The meeting on Tuesday Night lasted nearly 2 1/2 hours and was full of relevant information. I have already reported on the issue of the relocation of the Farmer's Market from the old Hickory Station Depot to the right side of the parking lot on Union Square. (Farmer's Market on Union Square).
The following presentations come from Larry Pope's address to the Council involving his arrest in association with the destruction of the swimming pool in Ridgeview and its relation with the pool in West Hickory. The other address of the Council is by Jim Edmonds in relation to the Cell Tower that is being placed in the vicinity of Highway 127 behind Jenkins Elementary, Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, and the Hunter's Run neighborhood.
Larry Pope went into the process of his being arrested for the protest of the demolition of the Ridgeview Pool on February 7, 2011. He stated that he had met with the Police Chief on the previous Friday with a Letter of Recommendation asking the City of Hickory to locate the future proposed swimming pool, in which they are seeking Federal dollars, to be located at 4th St and 7th Ave SW. That would be totally accessible to the children of Ridgeview and Westmont. If the City was unwilling to do that, they asked that the City to give the Ridgeview Pool to the Ridgeview Community and they would come up with the money to refurbish it and have it open by this summer. The only thing that they would ask of the city is to provide the water free of charge and they would provide everything else as a community. If a letter of respose was received by 7am that Monday morning, then the protest would not take place. Neither one of those recommendations was accepted as far as they know because no letter was forthcoming.
Chief Adkins stated that he did deliver the message, but he doesn't know what happened thereafter. Larry stated that he told Chief Adkins and Major Deal that if it was necessary to go to jail for something that the community wanted to save, that he was willing to go...
Larry then added that what the HPD officials were telling the (Citizens for Equity in Government) was not coming from them it was coming from Mick and Rudy. Larry told them that they had a job to do and he did not blame them for doing what they had to do, because you can be put between a rock and a hard place in working for the City of Hickory and you have to do what the top folk tell you to do. He added that they were treated with kindness and courtesy and showed that they were human beings and citizens and taxpayers of this city. He says that hopefully the rest of the City (including Mayor, Council, and City manager) will follow after Chief Adkins, Major Deal, and Officer Lee in doing what is right, because he refused to stand up during the Pledge of Allegiance where it says "...and justice for all," because y'all don't believe in justice for all. It is justice for those who you want to distribute justice to... And not to the southside of the railroad tracks (neither the Ridgeview or Westmont Community).
What was reported in the Hickory Daily Record, about city officials saying that no one had contacted them about the closing of the pools, was not true. They (Citizens for Equity in Government) will do whatever they have to do to bring Democracy and Justice to this city.
Jim Edmonds was the next to speak in addressing the Cell tower issue brought before the Council at the last meeting. There were two articles in the newspaper, but what everyone is missing is that this Cell tower is a whole lot closer to Jenkins Elementary school than it is to the neighborhood. It is a couple of hundred feet from the school.
Last week, he presented about the Tower and the Superintendent and every member of the board stated that they were unaware of the request. Joab Cotton did call him later in the week and did say that the notice came in the mail at the beginning of the year after Christmas break. You can imagine at a school how a little letter did not get where it needs to be. The Principal at Jenkins, Stephanie Dischiavi, sent Mr. Edmonds a letter that arrived last Friday. It was summarized that the students of Jenkins are getting missed in this. The Principal was unaware of this issue until 5 days after the Planning Commission meeting was held that approved the construction of the Cell tower at that spot. The residents of Hunter's Run are on the clock and have 30 days from the time it was approved. Isn't it a sad statement that a school would have to spend tax dollars to appeal to Superior court to stop a Cell Phone Tower from being put adjacent to their campus, when they need money for text books and to hire teachers? Does anyone here think that it is a good idea for these elementary school children to be sitting under this tower 30 hours per week. This Council has got to do something. We're helpless. Y'all are our elected officials.
The Hound: Community, communication. Good Communication = Good Community. Bad Communication = Bad Community. Is anyone seeing a pattern here? Is anyone seeing a link or a common theme to the issues of angst and anxiety that we have seen over the last few years?
