Mayor Rob Marlowe
This fall’s “Cotee River Cleanup” will be this Saturday. Folks will gather at 8am at the New Port Richey boat ramp. You don’t need to have a boat or a kayak to help out. All you need is a few hours that you can spare to help out. We generally wrap up just before noon with a hot dog cookout.
Wear stuff you don’t mind getting dirty and come on out. There will be free t-shirts for the first 100 folks to show up.
This event has been on “the calendar” for months, but it has been a bit of a secret. The Rec. Department created a facebook event page less than two weeks ago. Neither the West Pasco Chamber of Commerce or Greater New Port Richey Main Street are promoting this community event on their calendars. I can’t criticize them though… The cleanup isn’t even on the city’s calendar or its news feed.
This isn’t the first time that the word on some event hasn’t gotten out. When there isn’t a single place to look for events around town, events simply don’t show on any calendar. This isn’t rocket science guys.
Main Street appears to be planning a Fall Festival in Sims Park for October 2nd and 3rd. Good luck with that.
The Chamber is planning the Cotee River Bike Fest for the following weekend. They plan to use the stage in Sims Park.
Given that both of these events are scheduled within the next month and Sims Park is surrounded with construction fencing, I hope the organizers have backup plans.
The 9/11 Rememberance this past Friday night was held on the edge of Orange Lake this year instead of at the Sims Park amphitheater. It wasn’t on the city calendar either.
While you won’t find any of the weekend events coming in October or November on the city calendar, it does indicates that the Land Development Review Board will be meeting at 2:00pm on November 26th. You can go to that if you want. I suspect I’ll be enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner with my family about then.
The lack of coordination has yielded some interesting conflicts. Imagine attending a Liberace tribute concert while a band outside cranks up the bass loud enough to be heard inside the theater. Yep. Last month. Long range planning and coordination could have avoided the conflict.
The issue isn’t just for large events either. We’ve had a couple of occasions in the last year where multiple public meetings were scheduled for the same room at the same time. If these meetings had been posted to the calendar, it would have been immediately obvious that there was a problem.
The largest event held every year in New Port Richey is the Chasco Fiesta. I’m positive that the Chasco folks know when the 2016 event will be held. It needs to go on the community calendar now.
Again, this is not rocket science. We need a single calendar that shows EVERYTHING going on in New Port Richey. It needs to show events months out so that others can plan accordingly. The technology exists to set up a calendar where multiple event organizers can enter their own information and where location scheduling conflicts are automatically blocked. The same calendar could even be displayed on multiple websites (the city’s website, Main Street’s website, the Chamber website, etc.).
We can make this happen. This Saturday’s cleanup should be the last city event that nearly gets lost in the shuffle. Now that it is on MY calendar, I’ll look forward to seeing you there!
Rob Marlowe, Mayor.
So is there a way to help people in organizations, who are a little averse to using free social media for promoting events in our community, increase their technological fluency enough to be able to get the word out? It could be a way to leverage getting fresh faces at events. Maybe some kind of workshop somewhere? Would a google communal calendar be effective enough to have the multiple plan on?
A Google communal calendar would certainly be an option.
Excellent suggestions about scheduling conflicts, what this says is that we are still living in a backwater town that is behind the times. It also says we have people in these positions who either are not knowledgeable or really do not care about their organizations growth. This town needs to hire a good IT company to do this all for them. If anyone knows of a good company that can do this at a reasonable cost let them know.. Why reasonable because no one has it in their budget right now…Sorry to say this town is continuing to remain in the past because the people in charge are in the past. Time to move forward. Either lead or get out of the way and allow other people to do a better job. Talking about it does not get anything done. The expression action speaks louder than words remains true. Lets get some action. Someone needs to take the bull by the horns and send a letter to each organization and have a joint meeting about web sites posting and implementing all that the Mayor has said. Now that he said it maybe he will also be the one that gets this started…I think he knows of a great IT company that could so all this…
Thanks for reading my post, I do not post very often but to read that we are still in the backwoods did disturb me as it should have you also…Go get them straightened out Mayor.
