If public investments are to be made
who will audit the books to insure that
the jobs created, are not part time
or at minimum wage, and meet the
criteria for public investment?
Without a checker of the statute required
targeted expected results the
process becomes a shell game and 25 million
buys a lot of silence from those
who want to tap the till for their pet
projects!
Paul Double
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