A city councilor who knows technology rules. Still want to stand by that statement councilor Kate?After weeks of searching, WW's editorial board finally found the perfect candidate for Wusta's Blogging Fool Award - not that there ain’t enough blogging fools in Wusta mind you. So garnering the unanimous vote of the editorial board, Worcester city councilor Kate Toomey the indefatigable defender of the status quo.
Previous winners are: Harry Tembenis (aka Harry the Teletubby, Paulie's braindead sidekick), Bill Randell and Worcester Magazine.
This week’s inept handling of a citizen’s banal inquiry – a meatball pitch if ever there was one – turned into a comedy of errors. As many of you know if you’ve ever tried interacting with a councilor, the process is rather frustrating – no response to emails or telephone calls. If you’re lucky to get a callback, the response is ambiguous. Isn't it their job to get respond to the electorates inquiries? Begs the question, what is the job of Worcester city councilor? Since there is no job description, it's what they say it is.
There’s not a whole lot to say about councilor Kate Toomey. Except that she pioneered the use of Facebook and Twitter as a communication tool to parry with with the electorate. Perhaps more noteworthy, in 6 years on the city council she’s hasn’t profiled herself on any single issue - always the lackey. When history looks back on her time, her legacy will read: Indistinguishable from the proverbial bump on a log.Admittedly Toomey’s use of Facebook and Twitter to communicate with the electorate is democratic. Perhaps even laudable. Her droids – all three of em - call her a leader in the use of gizmos to communicate with the public – a quantum leap in open government! Ever read the posts? More like a quantum heap of pabulum.
And how about that Toomey website? Dead since March 2010. With so much happening in city politics she can’t put her thoughts into complex sentences? By golly she’s a teacher. Or maybe she’s smarter than we think. Knowing how dim-witted the electorate is, 140 characters is more than sufficient to get her message out. Thinking back, councilor Rick Rushton made a couple lame attempts at connecting with the electorate on his personal website. The content though intelligible - using more than 140 characters and complex sentences - is unadulterated BS.
Addendum. Folks want transparency in government. They want to know what the politicians are doing and thinking. They want to know what's happening in the backrooms and how it will affect them.
My experience has shown a serious communication deficit between councilor and electorate. The councilors want the one-on-one contact with the voters. Know why? It’s not the personal touch as you may think. It's so they can dupe the citizen and no one is the wiser for it. Hopefully your name is on the voters list, otherwise you'll never get a call back.
If the electorate had the will they’d demand a public blog be established for communications between the electorate and the councilors. Maybe even with the city departments. Imagine seeing the posts? Then you’d see first hand the arrogance and incompetence rampant at city hall. But I imagine the councilors will consider the communications privileged, using some legal mumbo jumbo from the city's law department about state record laws... public dissemination... being illegal.
I say, what’s so privileged about asking a councilor to fix a sidewalk? Folks want to know if they follow through and what they're thinking. That's not a whole lot to expect from them?
If Toomey’s recent interaction is indicative of the quality of response from one councilor, imagine what the other 10 are like?