Who does the information belong to? Who is trying to control and manipulate the information we receive? Is all of this chalked up to misunderstandings? Isn't it a stretch to chalk every issue of miscommunication or lack of communication to coincidence. You would have to compartmentalize every issue related to the City of Hickory in order to do that. If you start rubbing your brain cells together and connecting the pattern, then you will see that we have a serious issue here and it is time for some accountability related to public information. Public Information belongs to the people. They should not have to jump through hoops to get it. It should be accessible. It is time to demand that the City of Hickory stop playing petty little games with information that belongs to the people.
The grievances against the hydra continue to mount. Isn't it time to reverse course. Why would anyone voluntarily choose such a self-destructive course, because in the end they are only hurting themselves, their reputation, their legacy, and their community is being hurt by their actions, not the other way around!
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Thursday, February 17, 2011
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4 comments:
Many times, it's important to listen to what isn't being said, in addition to what is. Listening to what Larry Pope had to say, I don't see him as being entirely wrong. I don't think Rudy lied to him however. I don't think anyone did call Rudy and tell him about the protests. Does that mean he didn't otherwise know? No, it just means that no one called him and told him, which is apparently what he stated to Larry.
Listening to Edmonds, I think his presentation would have been more to his benefit and cause had he presented documentation or some evidence to substantiate his claim, as opposed to playing on fears and emotion alone. A quick search of the internet produced quite an extensive array of scientific studies to help corroborate his claims about the tower. But too little too late. Planning boards only make recommendations to council. Council approves or denies based on the findings of those appointed boards or can go against those recommendations. Public hearings are scheduled and held, more often than not, with no one appearing to be heard on a matter until it has passed. Government follows a statutory procedure for disseminating information to the public. It is up to the public to keep itself informed of what the government is doing. To think that government can call each person individually every time a matter is before the respective governmental entity is a bit much. People are too busy for that you say? How many people would have to be added to local government in order to inform every citizen of every issue that comes before council? Before you start tuning up, let me say that I'm not defending or supporting any position on this matter. I'm just saying that apathy is viral until something affects someone personally, then they become crusaders for disclosure and 'openness'. And the thing which they should be most dissatisfied with is themselves for burying their heads in the sand to begin with. So if the people want to be involved in government, that means the people need to be present at every meeting, to see and hear what is going on. Otherwise, you're on the hearing end when an issue has already been decided. Sadly, if the City pulls the plug on the cell tower approval now, they will quite likely face litigation themselves, having already approved the finding of the planning board. I also found it interesting that the School Board admitted to being made aware of the tower through receipt of a letter according to Edmonds, but apparently were not interested enough to contact City Council through official or unofficial channels and homeowners and/or parents are the obvious banner carriers. In light of what is transpiring, I'd claim to have lost the letter too.
I don't understand what the big deal is about cell phone towers being placed wherever they are needed. If the carriers don't have them strategically placed, then they have coverage gaps and we, the paying customers have dropped calls and no data service. This isn't only about Cell phone coverage. It's now about high-speed, next-gen (4G) wireless data. Clear and Sprint have begun the process of turning on 4G WiMAX in Hickory, but so far, it's only on one tower and it's reach is quite poor.
I cannot stand this "Not in my backyard" mentality. Mostly because it comes from the same morons that complain they can't get good reception in their homes.
In general, Hickory and the surrounding areas have inferior coverage. We should feel fortunate that any of these companies are trying to improve reception/coverage in the Hickory area.
Many schools in the suburbs of Chicago, IL (where I moved from 8 months ago) have cell phone antenna panels on the football stadium light poles and parking lot lights. It just makes sense to do this.
Personally, I don't think these towers should be located in neighborhoods, but that is just me, and if people can show me that it is safe to constantly be around them, the cool, I would accept it.
I also am not saying that we should have to call every citizen in Hickory to inform them of every issue that comes on the horizon.
We have city officials that have a history of continually playing games with the process of boards, commissions, and task forces. We have a person at the head of our government who has made people that I know jump through hoops when they have requested information from the city.
The city council meetings are recorded for dictation purposes. There is a verbatim copy and then there is a synopsis that we see online. The verbatim copy is kept on file at City hall, if you want a copy of it you can have it, but you must request it and it costs 25-cents per page to copy it. Which is going to be $6 plus for the average meeting.
