Civic-mindedness
Sep. 9th, 2003 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmazeIn spite of feeling a little under the weather, I did actually go to the Somerville Ward 4 meeting tonight. It was strangely informative; in particular, I understand a lot more of what the mayor of a small city does (namely, drive around the city a lot, learn the names of all the streets, and be a manager for the department heads). I'm also fairly certain now that I'm going to vote for Dorothy Kelly Gay again in the elections (sorry, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
visage, you don't get my vote this time). Somewhere between a third and half of the people there were city officials, but this meant that I could go to the person from the Transportation and Parking office, ask about the ugly van parked on my street, and get told that it was probably parked there illegally and they'd send someone over soon after midnight to take a look.
The things brought up in the meeting seemed a little mundane, I suppose, but I don't know what I was expecting. One person was worried about garbage around the convenience store on Broadway, another about a particular city-owned lot on their street, another about the size of a new development and effects on traffic. To their credit, the city people (including DKG) generally did know what was going on; the only thing they couldn't answer offhand was about a property that had just been sold, and the new owner hadn't contacted the ZBA about construction there.
Useless factoid: there are about 5,000 utility poles in Somerville, and the Internet makes replacing them easier.
visage, you don't get my vote this time). Somewhere between a third and half of the people there were city officials, but this meant that I could go to the person from the Transportation and Parking office, ask about the ugly van parked on my street, and get told that it was probably parked there illegally and they'd send someone over soon after midnight to take a look.The things brought up in the meeting seemed a little mundane, I suppose, but I don't know what I was expecting. One person was worried about garbage around the convenience store on Broadway, another about a particular city-owned lot on their street, another about the size of a new development and effects on traffic. To their credit, the city people (including DKG) generally did know what was going on; the only thing they couldn't answer offhand was about a property that had just been sold, and the new owner hadn't contacted the ZBA about construction there.
Useless factoid: there are about 5,000 utility poles in Somerville, and the Internet makes replacing them easier.
