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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

2ND OPEN GOVT. FORUM STIMULATES CITIZEN INIATIVES




Salisbury City Council members Debbie Campbell and Terry Cohen held their second public input meeting Tuesday night on the topic of increasing transparency in city government. After a brief recap of developments from the previous such forum held in February, participants were introduced to citizen-driven initiatives on budget oversight and governmental accountability taking place in other locales.

Following the presentations, attendees were given an opportunity to toss out questions about a wide variety of topics. Then they broke into workgroups where they defined projects of interest. These included collection of public safety data, a spending affordability analysis for short- and long-term planning, and access to line item financial data of the city, to name a few.

“We were pleased to see a number of new faces during this meeting,” Campbell said, noting that some previous participants also came while others who could not attend noted their desire to stay involved. “These citizens are ready to roll up their sleeves and make a positive contribution,” Campbell added.

Further details from the meeting will be forthcoming on their website, HERE within the next day or two. For more information, contact council members Debbie Campbell, 410-860-0893, debbiescampbell@comcast.net, and Terry Cohen, 410-845-0296, Terry@TerryCohen.com.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a shame it wasn't well attended. Looks like about a dozen people there counting Terry and Debbie.

joe albero said...

Actually, that's not true. I arrived the last 10 minutes of their meeting and wasn't able to capture pictures of all of the people who were there. I went to the County Council Meeting first. Sorry for the misleading pictures.

Tim Chaney said...

I have to hand it to Debbie and Terry, they are reaching out to the public.

With all they have going on in their personal lives like the rest of us, they still find the time to research their provided material, and are always well prepared for our city council meetings.

They are spending enormous time to try make for a more transparent government and well informed citizens so we can make wise decisions at election time.

They really stuck their necks out for us and I thank both Terry and Debbie. It's like Terry said, "I'll be able to go home and sleep well tonight."

Well the other three probably slept well that night also, they just don't give a crap about us.