"Opening doors..."

My campaign slogan is 'opening doors...'.  People have been asking me exactly what does that slogan mean.  Well, let me give you one example of what 'opening doors...' means to me.

I have been interested in serving on the City council for quite some time now.  About six months ago I made a decision that I would run in the next election.  I kept tabs on the city's web site looking for an announcement of the upcoming election.  In this day and age, the city's web site seemed to be the logical place to find information regarding the next city election.

Thank goodness for 'freedom of the press'. On December 19th, 2009 our community paper, The Journal, published an editorial which talked about the upcoming election and how to that date, only the four incumbents up for re-election had signed up to be on the ballot.

I was kind of surprised, I had checked the city's web site just that morning and there was no mention of an upcoming election.

I went to city hall that afternoon and put my name into the hat, I am running for city council.  I was just glad that I happened to read the editorial page that day or who knows if I would have found out about the election.

The Journal subsequently wrote a piece on January 1, 2010 about me putting my name in for the city council election.  In that article I mentioned that I was surprised to find out about the election not through the city's web site but rather through an editorial the paper wrote.

When do you think information about the upcoming election was finally posted on the city's web site?  You are right...sometime after the article about me appeared in the paper.  And just days before the sign-up deadline.

Did the city intentionally omit information about the election to keep the status quo on council? Or was it just merely an over-site on someones part? Or maybe getting certain information to the public through their web site is not a high priority, I don't know.  But I do know this, in this age of  the internet it should not be that difficult to find out when an election is being held!  The city's web site should be an important tool in communicating its citizens.  The city's web site should be a 'door' that you can open for information about what is going on in our city!

That is one example of 'opening doors...';  more information should be made available to the public, on a timely basis, through the city's web site.