Thank you for the ideas and suggestions you've left in the comments of my original post. As I expected, Blue Mass Group readers came through with progressive and thoughtful ideas to make Boston the greatest city in America. (Apologies for the hyperbole, hubspoke, but I truly believe our city can be a model for urban areas around the country if we try some bold new initiatives.)
I wanted to take a moment to respond to some of your comments. Many of you talked about issues around the Mayoral veto process. This is a great subject that I'm sure the Special Committee on Charter Reform will examine during the hearing process. I urge those of you who are Boston residents to come to these hearings, which will be publicly noticed on the Council’s website. You can also contact Councilor John Tobin to get more information on the committee's meetings.
On my Twitter feed, I was asked if I supported the idea of putting the BRA's financial details online. I believe that the agency serves a valuable function in the City of Boston, and that is should not be disbanded. However, I also think the agency needs to be more transparent to those it serves. Therefore, I believe the BRA should post its financial information online, along with all its documents, which I advocated for in my remarks to the Council on Monday.
The discussion about how Boston can improve the overall quality of life for its residents was great. I appreciated the conversation about how our city can better utilize its available parking and open spaces. Midge raised the notion that “complete streets” must be developed in all neighborhoods to make our streets safe for all who use them–drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists alike. In 2001, former Councilor Paul Scapicchio and I called on the city to hire a full-time bike coordinator. This led to the hiring of former Olympian Nicole Freedman, who has done an excellent job of bringing bike lanes to what was once one of America's least-friendly cities for cyclists.
There were several comments about how Boston licenses its restaurants and bars. Many of you called for a liquor licensing process that allows small businesses to serve alcohol without paying the astronomical price for one of Boston's few licenses. Several readers also called for more 18+ clubs and concert venues. I couldn't agree more with those ideas, and hope to make real progress in this area as the year goes on.
I also enjoyed the discussion about Ed Glaeser and Richard Florida. I read the American Prospect piece mentioned in the comments, and appreciated the lesson–and thanks for bringing it up.
Again, thank you for your excellent feedback. I look forward to keeping in touch with you as the Council gears up for its important work in the year ahead. Please sign up for my eUpdate, or contact my office at any time with your ideas and feedback.
Please make more readily available the stenographic machine record of the public meeting of Boston City Council currently in files on the home computer of the City Stenographer instead at City Hall ! Councilors’ public debate, your words would be available for feedback, comment, suggestions and questions.
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p>Closed captioning on public meeting webcasts for folks with hearing loss is a standard feature of the new stenographic scopist technologies, hardware, software. A more up to date stenograhic service would reduce costs and use the new stenographic scopist technology, hardware, software with features that make the public debate, the words of Councilors more available for citizens’ responses.
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p>see also
http://www.scopists.com/Scopis…
www. scopists. com/Scopistry
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p>http://www.scopists.com/Scopis…
www. scopists. com/ScopistryWeb/
Please make more available the collections of Boston City Council library…
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p> >”The City Council maintains a reference library which is open to city employees, students and the general public.
http://www.cityofboston.gov/ci…
www. cityofboston. gov/citycouncil/citycouncilpub.asp
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p> > The library contains City Council Minutes, Municipal Registers and City Documents dating from the early 1800’s to the present.
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p> > In addition, the library contains current publications relating to municipal law and finance.
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p>see also
http://www.orgsites.com/ma/bos…
www. orgsites. com/ma/boston-friends/
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p>http://bpl.org/research/govdoc…
bpl. org/research/govdocs/local.htm
Prez. Ross for engaging on BMG. Not many City Councilors do that. Best of luck with the budget this year. I’ve heard it is suppose to be tough.
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p>And stay on your transparency track! And I don’t mean what DWS keeps rambling on about. Get more City Documents online.
On fine paper departmental Annual Reports are printed up by the City Printing Department http://www.cityofboston.gov/gr… www. cityofboston. gov/graphicarts/
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p>Departmental Annual Reports need to be made available on the web. For too long the City Messenger has been an obstable to access when there are enquiries for these public documents in his custody at Boston City Council.
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p>The City Messenger has been an office in need of evaluating as to whether or not this office fulfills its responsibilities well, whether or not this office of City Messenger is needed at all.
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p>Departmental Annual Reports are numbered and bound at the end of the year in fine bindings. Yet not readily available to the public. For FOI Freedom of Information public records advocates, for sunshine open public meetings advocates of open government this grey literature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G… en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Grey_literature of our municipal government needs to be more open and available on the web.
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p>What Boston City Council, the City Clerk and Assistant City Clerk have been failing to understand is the reasonableness of advocacy for access to what are intended to be public records of our city governing.