Northfield Mayor-elect Dana Graham stopped by my
corner office stand-up table at the Spur this morning. He’d finally gotten some sleep after being up all night for the election on Tuesday so he was more than marginally coherent.
Lately I’ve been sermonizing lecturing brow-beating suggesting to him and a few other city officials that the time is ripe for using a variety of online tools to ramp up citizen engagement. The City’s new website will launch early next year but the technology by itself won’t automatically make citizen engagement happen.
So I proposed a few different ways that he could do a "Q&A with the Mayor-elect" here on LoGro and he opted for a live, one-hour text chat.
Here’s the FAQ:
WHEN IS IT? Monday, Nov. 12, 8-9 pm.
WHERE? Right here in this LoGro blog post. I’ll move it to the top of the page on Monday so it’ll be easy to find.
WHAT DO I NEED TO PARTICIPATE? If you’re reading this on an internet-connected device, you’ll need nothing beyond what you’re using now.
HOW DO I PARTICIPATE? Just type your comments or questions in the text box. I’ll select the ones that I think are best for Dana to respond to.
WHAT?! HE MIGHT NOT EVEN SEE MY QUESTION OR COMMENT? Correct. I’m the emperor moderator.
WHAT IF I CAN’T ATTEND? You can submit a comment or question ahead of time. Attach it to this blog post just like any comment. I’ll archive a transcript of the chat here so after it’s all over, you can read what happened at your leisure.
Northfield News used Cover It Live to provide up-to-date info on the Rice County election returns. I thought you might appreciate that. It worked pretty well.
I did see that, David. I thought it worked well for that, too. I’ve used CoverItLive here on LoGro a few times, going back to 2009.
The mayor has an important role as facilitator. Members of the council represent various elements of the community – and have strong views themselves. There are thorny issues facing the council – decisions on the safety center, the need for economic development, problems caused by reduction in state funding, to hame a few. How will you work to assure all voices are heard, but that decisions are forged in a timely way? Can you cite a previous example of how your leadership resolved differing views to achieve consensus?
Thanks for submitting those questions for Dana, Jane. I’ll definitely consider having him respond to them. 😉
Here are links to Q&A’s and videos with Dana Graham that were done as part of the election:
Patch Q&A – Dana Graham
Patch Video Interview – Dana Graham
Nfld League of Women Voters Q&A – Dana Graham
Northfield News Q&A/Video Interview – Dana Graham
Mayor’s Youth Council Video – Dana Graham
KYMN Interview by Jeff Johnson – Dana Graham
KYMN Interview by Wayne Eddy – Dana Graham
Thanks to Corey Butler at Northfield Patch for assembling these links as part of Patch’s Northfield Voter’s Guide: What to Know for Election Day
This blog post is now ‘sticky,’ meaning, it’ll stay at the top of the blog all day today till we’re finished with the chat tonight.
For decades people have sensed (and feared) that developers and land speculators have sold small towns bills of goods that inflate the cities expectations of returns on infrastructure investment. Groups like “Strong Towns” have finally quantified this sense by doing the numbers on the economic growth models we have employed since WWII. What they find is alarming.
For example, I have suggested in the past that before towns (both Northfield and Dundas) commit to new housing development they should have a good inventory of
Some of these questions are harder to get answers to than others, but to make bets with the taxpayers money requires that we do our best to answer them. Enlisting the help of the experts (staff, realtors, bankers) would require a large grain of salt, since they are sometimes damaged by even the simple public knowledge of these data. And we elected officials too often abrogate our responsibility in favor of reports from those self-same developers, who love to ply us with eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures of the scene of the future crime.
So, the question I pose is this:
References:
Thanks for this, Bruce. I see your question in the middle:
It might be tough to generate a quick response to it in a live chat format so keep your expectations low!
Griff, please ask Mr. Graham if he has read the OSHA report, Consultant Soldo’s report and the League of Minnesota’s position paper regarding the Fire Department. What is his take on these? I’m especially interested in his opinion on the selection of the Fire Chief–because what he said in his KYMN interview with Wayne Eddy seems to be the opposite of the recommendations in the Soldo and League papers.
I’ll consider it, Curt. Thanks!
Thanks to Dana and all who showed up for the live chat last night. We had 15 people attend, which I thought was pretty good considering that the three election-related face-to-face forums I attended had a dozen or less.
My goals for the event were modest:
1. provide a positive online citizen engagement experience for the mayor-elect and participants;
2. learn more about how to host a successful live chat;
3. understand better the pros and cons of a live chat for a issues-oriented event with a public official.
I’m interested in getting feedback from those who attended, as well as anyone else who reads the transcript which is now available.
Bruce, I’ve turned your comment into a blog post here.