Why Natick Gov Explained?
Having been involved in municipal Government since I was 19 years old, I have attended far too many late-night meetings and dealt with numerous "issues of the day". With the advent of the cable access programming, more visibility and ability to drop in on things are available now than when I first got involved. However, it is fair to say that even recently a small percentage of the towns population pay close attention and much of this work happens in meeting rooms in Town Hall with rows of empty chairs available to the public.
Every once in awhile a controversial or important topic takes place or confronts a community and there is an uptick in activity, attention, and people seeking to participate. I think I have experienced about 4 or 5 such upticks like this in nearly 25 years of municipal service. If these happenings are like tsunamis 1 or 2 of them were mild, 1 or 2 of them were damaging and significant, and there is the COVID tsunami of 2020, this is the mother of them all, this is Sumatra, Indonesia Christmas of 04. this is the big one. Add in the requirement for municipal meetings to be held on video conferencing platforms, where committee and board members participate from home, and the citizens of the town can attend and actively participate from their couch or den, and the intensity of the event heightens.
Invariably when a rush of new people choose to jump in and figure out what is going on, why is this important to me, and why does everyone think it is so complicated? I've often been the one on the other side of the table trying to explain how it works and attempting to explain why what you might think is a simple solution isn't actually a solution at all. Time at these meetings is often limited and the crisis is at hand so bringing a community along by teaching the rules of what seems like an unnecessarily complicated game is difficult.
I applaud those that have quickly deployed their efforts to quickly learn and work to educate those that have not expended the same amount of effort. They have tapped into the resources and people out these who have been at this for some time in an effort to educate people as effectively as possible. The purpose of this blog for me, in the height of the municipal tsunami of 2020 is to try to explain some of these complicated themes in as easy a manner as possible to understand. I always attempt to explain things in an analogous manner so that it can be in terms that anyone could understand. there is some danger in this that not all concepts or analogies fit every circumstance, but they do more often than not. As I have dedicated lots of time to Natick on the inside, this is my attempt to be of some assistance to the community from the outside.
I have a list of topics I am going to try and write up posts for and if there are other topics I miss that some would like a similar explanation for, simply leave a comment or email me at dansullivan2@gmail.com
The first few topics I intend to hit on are:
How does the Natick budget process work, why is it set up this way?
Why there is zero benefit to municipal leaders agreeing at the beginning of a budget process.
Why are structural budget deficits a really bad idea?
What is 'transparency" and why is it sop hard to achieve?
These will get me started, and Im sure I will come up with some more.
Having been involved in municipal Government since I was 19 years old, I have attended far too many late-night meetings and dealt with numerous "issues of the day". With the advent of the cable access programming, more visibility and ability to drop in on things are available now than when I first got involved. However, it is fair to say that even recently a small percentage of the towns population pay close attention and much of this work happens in meeting rooms in Town Hall with rows of empty chairs available to the public.
Every once in awhile a controversial or important topic takes place or confronts a community and there is an uptick in activity, attention, and people seeking to participate. I think I have experienced about 4 or 5 such upticks like this in nearly 25 years of municipal service. If these happenings are like tsunamis 1 or 2 of them were mild, 1 or 2 of them were damaging and significant, and there is the COVID tsunami of 2020, this is the mother of them all, this is Sumatra, Indonesia Christmas of 04. this is the big one. Add in the requirement for municipal meetings to be held on video conferencing platforms, where committee and board members participate from home, and the citizens of the town can attend and actively participate from their couch or den, and the intensity of the event heightens.
Invariably when a rush of new people choose to jump in and figure out what is going on, why is this important to me, and why does everyone think it is so complicated? I've often been the one on the other side of the table trying to explain how it works and attempting to explain why what you might think is a simple solution isn't actually a solution at all. Time at these meetings is often limited and the crisis is at hand so bringing a community along by teaching the rules of what seems like an unnecessarily complicated game is difficult.
I applaud those that have quickly deployed their efforts to quickly learn and work to educate those that have not expended the same amount of effort. They have tapped into the resources and people out these who have been at this for some time in an effort to educate people as effectively as possible. The purpose of this blog for me, in the height of the municipal tsunami of 2020 is to try to explain some of these complicated themes in as easy a manner as possible to understand. I always attempt to explain things in an analogous manner so that it can be in terms that anyone could understand. there is some danger in this that not all concepts or analogies fit every circumstance, but they do more often than not. As I have dedicated lots of time to Natick on the inside, this is my attempt to be of some assistance to the community from the outside.
I have a list of topics I am going to try and write up posts for and if there are other topics I miss that some would like a similar explanation for, simply leave a comment or email me at dansullivan2@gmail.com
The first few topics I intend to hit on are:
How does the Natick budget process work, why is it set up this way?
Why there is zero benefit to municipal leaders agreeing at the beginning of a budget process.
Why are structural budget deficits a really bad idea?
What is 'transparency" and why is it sop hard to achieve?
These will get me started, and Im sure I will come up with some more.
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