My question is why to either of these. You see how I am Youtubing this meeting with my $150 Zoom H2. I can take pictures or do mpeg-4 video with my $150 Sony Webbie, I can dictate straight to my computer with my $100 Dragon speech recognition program. Why is this information being held back from the public. What is so difficult about all of this. Is it really unreasonable? Really?
Do you know how many of the City's documents could be held on a $94 2 Terabyte hard drive from Western Digital or Seagate? We are talking a couple hundred million pages of Windows Word documents. We are talking 12,500 hours of the recordings the quality of which I make. So, to be generous, that would be 6,250 council meetings. So since on average there are 23 Council meetings every year, that would equate to enough data space available on a $94 hard drive to record meetings for 271 years.
Granted the technology has not always been there, but it is there now and it is time. It is time to make City meetings more accessible to the general public. No, the vast majority of the people won't care, but this is our history we are talking about. And there are a lot of people who do care. Think about whether you would like to have had the ability to record more of you and your families history years ago. Wouldn't that have been neat.
We could have the a webcam set up and people could watch the meeting in near real time or time-shift it to a time when they do have time.
I just believe that a more informed public would lead to better governance and it is time to move in that direction and it can be done at a very inexpensive price, although a city that comes up with a $400,000+ price tag ($800,000+ for two) for a pool not 3 times bigger than a back yard pool is a city without much credibility when it comes to the price tag associated with implementing anything.
So let's get real and lose the BS. I hope you can see where I am coming from and understand the frustrations many of us have.
Frankly, I think there are too many cell towers period. But I'll take the next step. If the position of the tower is too close to the school, ok. Then cell phones in the schools, wireless networks, anything that emits RF radiation needs to be eliminated from the schools. If the safety of the children is paramount, then it doesn't need to be done halfway.
Some latitude in who is referenced at the top causing hoop jumping, so I'm guessing one is elected and one appointed. Either can be replaced. Insofar as costs are concerned, those are likewise controlled by statute. The City is only supposed to be re-couping actual costs of reproduction, paper, toner, electricity. Not of the person(s) who created the document or doing the copying. So, $0.25 per page sounds a bit pricey when Office Depot is doing it for $0.11. Is it meant to discourage someone from coming and demanding the minutes of every council meeting since Hickory was incorporated? Perhaps. Of course, if it were all digitized, that wouldn't be quite so problematic, but someone is still going to have to scan boxes and boxes of documents just to provide that sort of access. I have yet to hear of anyone willing to tackle that task, in Hickory or elsewhere. That doesn't mean that since the coming of age of digitalization steps couldn't have been taken to see that it is done from some point forward.
We could go back and forth on the ways and whys of implementing or not. But until the State laws are modified to require use of digital media, most local governments are not going to make full or complete use of it. They are going to stand on the premise that meetings are public and open, if you want to know what's going on, come on down. But yes, they could make better use of the technology, but don't.
I found it interesting that only a synopsis of minutes are posted and not the details. If you hyperlink to the full document, it would save some time writing a synopsis or cutting and pasting the highlights. Then again, why not just hyperlink the audio files and you can get the whole thing like you're doing. Those files are already being stored on a server, you're just linking it. The only cost involved would be bandwidth of people accessing those files, which should be nominal.
As far as the pools, I have no clue. But since most backyard pools are holes with a vinyl liner and concrete skirt, I'm guessing what the city is talking about is all concrete construction to last substantially longer and deal with the numbers anticipated on using it.
I'm really not being adversarial. I agree with quite a bit of what you point out. But I also understand there are practical realities to everything. I exaggerated the fact of each person being contacted for effect, but I've heard that very statement put forth in public forums to elected entities, "Well, you did this and didn't contact me...." I honestly think people expect one on one communication with government. As you know, ours is a representative not a direct democracy. Given the voter turn out rates, could you imagine trying to get concensus on an issue, any issue, among the 40,000+ citizens of this city as a direct democracy? Let me give you this though as food for thought. Hickory has bought into this whole Total Quality Management (TQM) thing for its relationships with its citizens conceptualizing them as customers. Since the customer is always right, time for them to ante up rather than just giving lip service to a notion that gives pretty images but no substance.
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