Hawthorne City Manager’s Weblog

Guest Column: DeLoris Roberts -”Who is really irresponsible?”

Filed under: Uncategorized — Chad Shryock @ 6:57 pm

County Commissioner Paula DeLaney called Hawthorne irresponsible for its decision to start its own fire department. I think she is guilty of bureaucratic projection.

We want to provide fire service to our city at a reasonable cost. Is that irresponsible? The county wants to charge us more than we can afford for that fire service. That is irresponsible.

We want to provide protection to our neighbors in the local unincorporated area. Is that irresponsible? The county refuses to dispatch us to unincorporated calls. That is irresponsible.

We want to provide service to our residents outside the confines of partisan bickering and bureaucratic paralysis. Is that irresponsible? The county wants to punish us for not accepting its way as the only way. That is irresponsible.

We want the county to provide emergency services for which we contribute to their general fund. Is that irresponsible? The county wants us to pay again for a service we already fund. That is irresponsible.

I think you understand what I mean by projection. The county, in the person of then-Chair DeLaney, chooses to call a well-meaning municipality irresponsible for attempting to provide vital services at a reasonable cost. The city takes these steps because the county made it necessary for us to do so. If our actions are truly irresponsible, then I submit that the other smaller municipalities in the county are irresponsible too, when they attempt to circumvent the roadblocks and impediments the county puts in their way.

We cannot be responsible for the fiscal mismanagement of the county. In fact, since the small municipalities fund a great deal of their budget, we should demand that the county become more responsible with our dollars. Demanding ever more money for services that are sketchily provided on what seems like a random basis is certainly not the way to solve the demands of declining tax revenues mandated by the state.

Treating every city but Gainesville like unwanted stepchildren during the Boundary Adjustment Act process is also no way to treat those who contribute so much to the county budget.

Spending tax dollars on nonessential programs, unrelated to the health, safety and welfare of the citizens, while trying to extract more money for those that should have priority is bad government, responsive to the vocal few, and a detriment to the many.

Call us irresponsible? I think not.

Here is my definition of irresponsibility: Re-electing Paula Delaney or any other county commissioner who is not committed to providing essential services first and foremost before even considering funding a single special interest social or environmental program, feel-good campaign or ”study.”

DeLoris Roberts is the mayor of the city of Hawthorne

Comments (0)

Blogging Article From Gainesville Sun

Filed under: Uncategorized — Chad Shryock @ 6:51 pm

Blogging booming at age 10
By AMY REININK
Sun staff writer When Jorn Barger coined the term “weblog” in 1997, he likely wasn’t thinking about coverage of the McIntosh Town Council.

But as the blog hits what is widely believed to be its 10th anniversary, the process Barger described as “logging the Web” has become, among other things, just that.

In what University of Florida journalism professor Mindy McAdams calls an example of the evolution of a once-scorned medium, UF graduate student Cher Phillips uses a blog called the McIntosh Mirror to cover Town Council meetings in McIntosh, which has a population of roughly 500.

“No matter where you go, towns of 500 people just don’t get media coverage, and who in town has time to go to four-hour meetings?” McAdams said. “Her blog is a perfect example of someone who’s using a blog to do, in my mind, traditional journalism for a town that would have no coverage otherwise.”

The blog’s national evolution has been just as pronounced. Mainstream media outlets have gone from ignoring bloggers to forming alliances with them. Politicians who once dismissed blogs as “echo chambers for ideologues” are courting bloggers for coverage, or are keeping blogs themselves, said Diana Cohen, whose UF dissertation focused on how candidates create online identities.

“Blogs are simply a new dimension all campaigns have to consider now,” said Cohen, now a visiting assistant professor of government and law at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. “Some campaigns have gone so far as to create staffing positions that deal with the Internet - people who search blogs or who are active in blogs.”

McAdams said “campaign tool” is just one role blogs, which started as little more than online diaries, have evolved to fill.

