Category Archives: Good Government

Building Community in an e-State

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 by • 1 comment

Vermont is working to become the first “e-State” with availability of broadband internet and cell phone coverage across 100% of the state… by 2010. The “100% of the state” bit is ambitious and lots of people, organizations are businesses and contributing toward the realization of this goal.

The State of Vermont justifies this ambition saying it will be good for economic development, healthcare, education, public safety and more. And part of the “and more” usually includes a vague reference to the e-State being good for society and civic engagement. Can the internet and cell phones enhance the sense of community in a town? Many people feel these tools actually turn people’s attention away from local community.

The Snelling Center is stepping in to address this issue with a one-day event on May 29, 2008…

Explore public policy issues, opportunities, and potential obstacles that will arise as Vermont becomes fully connected.

  • How might civic life change in a fully connected state?
  • How will we master emerging technologies so they unite us and strengthen communities?
  • How will we address issues of privacy, equity, resistance to change, ownership, and cost?
  • How will local and state governmental units ensure that all citizens have equal access to information and participation?

Details, agenda, and registration.

The keynote speaker will be Lewis Feldstein, Co-Author of Better Together, which he wrote with Bowling Alone author, Robert Putnam. Putnam will be speaking at UVM on April 28, 2008.

Helping neighbors connect is newsworthy

Posted on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 by • No comments yet

Front Porch Forum’s story of helping neighbors connect and build community is showing up in the media recently. Of note, Mark Glaser just published a lengthy piece at MediaShift on PBS.org., starting with…

“We are a society that lives more and more in our technology-induced bubbles. When we go outside, we wear an iPod; we talk on cell phones while driving. In urban areas, we might never meet our neighbors unless there’s a fire or earthquake. But can technology also help bring us together in our physical communities, and help us get to know our neighbors? Front Porch Forum (FPF) is making a valiant effort to do just that”

Hopefully, his readers will cast a vote for us! And help spread the word.

Read/add comments.

Grassroots Candidates use Front Porch Forum

Posted on Monday, March 31, 2008 by • No comments yet

At its best, Front Porch Forum simply provides a venue for some pent up community issue to bubble up and get addressed. This may be the case in a part of South Burlington, VT recently where neighbors discussed an opening on the City Council…

“I have been concerned that our neighborhood does not have adequate representation in the City and have considered running for it… This is a huge window of opportunity for someone from our neighborhood to take a leadership position in city government, given the attention this newly conceived plan deserves. You need only 30 signatures, and the deadline is mid-April. Our neighborhood needs to be a voice in the discussions shaping the future of South Burlington.”

Then neighbor Liz weighed in…

“I couldn’t agree more… but am also unable to adequately represent our neighborhood at this time.”

And she laid out some of the issues facing the neighborhood (e.g., airport expansion).

And then, lo and behold, neighbor Meaghan jumps in with both feet…

“Dear Neighbors – Because I feel it is so important for someone from our neighborhood to run, I’ve decided to give it a go. My husband and I have agreed, and I’m grateful to him and to our children for supporting me and moved that they are encouraging me in this effort. They, too, love this city and see this step as an investment in the future. If I succeed and am elected as City Councilor, I plan to use this Front Porch Forum as a means to hear your ideas and to communicate with you. This process can start now. And, if someone else wishes to run, I see this as a positive sign for our neighborhood and our city. So please do.”

Please vote for us! And help spread the word… one vote per email address.

Read/add comments.

Neighborly Encouragement

Posted on Friday, March 28, 2008 by • No comments yet

It’s inspiring to moderate Front Porch Forum in Vermont. Here’s part of Alan S.’s posting to his Burlington neighbors today…

Hello Neighbors – I assume that the rest of you are as ready for flowers and grass as I am. Enough of this cold and dreariness already!! I had a tree topple on my house during the last ice storm. Fortunately, it did no damage to the house, but I had to remove it entirely… It still seems strange that I live on Birch Court, but there are almost no birch trees left on the street. I may correct that shortcoming by planting one to replace the one I removed. I have to save up some funds because lately the cost of living is becoming prohibitive.

Hard earned dollars do not go as far and being fiscally conservative has become a way of life. We boomers are in for some tough times, especially those of us who got a late start saving and investing money. It behooves us to stick together and maintain our community with its resources. We will need all the resources we can muster in the future.

One immediate way to be involved is to join and attend our Neighborhood Planning Assembly. We hold monthly meetings at the Heineberg Senior and Community Center. Look for postings here on the forum. In addition to NPA, I encourage that you speak with city councilors, Board of Health members, school board members, and any other appointed or elected servants of the city. Your input to the processes of governance and change is critical to successful outcomes. I have learned not to underestimate the power of my single voice and certainly not the collective power of our many voices together. Please write, call, post on the forum and blogs, do whatever you can to raise community consciousness.

I also want to mention our need to reach out in our immediate neighborhoods. There are some of us living alone and living poorly for lack of resources. I believe that it would benefit them greatly if we paid them a neighborly visit. I encourage us to find small, but effective ways, to help someone near us. I keep in my own mind, that someday it could be me waiting for someone to be friendly and loving. Please reach out to your neighbor next door and beyond. The rewards for doing so will be great!!!

Please help us continue and expand this work… vote today and spread the word!

Read/add comments.

Town Meeting and Front Porch Forum

Posted on Monday, March 3, 2008 by • 1 comment

When my wife, Valerie, and I created Front Porch Forum a year and a half ago, we had a simple mission in mind… to help neighbors get to know each other better and foster the sense of community at a very local level.  We haven’t tried to dictate what people write about… we just wanted folks to sign up and put this free service to work.   And they do!

