Me Getting to Know You and You Getting to Know your Local Government

Governor Snyder celebrated his 182nd day on the job by issuing a 700-word press release and day-by-day timeline outlining his “relentless positive action” during his first six months in office. Although the Governor had a six week head start on me, our early highlights both include the timely completion of a balanced budget.  While the Governor has focused on reforms, I have focused on getting to know the community. 

I have made it a point to meet community members both inside and outside the City government since starting my new job on Feb. 14. My goal is to meet every full-time City employee, City board/commission/committee member, community organization and neighborhood association during my first year. This is an ambitious goal in a community with so much citizen involvement and public participation but it is also a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with the Senior Men’s Club at The Community House on June 17 and look forward to speaking with the Kiwanis Club this week. 

I have also committed myself to communicating with the community through a variety of traditional and new media. Much has already been written about my foray into social media so I will not repeat that here. Instead, I want to focus on blogging.

Last week I wrote about a joint City Commission and Planning Board meeting.  I can tell by the underwhelming response (cue the crickets) that it did not resonate with any readers.  Perhaps no one even read it. 

This highlights one of the challenges I have grappled with throughout my career in local government: It is difficult for me to guess what you, the general public, is interested in reading about. This challenge arises from the nature of my job. I deal with particulars of local government so detailed and requiring such specific knowledge that they generally are not well known or understood by outsiders. 

“Inside baseball” is a metaphor used to describe such particulars of a subject. But this is not baseball. This is government of the people, by the people, and for the people. As such, I believe the people have a right and responsibility know and understand the particulars of their local government.  This leads me to attempt to explain these particulars when I write. Although I try to limit my columns to 500 words, I average more than 1,000 words and once wrote a tome of nearly 2,000 words.

I truly enjoy educating the public about local government and will happily do anything I can to do so. So I ask you, no, I beg you! Please tell me what you want to know about! I need your help identifying topics of interest to the general public. Please send your comments and questions to rbruner@bhamgov.org.  I may not be able to reply to each e‐mail but I will address common concerns and questions here.