Bloggers frequently compile news reports from traditional media outlets, or provide updates on happenings that traditional media outlets don’t consider news.

“If someone was obsessed with Wal-Mart in North Central Florida, that person might link to every news report ever written about Wal-Mart, or any update they can get about Wal-Mart’s efforts to build giant stores in North Central Florida,” McAdams said. “Will Wal-Mart talk to them? No. Is it traditional journalism? No. But they might be doing me a big service if I’m obsessed with Wal-Mart, too, because they might point me to something I never would have found otherwise.”

Stafford Jones, chairman of the Alachua County Republican Executive Committee, said that’s part of why he counted himself among the readers of alachuapolitix.blogspot.com, a now-defunct blog focusing on local politics. Jones said although the blog contained vicious personal attacks and was tailored to local political insiders, its core readers found useful information there.

“I was frequently the target of attacks on there, and I got the impression there was a lot of anonymous slander going on,” Jones said. “But every now and then, there was some really brilliant, thought-provoking writing, or a tidbit of information I didn’t know before. I think the impact of a blog like that has to do with how much the readers can filter through the junk to get to the real important and thoughtful issues.”

Blogs can demystify politics and journalism. McAdams said the best blogs kept by journalists “are an extension of their normal reporting, like an open notebook.”

Alachua County Manager Randall Reid keeps a blog that aims to “benefit those of you who might wish to keep up with the workings of your county government,” he wrote in the blog’s introduction.

Blogs can also be used as a forum for debate, as is the case with Ed Shupe’s Gadfly Journal, an evolution of Shupe’s popular e-list about community news in High Springs.

“When I started the e-list, I wasn’t trying to report news,” said Shupe, formerly a columnist for The High Springs Herald. “I was mainly providing a place where people could vent their feelings about the City Commission, city spending, growth and development and other issues in the community. I wanted people to post comments about issues you wouldn’t normally hear about.”

McAdams said as blogs have evolved, major media outlets have encouraged staff members to blog about their beats, or have even recruited private bloggers.

At the Orlando Sentinel, community members blog about neighborhood news on a section of the newspaper’s Web site. A recent post from the Winter Park blog included news about the community’s Panera Bread moving to a new location.

“The Orlando Sentinel isn’t going to send a team of reporters to Winter Park or Sanford to write about the traffic intersection or the pothole or whatever else,” McAdams said. “Instead, they have fostered a relationship with bloggers that’s something different from what the newspaper offered before.”

William McKeen, chairman of UF’s journalism department, said journalists must apply high standards of fairness and accuracy to any work they do, whether it’s blogging or writing a traditional news story.

“It seems like a lot of bloggers spend time obsessing over little things like hangnails and bobby pins that only they care about, and that seems to me to be opposite from what newspaper reporters and columnists do, which is finding the universal truths in what they’re writing about,” McKeen said.

But McAdams said blogs have evolved to the point that some of them, such as Phillips’ McIntosh Mirror, voluntarily hold themselves to standards just as high.

“A lot of journalists and other people are quick to tell you why blogs are trustworthy or not by saying, ‘All blogs are X.’ But the thing is, there is no sentence like that that’s true, no matter what X is. There are too many different styles and motivations and formats. The only way to find out which blogs are good and reliable and which aren’t is by spending some time reading them.”Some local blogs

Cher Phillips’ McIntosh Mirror: http://mcintoshnews.blogspot.com

Ed Shupe’s Gadfly Journal about High Springs: www.gadflyjournal.blogspot.com

Hawthorne City Manager Chad Shryock’s blog: http://wordpress.cityofhawthorne.net/

Alachua County Manager Randall Reid’s blog: www.co.alachua.fl.us/government/blog/

Jimmy Harnsberger’s Gainesville Neighbors blog: http://gainesvilleneighbors.blogspot.com/

Want to find more?

You can search for blogs on a specific topic using sites like www.technorati.com or www.blogsearch.google.com, Google’s blog search function.

Want to start your own?

Try www.blogger.com/start.

