508 is a show about Worcester. This week’s panel is Dante Comparetto and Brendan Melican.
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You can watch 508 Fridays at 7pm on WCCA TV13.
Rally for Tim DeChristopher at the Worcester federal building; revocation of nonprofit status from some Worcester groups; “Building a Green Solidarity Economy”; Duck Yao takes bitcoins; Worcester will be sued over tobacco ad ban; opposition to closing Downing Street makes some progress; City has an online permitting system; chickens; what issues should City Council candidates discuss during the election? And: neighborhood councils.
Could we have found a still that didn’t give the impression I was going door to door selling salvation?
1) Brendan — there were subtle hints that you actually aren’t going door-to-door:
a) Your shirt is not solid white
b) Your tie is not navy blue
c) Your hair
2) Regarding clean bills of health — that should only be required for folks who advocate for healthy legislation. Mike Germain should be exempt.
3) Regarding neighborhood councils — this is, I hope, a Lukesian digression and not a Eddyan one — I think this gets to the chicken and egg (no pun intended) aspect of city government: are people not involved because they’re not adequately represented, or are they not adequately represented because they’re not involved?
That is, could we get 20% of the registered voters in a neighborhood to sign a petition (when we could not do that for the city as a whole)?
The argument for district council seats was that each district would get better representation. This, as we know, isn’t completely accurate, and it’s also quite difficult to unseat an incumbent.
How would a neighborhood council work any differently? Would it increase folks’ participation in government, or would it be the same four people always running and pushing their own agenda?
Brendan mentioned that a neighborhood council could take some stress off city government in a financial sense (that is, a council could work on improvements that would not cost the city government anything). However, I only see that working in a richer area of the city. Would it just cause increasing frustration to have one more layer of government that says it can’t pay for your sidewalk to be prepared?