City Council Chooses the Citizen as a Goal for Upcoming Years

Hello all,

On Wednesday night the city council had a goal setting workshop at Beeb’s in Livermore. This was a most interesting night and a night that was open to the public. Throughout the evening, we reviewed a citizen’s survey and city department heads provided the public and council with a status report of their prospective departments.

We then moved to defining the priorities for the coming two years. As you may or may not know, with the downturn in the economy, severe cuts have been made and the maintenance on local infrastructure has been delayed. The time to pay that piper is rapidly approaching in a slowly recovering economy where we simply do not have the ability to fund everything we want.

Throughout the process we identified key items that are crucial. Click here for the 2012-2014 City Council Goals. For today, I would like everyone to focus on number two — public engagement. Through the past election, one of the things I heard from people was that the city council does not listen. Well here I am Livermore telling you that this council has placed engagement of citizens as one of the top priorities. I for one am very excited to see this implemented and hope that you, the citizen, truly feel involved to the level you want. 

Over the next two years, we will be working more and more to reach out to the public. You can already see changes on the city website that make it more interactive and easy to use. If you have never been to the city website please check it out here. There is a tremendous amount of information about services your city provides as well as events and other useful information.

Additionally, how many of you have friended the city’s Facebook? If not click here to do so. Through the Facebook page, the city also reaches out to you, the citizen. Your city is now engaging in Social Media. Click here to see access those sites.  

Over the next few years, we may see a council member monthly blog on the city website where each of the five council members can speak to various issues. We may see an increased presence in social media. All of this is for you, the citizens of Livermore.

So, this is a two-way street. Im asking you, the citizen to get involved. Access the social media, come to a meeting, email your council member. Let us know what you want. Any feedback on this process is greatly appreciated. As always, thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this blog and to respond.

Thank you.

Laureen