Hack for Change

Happy National Day of Civic Hacking!

National Day of Civic Hacking is a national event that takes place today and tomorrow, in cities across the nation. The event will bring together citizens, software developers, and entrepreneurs from all over the nation to collaboratively create, build, and invent new solutions using publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country. National Day of Civic Hacking will provide citizens an opportunity to do what is most quintessentially American: roll up our sleeves, get involved and work together to improve our society.

Some FAQs:

Q. What is National Day of Civic Hacking?
A. National Day of Civic Hacking is an event during which citizens from around the country will work together with local, state and federal governments as well as private sector organizations with the common goal of improving their community.

Q. When and where will it take place?
A. National Day of Civic Hacking will take place in cities across America on the weekend of June 1-2, 2013.

Q. Who is leading the National Day of Civic Hacking?
A. National Day of Civic Hacking is a national initiative to promote transparency, participation and collaboration between governments and citizens. It’s a collaboration between citizens, organizations, companies and government. Events will take place in cities around the nation.

Bringing it home, the purpose of this blog is to promote transparency, participation and collaboration between governments and citizens. On a personal level, I see it happening between the municipality (with some exceptions) and citizens, but the school district has dug its heels in deeper to discourage transparency, participation and collaboration. The school board directors, on the whole, are secretive, ignore residents' emails, dismiss detailed budget presentations given by residents, reject professional input (CAC), roll their eyes at opposing viewpoints, and on and on.

District/Municipal Collaboration

Wow! I can't believe it.  Both the President's November Report and the Superintendent's November Report have been posted on the School District website. I didn't have to remind them.  Just a little background, both reports were about six months behind on the website. While Dr. Steinhauer was blogging about fortune cookies and construction, his monthly board reports were MIA. Mrs. Posti decided to reprint her board reports on her unofficial blog instead of keeping them official on the website.  Nice to see some improvement.

By reading Posti's report from last night's meeting, I see that she is taking a more cooperative stand with the municipality.

Later this month, the Commission will be taking action on developing a new ad hoc committee designed to review Mt. Lebanon’s available fields as well as the needs that the various local athletic organizations have for field space. This committee will be made up of representatives from the Municipality, each of the field sport organizations as well as representatives from the District. Should this committee’s development be approved by the Commission, I’ve asked Mr. Grogan, Mr. Marciniak and Mr. Kubit to serve on the committee.

This is just one of the many ways the two local taxing bodies work together on a regular basis to realize cost efficiencies, share resources and provide support to each other. In addition to this committee, representatives from both taxing bodies serve on our Strategic Planning Committee, the Municipality’s Comprehensive Planning Committee, the Environmental Sustainability Board, our Safety and Security Committee and the Municipality’s Economic Development Council. Our staff work together to coordinate field maintenance, fuel purchase, winter maintenance, photocopying and printing, interoffice mail delivery, fire safety, police and fire training, pedestrian safety, drivers training, contracted services, recreation, parking and communication. We also work together on programs like School in the Park and Arts in the Park regularly and have realized cost efficiencies for things like joint elevator maintenance in the past when it was cost-efficient to do so.

Additional areas of potential cooperation might include contracting District employees for things like HVAC and Building Automation controls, janitorial services, shared purchasing and fleet management. As contracts are renegotiated in future years, these opportunities and others might be explored. We’ve worked with the Municipality over the years to realize cost and service efficiencies that benefit our residents and are grateful for such a collaborative relationship with their employees and elected officials.

Josephine Posti forgot to mention how she had cheerfully invited the commissioners to the school board community coffees rather than having a Joint Discussion Session.  She is much too busy and requires an agenda to determine if it is worth her time.  Josephine also failed to bring up how difficult it has been for the commissioners to discuss the Joint Maintenance Agreement with the board members.