It isn’t that we are “backwater” or lacking in IT capabilities. The issue is that the city and the other major players all do their own thing with little coordination. There are several solutions out there that would cost less than a family dinner at the Dulcet, so the expense is not a concern.
Is it lack of coordination or is it that the City would very much rather release too little information than too much? One suggests assumes that city departments and workers aren’t very good at their jobs, the other suggests that they don’t want people to know how well the departments are functioning. I assume the latter.
It’s a pretty obvious effort to keep most everyone in the dark unless absolutely necessary. Sure, they post the bare minimum events and council meetings and the like–and they send out press releases for various items that are mostly fluff.
I never see Press Releases about an upcoming agenda items on the budget or an official statement about the Hacienda’s development. Your blog is about the only public mention of these events unless I have time to report on it, or Suncoast News runs the rare article.
The closest we get is the City Manager’s weekly report–something that I’ve been aiming to directly publish to citizen e-mails, but haven’t gotten to yet.
Government earns more trust when transparent, and New Port Richey is on a long list of government agencies that are as far from transparent as possible.
On a 1-10 scale I’d give NPR a 2 for transparency. This is part of why the City and its government has such a poor reputation.
A lack of transparency also makes it incredibly difficult for the citizenry to determine if a government is competent which is why I lean toward assuming incompetence when I have no information. This is why on the national level it’s such a big deal that we don’t know how some of the security functions of the state operate.
So, in summary, I have to disagree with your assessment that we’re not “backwater.” I think we are very much backwater but not because we lack the capability. It’s because we choose to be backwater and play the good-ole-boy game. It’s a conscious choice that Council members have refused to take the initiative to change the culture.
I still can’t believe that none of the council members are outraged that a police officer was excused through manipulation of evidence from a DUI by his department. Not only did that occur, but no one notified citizens. They kept it hush until someone in the media found out about it. EVEN THEN the reaction was basically “so what?” So out of touch.
Jon,
With all due respect, you are completely off the mark.
The city manager posts a weekly update and includes various media outlets on the distribution list. You can not lay the blame for our limited media coverage on the city. The news media simply isn’t what it used to be.
City council agendas and minutes are posted to the city website. Meetings are carried by both Brighthouse and Verizon. Certain meetings, like the budget meetings, are publicly noticed with paid advertising in the paper.
There was a detailed presentation on the Sims Park project last Tuesday night. There was a public gathering at the Hacienda last week that included the renderings for what the Hacienda will look like in a few months. Deputy Mayor Phillips led a set of THREE public meetings last month to discuss city issues the public and answer citizen questions.
The cold reality hardly matches the picture you describe in your comment.
We still have room for improvement. I post items of general interest in my blog. The calendar issue transcends just the city… we have other major players in the community that need to be part of the solution.
I’m not sure what you want the city to do regarding the former police officer. He lost his job. That will need to be punishment enough since we’ve long since moved beyond public floggings.
Rob
You missed (what I find to be) the most comprehensive Calendar for New Port Richey events:
http://newsportrichey.org/community-events-calendar/
Now what I could use is a few more people letting me know about events. All press releases and announcements can be sent to:
jrtietz@gmail.com
The only limitation is that I don’t post events outside of New Port Richey.
Well Rob, I’ve been saying that (lack of communication from city departments) for quite some time. And that includes not only a lack of sharing pertinent info from city hall that’s also very true of the rec center and the city would benefit greatly from that.
In fact, I know that to be true because I had a PR contract with the city specifically to do media promotions 3 yrs ago for the rec center and the center and pools was in the newspapers, online, on FB all the time…for 3.5 months. It built up summer camp, all the programs and influenced membership. And then we were cut because council saw us as an “interim public relations contract,” hired another PR office and promptly fell off the map. Sigh!
Not to complain about that, really, but still isn’t there a way for staff to do a better job of getting info out to the public earlier than a week in advance or none at all? It’s very discouraging.
Things should go on a consolidated calendar as soon as they are scheduled. Let me take that a step further: Things shouldn’t be considered scheduled UNTIL they are on the consolidated calendar.