Oh yeah? Well, My Mayor Blogs! Neener, Neener
Look, I don’t know the last time I bragged about an elected official. It’s kind of not what we do. Let’s face it, civic life, especially in a small town, it’s pretty boring. Utilities, street and infrastructure issues, licensing, etc. is just not really that interesting to talk about.
What I know is, when it comes down to politics that impact your daily life, these are exactly the types of issues that are probably most prevalent. Stop lights in your neighborhood, safety on your streets, trash pick up schedules, etc., really do impact the way you live your life.
Perhaps more importantly, there’s a lot that goes on in and around office of a mayor that provides interesting information and insight into what is happening in a broader community overall.
My mayor, John Curtis, chooses to blog about it. And he “gets it”. It is the case that Mayor Curtis seems to sense that blogging is more than just spouting what’s on your mind, but also sharing information and insights about other things that are going on.
He touts some of Provo’s highlights, for sure, He is providing a pulpit of publicity, casting light on valuable events that affect the citizens of Provo or that citizens can get involved in whether they are taking place inside his town, or if it involves the city government.
I believe the biggest hurdle to people getting involved in their local civic life is a lack of understanding about issues, and what’s going on.
The city seems to follow suit. The city Council hold the blog, there are social media accounts on Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook for various city services and organizations. Being able to “find out about things” is not the challenge, it seems, in Provo anymore.
For what it’s worth, the mayor uses the powerful and open Wordpress platform to power his blog. I love the platform and strongly urge anyone to check out Wordpress.org (self-hosted) or Wordpress.com (cloud-hosted) if you’re interested in trying to get a low-cost, simple and powerful blog online. It includes free and simple tools like email subscriptions and notifications, social network integration and more. Simple, and easy to use. There’s even mobile apps so you can post on the fly from a tablet or phone.
Look, gone are the days when we all gather in city hall for town meetings. We just don’t have time laying around with nothing to do. Time and space need decoupling if we’re going to allow more efficient civic communications. I appreciate my city for taking the lead in this and taking the conversation to the interwebs.
