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How to get public input is challenge for City Council
Council ponders how to encourage involvement
By Steve Enders
It's been one of the burning topics for at least a couple of City Council members since they were elected last November.
It's also been a topic of conversation on various councils year after year, according to those in Saratoga's City Hall.
The dilemma is about communication--and how the City Council gets in touch with its constituents. Or, more importantly, how residents of the city can better involve themselves in what's going on at City Hall.
The results will soon show, as the city considers re-issuing its quarterly newsletter and puts the finishing touches on a long-talked about city website, to be online as soon as August.
In the mid-1990s, budget cuts, and a lack of staff to produce it, killed the newsletter that went out quarterly to every Saratoga home. Now, it appears it may be on its way back, and could include a cut-out reply card for residents to send feedback.
Also, a student who's home for the summer from Boston College is working on getting the city's first web page ready to go. City Manager Larry Perlin said that residents will be able to access and interact with constantly updated information through the site, including council agendas, building information and permit forms.
Other ideas, Perlin said, include posting city bulletin boards in key places around town for city flyers and notices, placing inserts in the Saratoga News and better communicating with the city's homeowner's groups.
On June 19 at its annual retreat, the Saratoga City Council again plodded through this murky topic of how to better inform the public on what's going on in town.
And, unfortunately, there don't seem to be many clear-cut answers.
The discussion on public relations comes after controversial agenda subjects such as the city's new septic abatement ordinance and the city's playfields issue.
On the former, citizens came out of the woodwork just before the council passed the ordinance. On playfields, residents complained they weren't noticed of the hearings by the city and felt left out of the process.
In both cases they came after many months of public discussions. During the septic-tank talks, Councilman Evan Baker predicted there would be more people interested in the item as it came closer to completion. And as predicted, residents started appearing at city meetings, protesting the proposal, which won unanimous approval anyway.
During some of those public hearings, residents told the council that they had no idea the item was on the docket, despite rigorous noticing practices--normally within 500 feet of an affected site--from City Hall, agenda distribution and articles and advertisements in the Saratoga News.
Baker lambasted those residents for staying out of the loop, and challenged his fellow lawmakers to come up with a solution.
While a definite solution may never come, at least the council has come up with some ideas, like reviving the city's defunct newsletter and getting the web page off the ground.
"We all agree that you don't hear from people unless you hit a burning button on a particular issue," Baker said. "People are busy. ... People are fairly apathetic unless it's a hot issue, and otherwise, you don't hear from any of them. To me, it's a great frustration."
So the council brainstormed on how to get the public back in government, despite a philosophical challenge offered by City Manager Larry Perlin.
He asked the council, "What's the big deal?" Since people put their trust in an elected official to represent their viewpoints, what difference does it make whether or not people beat down their doors with questions and comments? If the public doesn't like the job you've done, Perlin said, then they'll boot you out of office.
"There's a feeling of disconnect," Baker says. "If [citizens] felt they were better informed, they might respond more. The obligation on us is to find multiple ways of working in readily and easily available methods to inform as broad a cross section of the citizens as possible."
Baker, however, said that just because he campaigned on particular issues and was elected doesn't mean he knows exactly what citizens want. "I don't presume for a minute that what I think is good, a majority of people think is good. I recognize there's an expectation of a limited amount of input, but I don't think we're doing enough."
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Saratoga, California Since 1975
