by
Dave Lambert
on Wed 21 Mar 2007 05:24 PM EDT
A Troy citizen passed on to me an email that was sent from the City’s Community Affairs Office today. The document describes a new blog called “TalkofTroy.”
I checked the web address mentioned in the document. The only person identified on the web site is William Cowger. Mr. Cowger serves as the Chairman of the Troy Chamber of Commerce’s Political Action Committee.
The web address… http://talkoftroy.org/
Here’s the text…
To: Futures Task Force Participants.
Subject: www.TalkofTroy.org on-line community
You are probably frustrated and disappointed with the delays related to all our hard work on the Futures 2020 Task Force Report. By default, our futures report will at best be Troy 2025 if we don’t get it off the floor. One way to kick start that effort is to push our work and visions to the community ourselves via our own on-line community. If we do it right, this on-line community has the potential to be THE place Troy people come to communicate on issues. The cool thing is that we get the first shot at defining the issues. If the stakeholders of Troy insist on the implementation of our Futures Visions, the City Council and Staff will be forced to do something about it.
It is exciting to announce that TalkOfTroy.org has been created and is available for posting immediately. Most of the Futures Task Forces identified the need to better communicate about issues facing the city to minimize divisiveness. This is your chance to participate and to pass on all your knowledge and hard work to the people of Troy. For this to succeed we need to take the lead on posting regarding the issues about which you feel most strongly. Everyone (not just the chairs) that served on a Futures Task force is encouraged to post soon and often. The more there is to read and comment on the more successful the site will be.
The site is meant for CIVIL CIVIC discourse, and any posts not meeting those criteria will be removed. CIVIL CIVIC discourse means non-offensive and non-commercial discussions.
There will be 2 communities on the site. The Talk of Troy Blog is intended for reasoned and researched topics not unlike op-ed columns in print media and will be fully moderated. Posts will be vetted before they appear. It will not be unreasonable for moderators to request a poster to move a post from the blog to the forum, if that is a more logical place for it.
The other community is the Talk of Troy Forum where anyone can bring up and post any subject rational or not. The Forum will also provide a mechanism for stakeholders to be polled on issues facing the city. There is a discussion group just for Futures 2020 and it is recommended that the Task Force Leaders post their summaries in the appropriate section. That way we can get public comment on the individual items in the Futures Report. An example is that most people when they see we want to increase housing density will throw their arms in the air and say they don’t want anything that will increase traffic. It is up to us to educate them on why higher density does not translate directly into increased traffic and why it is necessary.
There needs to be 4-5 volunteers out of our ranks to act as moderators. There will be no name calling or offensive posts allowed on this site, nor is the site to be commercial in any way. We want as many people as possible to participate. If we find that the vetting becomes a bottleneck or appears like censorship, we might open it up. However, we do need 4-5 people that will take it upon themselves to at least once a day review and remove any offensive posts and comments. We hope that it should take no more than 15-20 minutes at the most, and with the 4-5, you can miss a few days and others will pick up the slack.
This is just one of the ways that we can push the Futures issues out to the public in addition to speaking to community groups on the issues, etc. You need to be the catalyst to get the on-line community up and running. We will publicly unveil www.TalkofTroy.org at the March 28th Futures presentation to the community. It would be wonderful if many of you had already posted before that time. A community wide press release will be sent to all media on March 28th as well.
Thank you,
Troy Futures Task Force
Troy City Council Special Meeting Agenda --- 3/22/07
