Why do town government meetings need to be taped?

I don’t know about you, but I have a pretty full schedule. There’s work. There’s family. There’s fun. There’s obligations. I have a calendar on my computer and I add little notes and reminders to it and they blink and beep at me and tell me where to go and who to meet and what to buy and who to call. Sometimes I forget to put a little reminder on my calendar and I miss an event. (Like the clean team this Sunday…sorry guys!)

Here's a meeting I recorded as a podcast. It has been downloaded over 200 times since January

So with all that’s going on in the average Joe’s life, how in the world can they hope to go to every important meeting on the island? It’s just not doable.

But, if meetings were televised, or even better, recorded, digitized, shortened and loaded on the town web site, I could grab a sound file of a meeting for my ipod and listen to it in the car, or while I do the dishes, or when I’m lying on the beach (which I wish I had more time for).

Here’s the thing.

Government is not just about electing people you like to do a job you don’t have time to do. It’s also about public participation. It’s about listening and reacting. It’s about writing letters and calling your elected representatives, or stopping them on the street and telling them what you think.

As a political kind of guy, I thrive on feedback. I want to know if what I’m saying or writing is resonating with people, or if I’m full of poo. I need to hear from the rest of the island to understand where the island wants to go (which is one reason I started YACKon.com and made it possible for an on-going, island-wide dialog to take place).

But it seems as though the majority of folks on this island are non-participants. They read the newspaper once in a while which gives them the broad strokes of a policy, but they never get the subtle nuances of what’s going on in their town and county government. Why? No time. We’re too busy trying to make ends meet and get our kids to band practice.

My feeling is, if we can make it easier for people to know what’s going on in government, if we can make it possible for more people to participate, government will gain valuable insight from the feedback that results. And government will better understand how to govern.

Plus, it really will not take that much to get meetings online. Or on TV. Comcast could give us the tools to do it. The town has a website and people who attend meetings now can press the record button. Loading sound files on the web is pretty simple as well.

I’d be happy to do it all myself. For free. If I had more time.

Nantucket first.