An Open Letter On Open Government

After last night’s 3.5 hour meeting on the proposed St. Paul Square development, I wrote the mayor this letter:

Mayor Costas –

Good morning. Thank you for presiding over another contentious community conversation with decorum and dignity. Your leadership and insights were, as always, very helpful! The St. Paul’s project is, no doubt, going to be an improvement over what was there and, for that, I am excited. However, as I expressed last night, we still seem to struggle to find ways share complete and accurate information about what’s going on in the city. It’s a big job, no doubt. I know that keeping the 14 people at Roots on the same page can be difficult. So keeping a city of some 33,000 informed and engaged is exponentially harder. For what it’s worth, I intend to keep doing my part to help shine a light on things for the public.

The reasons I invited the developer to speak to the Central Neighborhood Association in September were to have a an open conversation among neighbors about the project, provide the developer with some new perspectives to hopefully improve the project, and help the neighbors realize that this project will ultimately be a good thing. I didn’t then, and still don’t, know him personally. But I’d heard enough to know that he is a well-regarded and reputable builder and human being. That’s why it was so, frankly, shocking to learn of the public support aspect of the project after hearing him state unequivocally multiple times that the project was to be funded with all private capital. Last night, as you know, he admitted that his wording was carefully and precisely crafted and that he was, on that point, misleading or perhaps disingenuous. The statements were accurate. But they were not complete. And I believe this tiny mis-calculation and deliberate effort to be opaque directly fed a majority of the concern you heard last night.

I recently said to some people that this government is “terrible at transparency.” And I meant it. Here’s why: Unlike most citizens, I am fortunate to have a lot of free and flexible time in my schedule. But I spend more of that time than I expect to scouring the city website and emailing city department heads to try to get public information about what’s happening. I’m signed up on the website to receive notifications of meetings through the website’s “Agenda Center” functionality. But I have, on multiple occasions, received notification of agendas for meetings that occurred in the past. And on far more occasions, I have received no notification at all that meetings are happening. I know that there are statutory public notice requirements (e.g. in the newspapers) and the city and its petitioners do tend to meet those minimum requirements. But let’s be honest, few people read the newspapers any more and fewer still read the fine print of the Legals section in the Classifieds. What I’m calling for is to exceed those statutory requirements in an effort to bring more people into the process and improve their perception of and confidence in their government.

You have done amazing things as mayor in your 14 years of service. And I and many others are grateful. But there’s one thing that you have not accomplished—ridding the public of its fear that a lot of the progress has been made by back-room deals amongst a few, very connected insiders. Therefore, as your fourth term starts to wind down, I submit the following modest suggestions to start to improve the public’s experience and add a more open government to your already impressive legacy.

• Add better audio equipment and video equipment to public meeting spaces
• Add SMS (text) notification capability to Agenda Center
• Simplify the information architecture of the website and archive older data
• Include relevant attachments when publishing City Council or other department meeting agendas, give the public access to the same package that members are provided
• Most importantly, require all departments, including and especially the City Council, to reliably utilize the Agenda Center functionality and exceed public notice requirements

As one of your most active website users, I’d be happy to provide more details to the right person(s) on your team.

Very best regards,
Bill Durnell