What am I going to do as soon as I get elected?

 

Candidates, we all have a plan right. Exactly what you want to do as you assume office?

 

My plan is really rather simple. The best plans normally are. If it's too complicated too many things can go wrong and the likelihood of successful outcome is reduced. So let's keep it simple and things I can actually do. 

Number 1. Hire someone to answer the phone.

 

I want you to have a phone number where you can bypass all the machines and get to a real live person that can help you deal with the city. If you have a question for me, this person can get to me easily, get an answer for you and then get back to you. 

 

Number 2. Hire a door knocker.

 

I want people involved in the decision making. I am serious about that. I have no idea what my time constraints are going to be at this point but I need to make sure that I can get your opinion even if my time is fully consumed elsewhere. This person will be helping me put together information packages about the issues as they come up and the decisions we face. Then this person will be going out into the ward to talk to people. It's really a very simple plan that I think can adjust to a wide variety of future unknown situations. While I would like to reach out to everyone in the ward, according to wikipedia there are 32,235 people. How many new people would we have to meet every month? 672. As much as we want to I don't think we will be able to reach everyone at home. It's still worthwhile to hire this person though. If the budget allows perhaps we can hire a second or third person in this area.

Number 3. Lease a retail space somewhere in our ward.

 

If you and a group of your neighbors wanted to get together for a meeting, sit down, talk about things, where would you go? You could go to someone's house, but most of us really don't like having large numbers of strangers in our homes. Yes coffee shops, malls and restaurants are an option, but each of those experiences have been specifically engineered by commercial interests to extract as much money from you as they can. Meeting with people should not cost money. It's not about money. It's about meeting people.

 

I am sure I will get some space at city hall for meetings. Most of those meetings will be with city staff and people that hang out at city hall. If I want to meet with people from my ward, my constituents, they would have to trek all the way to city hall? I would bring constituents in large numbers to commercial establishments that are going to tempt them with all kinds of unneeded commercial transactions? No. Get a meeting space somewhere in our ward.

 

This space will be engineered to different requirements. Given what I have in mind this requirement statement should pretty well cover it. "This retail space shall facilitate the growth and development of non-profit community organizations by providing a public meeting space equipped with infrastructure that enhances communications." I will use it to meet with constituents in the ward but it will be so much more than a councilor's ward office.