Citizen involvement in city government increasing
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I want to take a minute to say thank you to all who participated in our Town Hall meetings last month – the Ward Commissioners who hosted the meetings, City staff who helped plan the meetings, and the citizens who attended. Ideas were shared, issues were brought up, and relationships were made.
The idea of hosting Town Hall meetings came out of the efforts of our strategic planning session. It is nice to see the ideas that stemmed from that work coming to fruition. Better communication with our citizens was a highlighted priority, and in addition to the meetings last month, I wanted to share with you a couple more changes we’ve made to help keep our citizens informed, and to improve accessibility to your elected officials.
One issue that has been identified over the last few years is how citizens know what is being discussed and decided at City Hall. While we post the meeting agendas as we are legally required to, as a citizen, in order to be informed you have to actively look on our City’s website or go to City Hall at the right time. We understand this may not be convenient or people forget to look, so we have recently started a service for you to receive email notifications of upcoming City Commission meetings via email. If you are interested in receiving these meeting notices, please go to the City’s website at www.cityofpolson.com and click on the link titled “Sign up to get City Commission Meeting information sent directly to your email” under the Latest News on the home page. You will then receive notices of City Commission meetings so you can be prepared and informed if there are topics you want to stay tuned to, or provide input on.
Another change we’ve made is making your commissioner’s direct contact information available on the City’s website. An oversight was recognized that while we did have email addresses, we did not include your representative’s direct phone number on the website. We have now added telephone numbers for each of your elected officials, and we encourage you to contact us via phone or email if you have questions or ideas you would like to share with us.
We are also looking for citizens interested in serving on the City Commission. There are three Commissioner seats that are open – one from each Ward, as well as the Mayor position. People who are interested need to file with the Lake County Elections Office by Monday, June 19. If you are interested and have any questions I might be able to help with, please do not hesitate to contact me at 212-0489.
