The Daily Hustle: 3/31/11

The city’s never wanting for public input – see the efforts to rename the Solid Waste Services department. But in an attempt to harness that input on more than the occasional renaming, the city’s launched a website where citizens can sound off on any number of issues.

At speakupaustin.org, citizens can leave comments or suggestions on whatever they like, but the city is also looking for some specific suggestions: their first area of focus seems to be the growing pains along Rainey Street.

The service is piggybacked on Austin-based Sentient Services’ icanmakeitbetter.com platform,designed to similarly solicit suggestions for improvement. “This site will make our community engagement process more accessible and ensure we are doing all we can to solicit input from the entire community – not just those who can attend in-person meetings,” says city Community Engagement Consultant Larry Schooler is a presser announcing the service.

… In other news, more e-mail releases from City Council, this time from Laura Morrison, who writes “in the few cases when I may have conducted city business with email on my personal account, my policy is to forward the email to my city account. This practice is consistent with the draft policy that was discussed at the March 29th Council Work Session, which I will continue. Upon review, I have identified five emails that I overlooked in forwarding to my city account. I have now made the correction.” The nine pages of messages include a note to Morrison and Chris Riley from the Texas Observer, looking to preserve $20,000 in cultural arts funding they receive; a message to Bill Spelman seemingly poking fun at a simplified TV news report on Formula 1-related business, Ryan Clinton sounding off on animal shelter candidates; and previously reported brainstorming on AISD funding fixes from constituents.

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