Amy Reinink can be reached at 352-374-5088 or reinina@gvillesun.com.

Comments (0)

April 6, 2007

Credentialling From ICMA

Filed under: Uncategorized — Chad Shryock @ 8:17 am

This week, I recieved a letter from the International City Management Association (ICMA), informing me that I had recieved the Credentialed Manager designation. This is somethat that I am very proud of, especially since only 972 other City Managers in the world have recieved this designation.

I am also proud of how this reflects on our organization and on some of the things that we are trying to accomplish. The City of Hawthorne has been working hard to “take it to the next level.” By this, we mean that we need to continuously improve everything we do. I hope that this designation shows our commitment to excellence on both the individual and organizational level.

Here is a copy of the press release from ICMA:

Hawthorne City Manager Credentialed

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Chad M Shryock, City Manager of Hawthorne, recently received the Credentialed Manager designation from ICMA, the premier local government leadership and management organization. Mr. Shryock is one of 973 local government management professionals currently credentialed through the ICMA Voluntary Credentialing Program. To receive the prestigious ICMA credential, a member must have significant experience as a senior management executive in local government, have earned a degree, preferably in public administration or a related field, and demonstrated a commitment to high standards of integrity and to lifelong learning and professional development.

Hawthorne Mayor Terry Knowles said “We are all very of Chad and his accomplishment of being named as a Credentialed Manager. This designation has confirmed we already knew, that Chad has brought an incredible amount of knowledge, experience, leadership and professionalism to this City. The last two years have shown that he is a great asset to Hawthorne and we look forward to working with him as we take Hawthorne to the next level.” Shryock is qualified by over ten years of professional local government executive experience. Prior to his appointment in 2005 as City Manager of Hawthorne, he served as City Administrator in Eagle Lake, MN and Wabasha, MN and as the Executive Director of two regional economic development organizations in Iowa.

Shryock has also made significant contributions to a number of other organizations, including: Florida City/County Management Association, Florida League of Cities, Florida Government Finance Officers Association, in addition to previous contributions to the Minnesota City/County Management Association, Minnesota League of Cities, and the Professional Developers of Iowa,

For more information regarding the ICMA Voluntary Credentialing Program, contact Amanda Relyea at ICMA, 777 North Capitol Street, N.E., #500, Washington, D.C. 20002-4201; arelyea@icma.org; 202-962-3556 (phone); 202-962-3565 (fax). ICMA is the premier local government leadership and management organization. Its mission is to create excellence in local governance by developing and advocating professional management of local government worldwide. ICMA provides member support: publications, data, and information; peer and results-oriented assistance; and training and professional development to more than 8,200 city, town, and county experts and other individuals throughout the world.

Comments (0)

April 4, 2007

Bella Meadows Subdivision Groundbreaking

Filed under: Uncategorized — Chad Shryock @ 5:28 pm

Here is a good article about the recent groundbreaking at the new Bella Meadows Subdivision..

Hawthorne may be on cusp of rapid growth By AMY REININK

Gainesville Sun

When city officials broke ground for the Bella Meadows subdivision in Hawthorne on Wednesday morning, they kicked off the construction of 41 new homes.

But they also broke into a new era of growth and development in the small rural city.

(more…)

Comments (0)

October 10, 2006

City Codes Online

Filed under: Uncategorized — Chad Shryock @ 7:10 pm

We’ve added a new feature to the website and now, you can view the City Codes online. This has been a feature that we have been working on for some time and we hope that the public will find it useful. On the website’s navigation bar on the left side of the screen is a link to City Codes. That link will open up a new window and take you to our online City Codes at Municipal Code Corporation.

It is our long-term goal to offer a full range of City services on our website and this is one more step in that direction. So far, we have added City Commission Minutes, the agenda packets for the City Commission Meetings, our budget and our audit reports and this blog.

One of the other items that we are currently working on is the audio and video of our meetings on the website. This may take some time to implement, but we are investigating several options for providing this service.

