At this point, you have spent some time on the campaign trail. What have voters told you are their biggest concerns and how do you plan to address those concerns?
Not surprisingly, the biggest concern I hear regards the schools: how do we maintain a top-notch school system and how do we pay for it? With persistent growth of the student population and rising academic standards, this is a challenge demanding attention. Other concerns follow previous week’s themes: cultivation of alternative revenue, attention to housing needs, preservation of Cohasset’s character. Also, why don’t we have more (better) sidewalks?
Perhaps most surprising and most compelling are concerns regarding the transparency and accessibly of our town government. The perception that town decisions are made behind closed doors, by a select few in the community, needs to be acknowledged and dissolved. To do so, we must adopt strategies that remove the barriers to participation and information.
First, recognize that large portions of our community are restricted from traditional methods of participation. Evening meetings, uncertainty in schedules, and short notices on agendas particularly affect senior citizens and parents of young children. We should identify opportunities to open avenues to alternative methods of participation and adopt stricter policies on posting meeting notices, agendas, and official minutes.
Second, leverage the power of technology and the new town infrastructure. All town meetings should be streamed in real-time and recorded; currently only the Board of Selectmen and School Committee are televised/recorded. All discussions of official town business should be on the record and immediately accessible. Methods to promote transparency are relatively straightforward. We can streamline the distribution of and access to information by redesigning the town website and harnessing the power of social media.
By opening doors (literally and virtually) we create greater transparency, improve accessibility and encourage participation by all Cohasset constituencies.