As I sit on the dais during Council meetings, I often hear community members remark they were not aware of a particular issue before the City Council. Even though Foster City makes a concerted effort to notify everyone concerned regarding important policy decisions before the Council, sometimes the news does not get out.
The current methodologies of disseminating information are; press releases to newspapers, posting news on the City’s web site, FCTV and on our City’s marquee. Our City has even been known to send out information with water bills; although anyone who lives in a condominium or apartment knows they never see a water bill.
To do my part in getting the word out I have taken to periodically sitting in the Council Chambers on Sunday afternoons in order to further our community outreach and to listen to what is of concern to members of our community. Yet I still hear citizen’s frustration that they were not informed about an issue that concerns them.
I suppose we could look at the option that by the time we get home from a hard day’s work, looking forward to a hard day’s night, we might all just have to accept that to some degree or another we all suffer from news overload.
In the end, it comes down to a two way street of both parties trying to make that conscientious effort in spite of everything to, as our Constitution alludes to, be a government of the people, by the people and for the people, which is easier said than done. Because when you become one of those that are the government, you start to seek resolutions to problems that you realized as a private citizen.
Recently I was discussing the FCTV weekly news update with Arlene Shields, producer of Foster City TV. Here is how this works; the update, which is two minutes long is modified weekly to reflect current events.
After the initial two-minute news update the last three weeks’ updates are played back to back, for a total of eight minutes of local news updates. This process is reiterated on a weekly basis so that at any given time there are 4 weeks of concurrent weekly updates being played intermittently during the day on FCTV.
FCTV is broadcast over Channel 27 if you are a Comcast subscriber, and Channel 99 if you subscribe to AT&T Uverse. Thanks to our award-winning staff, we are able to receive informative and professionally produced informational segments. Now that we know we have this excellent resource the question for me became, how can I know when to tune in to gather this information? So I came up with a solution.
Here’s my idea; we occasionally need to replace monitors and video equipment at FCTV, what if we recycled the obsolete equipment we replace and set up a closed circuit system throughout the community, in conjunction with government offices and possibly local businesses, that would play a continuous repeat of the last four weeks worth of local news?
Having the opportunity to catch up on what is happening locally does not seem very bad while waiting in line. I spoke with Steve Toler, Foster City’s Administrative Services Director. Steve is in charge of anything and everything technical which includes IT and Foster City TV. Steve told me we have older surplus flat screen TVs with good viewing quality and the cost of setting them up would be minimal to the taxpayer. One issue is sound volume, but Steve said he would be willing to look at it and thought it could be mitigated.
Well, what do you think? Do you think the idea has merit or do you think it a notion doomed to fail? Do you think it is a waste of our resources or do you think it is worth a try? I really would like to hear your thoughts and suggestions. If you have another idea as to how we can improve communication between the City and the residents, I would like to hear that as well.
Postscript: Let me know how we are doing with our zip code. As I said in previous articles, the Postal Service has accommodated our request to make the default for 94404 and any local address to read Foster City instead of San Mateo. There have been a few snags but they are being worked out as we hear of them. I would like to know if you have had any such problems.
Once again, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you. I can be reached at home at 650-349-2316 or at jkiramis@fostercity.org.
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