So we didn’t know what to expect with our first real experience with an election cycle.  Wow!  Front Porch Forum has been awash with comments, announcements, endorsements, analysis, opinions and more for the past month or two.  Here are some numbers (rough estimates)…

  • 8,000 households subscribe in Chittenden County  (including 30% of Burlington)
  • 130 neighborhood forums hosted locally
  • 1,400 postings/month typically

Moran Plant Redevelopment Proposal (City’s pitch)

  • 150 people posted
  • 500 households reached on average by each of these posting

Burlington City Council Races

  • 100 people posted

Chittenden County School Board Races

  • 90 people posted

Presidential Primaries

  • 25 people posted

Lots of (mostly) great discussion.  Many people have told me that they are glad to hear their neighbor’s views on these matters.  Others though have said that they are looking forward to getting this Town Meeting Day behind us… soon enough!

Crime Data by Neighborhood

Posted on Sunday, February 17, 2008 by • No comments yet

Great data available from the Portland, OR police department… crime statistics by neighborhood.

I’ve looked at the crime log for my city (Burlington, VT) and, regrettably, the data isn’t presented in a way that is very useful to the interested homeowner.  I assume that the data is collected to help the police do their job, more than to help inform the public.

I would find it valuable to know every time a string of cars are broken into in my neighborhood… dates, locations, details.  Same with grafitti, house break-ins, vandalism, etc.

I’m sure the police have this data… it’s just not easy to get to and may be under wraps for other legitimate reasons.  Sure would be nice to have the police dept. website presenting all this data with an RSS feed that popped up on my feed reader when we get an uptick in trouble… “eight car break-ins reported in your neighborhood in past two days.”

What I’m left with is our informal neighborhood watch via Front Porch Forum.  That is, some people post a note on their FPF neighborhood forum when they get ripped off.  This is much better than nothing, but not as comprehensive as I’d like to see.

Everyblock out of the gate

Posted on Wednesday, January 23, 2008 by • No comments yet

Congratulations to the Everyblock team… they just launched this new service in Chicago, New York and San Francisco…

EveryBlock filters an assortment of local news by location so you can keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city.

Powerful stuff.  I might subscribe to an RSS feed of my neighborhood if I lived in a large city… but I doubt I’d visit regularly.  Also I wonder if the info flow will be appropriately scaled.  That is, if Everyblock delivers a phone book worth of minutia every day for one neighborhood… that’s too much.  And too little info flow doesn’t work either.

Looks like they’re on to something powerful. They seem to be making good use of the free $1.1M gift given by the old newspaper money people at Knight.

PTA Email Lists – Trouble?

Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 by • 1 comment

Thanks to Maggie Gundersen for drawing my attention to today’s Washington Post article about PTA-focused Yahoo Groups in the Washington suburbs… worth a read.

Over the past few years, electronic mailing lists have become the main forum for parents across the region to talk about their schools. With just a few keystrokes, the lists offer parents unprecedented power to spread information, to ask a question or answer one, to praise or pillory for an audience of hundreds.

As school e-mail lists multiply in size and reach, they are increasingly becoming ensnared in contests for control of the medium and the message. Principals are accused of trying to silence their discussion-group critics. Parents have allegedly stolen or hijacked e-mail lists. Moderators who step in to halt vitriolic threads are sometimes accused of censorship.

Some of the most contentious school controversies of recent years have played out largely on e-mail lists: reaction over a plan to distribute hip flasks as a senior gift in 2006 at Arlington County‘s H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program; debate about military recruitment at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda in 2005; and discontent, this winter, with a $50 graduation fee at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring.

“It’s the new venue. It’s the new community forum,” said Pat Elder, a Whitman parent who protested the presence of military recruiters on the Whitcom mailing list. “We’re too busy to, you know, meet.”

It goes on to detail some of the disagreements.

This begs for comparison to Front Porch Forum. Somewhat similar technology, scale and local focus… but big differences too. Schools, almost by definition, are breeding grounds for controversy and skirmishes among parents, teachers, admin, politicians, media, etc. And email, especially bulk email, is a notoriously poor medium for resolving conflict. It tends to foster and escalate misunderstanding.

Front Porch Forum tends to turn all that around… building community within neighborhoods. Still, there are lessons here.

Village Website Incorporates FPF

Posted on Saturday, January 5, 2008 by • No comments yet

Essex Junction Village is developing a new website… sounds like a well-conceived leap forward for this small Vermont municipality.  The committee of volunteers pulling it together are incorporating Front Porch Forum into it… on the ground floor.  I look forward to seeing it soon.  For now, the local paper covered the story this week.

Local Development Controversy

Posted on Wednesday, December 26, 2007 by • No comments yet

Philip Baruth writes today about a controversy in Burlington’s New North End…

Fascinating little snafu in Burlington last week. A very hard-working local activist, Lea Terhune, called a meeting to organize against a new Senior Housing development slated for the Apple Tree Point section of Burlington’s New North End. Wet-land is at issue, and Terhune says that Infill Development Group’s project would “warehouse [seniors] in a swamp.”

When Infill representatives arrived at the meeting, they were barred from attending. The meeting was declared a private gathering of concerned neighbors and not a public meeting. The announcement that was posted on Front Porch Forum was not clear on this point and should have been. I certainly regret any misunderstandings.

FPF is breaking new ground… nothing else like it out there. So we openly request constructive feedback on ways to improve our service. And, as always, we invite participation (join your neighborhood forum in Chittenden County, VT, here). As Philip says…

What we do know is that the Front Porch Forum has now been elevated beyond a mere local-networking tool: it has become required political reading for those on any side of any issue, any policy debate, any ongoing campaign.

 

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Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more

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