Local Government
Last week I wanted to know what happened at a previous Orange County Commissioner meeting. When I went to the county web-site to read the minutes, the most recent minutes available were from almost two months ago.
I understand that county staff people may be over-burdened and that budgetary concerns have resulted in less staff than we used to have. However, it is essential for effective governance that citizens have timely access to the minutes of meetings.
So I decided to find out how we stacked up. In order of timeliness, here are the winners (municipalities selected more or less randomly).
If we truly believe that citizen involvement is a high priority, our county officials should demand that we have access to the minutes within two weeks of a meeting.
A side note – when I casually googled Forsyth County, I came up with Forsyth County, Georgia and their last available minutes are from 6/10/2014.
Hello, all! I'm Sarah Morayati, a UNC senior and former Daily Tar Heel reporter. I've followed OP for a while now, and now I'm covering local government and development for Reesenews, the news/multimedia website the UNC journalism school just launched.
Right now we're planning out our coverage focuses for the coming year, and even though we're only a week or two past launch, we'd love to hear your thoughts about how we can better serve the community.
In particular, we're hoping to be able to use the freedom that comes with our online platform to provide more in-depth coverage of news and issues. This can happen through long-form articles and series, experimental story forms, multimedia, etc. -- whatever works. Is there anything you'd like to see more of? Less of? Issues or news topics that have gone under-reported or covered too briefly?
Let us know what thoughts you have -- either here, on Twitter or by email (sarah [dot] morayati [at] reesenews [dot] org). We're listening!
Each election, I am awed and inspired by those who have the courage and the stamina to run for office. Regardless of who we support, we should all be thankful for those who step up and put themselves on the line for the sake of their community.
Good luck to all the candidates, and thank you!
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