Council President Tibbott — Please restore Council@edmondswa.gov.
Thank you for your service to the people of Edmonds. We know that the hours it takes for a councilmember to represent their constituents far exceeds the pay, or the appreciation, received for your work. We also understand that your goal in eliminating Council@edmondswa.gov was to increase efficiency of communications to council, and perhaps reduce the workload.
However, eliminating Council@edmondswa.gov greatly decreases the ease with which your constituents are able to communicate with their council. Through the years the email has been in place, we have seen many commenters recommend Council@edmondswa.gov to other readers to share opinions with council. Each councilmember has one vote. All should be equally informed of their constituents concerns.
Please review the comments of My Edmonds News readers in response to your action.
No one supports this, including five of your fellow councilmembers. You’re standing alone against a sea of voter discontent with your decision.
Our request:
- Restore Council@edmondswa.govimmediately.
- Schedule a full council discussion of how to improve citizen access to council. An open public meeting is warranted to address these important communication issues.
- Schedule a public hearing, to ensure citizens have their say.
- The replacement of publiccomment@edmondswa.gov with an online form to make public comment, should be reassessed at that time.
— By Ken Reidy, Citizen of Edmonds, and Joan Bloom, former Edmonds City Councilmember
Bravo! Well written and concise! And according to Neil, you may still contact us all at council@edmondswa.gov and can disregard the email saying it would no longer be used and it gave a link to the online form.
Diane,
I just tried Council@edmondswa.gov, to thank the CP, and got the same reply, saying “Starting July 15th, emails sent to council@edmondswa.gov will no longer be forwarded to all Councilmembers” and all the other stuff, from Becky Peterson, Council Executive Assistant.
Maybe the Council Executive Assistant didn’t get the message from Council President Tibbott yet?
Until there is a way to submit comments to the entire Council for review at their next meeting (either using a form or via the joint email) the system should not be changed. This is especially the case since the agenda packet does not get posted until the Friday just beofore the Tuesday meeting. The current form must be submitted by the Wednesday before the next Tuesday meeting which is prior to the posting of the agenda and related materials. So the form is not a workable alternative at this time.
I don’t think we heard a clear description of the problem from Council Pres Tibbott. I have been using email systems since 1980 and this is the first time I have been told that a group alias address is the root cause of a problem.
CP Tibbott- How about publishing your own article in MEN that describes the problem, the root cause, and 2 alternate solutions?
Yea gads- if we cannot manage email aliases in city government, how is the city ever going to spend about $100 M to redevelop the Burlington Coat Factory parcels? This is bordering on embarrassing.
Or build a pedestrian and bike path trail hitting all the big landmark facilities in town costing in the ball park of 1 billion $’s that we are going to build with as yet unknown “various sources of funding.” We argue over how to communicate with each other about bad budget busting ideas. This is embarrassing, Theresa, not just bordering on it.
I realize we are currently overwhelmed with unfinished work, tight budgets, a hotly contested election for Mayor and soon Council positions; but, at some point, our city needs to take a serious look at how our entire city government is constituted and run. Thru some sort of definitely non-aligned and non-partisan citizen task force (not ECR, or ACE for example) we need to take an honest and complete look at the powers of the mayor vs. the powers of the Council and the nature of our Council, such as part-time vs. full-time and the amount of compensation that is optimal for getting the best people to serve for the right reasons.
Right now we have a system that just hopes to get a paragon of virtue for a Mayor every four years and seven smart Council Persons who are willing to work cheap. We also need to figure out a way to get rid of that ridiculous “three minutes to sing” public comments” forum used for Citizen/Council public hearings and meetings. There has to be a better way to do things here.
Minutes ago, I emailed council@edmondswa.gov and received an email that starts as follows:
Thank you for contacting the Edmonds City Council Office. We look forward to serving you. Starting July 15th, emails sent to council@edmondswa.gov will no longer be forwarded to all Councilmembers. Please route your message to the specific councilmembers or staff department related to your particular area of interest.