Comments (0)

October 3, 2006

Speed Traps and Money Pits

Filed under: Uncategorized — Chad Shryock @ 6:45 pm

It seems as though the news of the day in Alachua County was our new Police Department. We have been discussing the issue for almost a year now and the only media outlet to report on it has been the Alachua County Today. Suddenly in the last 24 hours, it was reported on TV20, the Gainesville Sun, and multiple radio stations. In reading and listening to these stories, I noticed two distinct themes from those opposed to the police department.

First is a misconception that the City of Hawthorne is trying to set up some sort of a speed trap to help us rake in the dough. Former Sheriff Steve Oelrich said that he thought we possibly had “visions of revenue coming in through traffic violations.” Others were afraid that we would become “another Waldo”.

(Now, I believe that Waldo’s reputation as a speed trap is unjustified, but that is a post for another day.)

When we prepared our Cost / Benefit Analysis, we were extremely careful not to rely on fine revenue to fund a majority of the new department’s budget. We did project an increase in fine revenue in our analysis, but the increase in fines represents the equivalent of four traffic violations per day, or two per 8 hour shift. This is hardly the makings of a speed trap. If we truly had the delusions of operating a police department to stuff the city coffers with fine revenue, do you really think we would have gone through the painful process of raising the millage rate by 2 mills to pay for it?

Which brings me to the second theme that was clear in the criticism of the department, that it will a huge money pit that will force us into bankruptcy and cause us to neglect other pressing needs of the City. The Cost / Benefit Analysis carefully identified the anticipated costs of starting a police department and identified potential funding sources to cover those costs. The study was reviewed by six different police chiefs and five city managers from across the State of Florida. If we missed anything in the study, then it was missed by some very qualified and very experienced folks.

The fact is that the new department will cost the average homeowner $81.07 per year for an average of 16 hours of law enforcement coverage per day 365 days a year. Compare this to the $72.21 per year that the average homeowner would have to pay into Alachua County’s Sheriff’s Patrol MSTU for absolutely no increase in protection. Paying $8.86 per year for that increase in police protection is certainly not a money pit.

Now, the folks that share these criticisms have every right to their opinion. That is why we live in a democracy. The City Commission weighed all of these things before they reached a decision. The one thing that strikes me as funny, however, is how the two major criticisms of the decision are so diametrically different. That is, how could the City be establishing a police department in order to unfairly bilk unsuspecting motorist of their money and stuff the City coffers with fine revenue and still go broke in the process?

Comments (0)

September 6, 2006

Hawthorne’s Proposed Police Department

Filed under: Uncategorized — Chad Shryock @ 9:05 am

Over the course of the last year, the City of Hawthorne has been studying the provision of law enforcement services within the City. This process came about because the results of our citywide citizens survey in 2005 showed that our residents were not completely satisfied with the level of law enforcement in the City. During the time that we were studing the issue, the County Commission began pressing the City to participate in the Sheriff’s Patrol MSTU. All of this has played a part in developing a proposal to form a local police department here in Hawthorne to augment the services already provided by the Alachua County Sheriff’s Department.

A police department model has been prepared that provides a department with 3.1 full-time equivalent employees. The department, once it reaches full staffing in six months, is designed to put more officers on the street in Hawthorne than are provided by the County, which will reduce response times for calls for service.

(more…)

Comments (0)

— Next Page »

Hawthorne City Manager’s Weblog

March 10, 2008

Fine living in an RV

March 5, 2008

A taxing debate

Alachua County’s Boundary Adjustment Act up for renewal

Guest Column: DeLoris Roberts -”Who is really irresponsible?”

Blogging Article From Gainesville Sun

April 6, 2007

Credentialling From ICMA

April 4, 2007

Bella Meadows Subdivision Groundbreaking

October 10, 2006

City Codes Online

October 3, 2006

Speed Traps and Money Pits

September 6, 2006

Hawthorne’s Proposed Police Department

Blogs of other City Managers

Important Links

Organizations