Beat Reporter Project Proposal

Updated July 18, 2010

David Dahlbacka

Summary

The Beat Reporter Project has two purposes: (1) to help citizens keep track of what its government is doing; and (2) assert the right of individuals to observe government operations under the Open Meeting Law. This project is inspired by Jadwiga Forbes, a long-time Somerville activist who saw government as a participatory sport.

The Beat Reporter Project is a network of committed individuals, each of whom takes one or more issues or organizations as his or her beat. These Beat Reporters would post event announcements and event reports related to their focus of interest on a new Somerville Voices (SV) category list named “Beat Reporter” for access by the Somerville community.

Each Beat Reporter would choose a level and mode of commitment. There would be three levels of commitment:

1. Tracker: A person who tracks an issue or organization on-line and in public media and announces coming events.
2. Reporter: A Tracker who also attends events and reports on what happened.
3. Researcher: A Reporter who also researches and posts background material giving the context for events.

There would be two modes of commitment:

1. Issue-oriented. A person who tracks and reports on organizations and events associated with an issue of interest.
2. Organization-oriented. A person who tracks and reports on a particular organization, such as a board or commission.

People might team up to share these commitments. For instance, one person might track an organization, another might attend meetings and write up what happened, and a third might research and write up background. Similarly, one person might track an issue area and also serve as reporter for a specific committee.

In addition to these roles, there could be special roles shared among a small group of individuals, such as:

1. Bulletin Board Tracker: Visits the bulletin board in the lobby of City Hall and reports changes, particularly schedule changes, to the rest of the Beat Reporters.
2. Agenda Tracker. Visits City Hall on request and gets copies of agendas, which are often only available on paper the day of the meeting.
3. Permit Tracker. Visits the Permitting Department at Department of Public Works on request and checks on pulled permits.

Motivation

On November 19, 2009, the Somerville Design Review Committee held a public meeting to review and make recommendations on revisions to the IKEA Special Permit with Site Plan Review. IKEA wanted to incorporate “gateway” elements, including 80’ flag poles, on Assembly Square Drive. Although I was interested in the IKEA development and was tracking Somerville meetings at the time, I did not know about this meeting until the day after it occurred.

On March 4, 2010, a joint meeting of the Somerville Planning Board and Land Use Committee met to discuss zoning changes proposed by ten Somerville citizens that would, among other proposals, mandate disclosure of all applicants for a special permit at the time of application. It was not clear from the posted agenda that this meeting included a public hearing. I attended the meeting as an observer and discovered that it was a public hearing only when I read the paper agenda.

The usual response to such situations is to complain about lack of transparency in government. While it is useful to point out problems, mere complaining leaves the remedy to the discretion of public officials, while electing new public officials only changes who has the discretion.

Transparency requires both an open window and people to look through it. Although the Open Meeting Law gives people the right to observe meetings, in practice no one usually shows up. People feel they don't have the time, or that showing up wouldn't change anything anyway. The end result is that meetings are usually attended only by those who directly benefit from the outcome.

There is no guarantee that anything will change if people show up. The only guarantee is that nothing will change if people don’t show up.

Description of Need

To accomplish anything meaningful, any organization needs three things: information, people, and resources (usually money). Of these, the most important is information. No organization can influence events it does not know are happening. Information motivates and directs people and attracts and prioritizes resources.

Information is particularly difficult to get about government operations. Although citizens are legally entitled to observe government meetings, historically this has been inconvenient. I have several times showed up to observe a meeting, only to discover that it had been rescheduled. There was a paper notice on the bulletin board, and I discovered from checking the web site that the old notice had been taken down without cross-reference.

Note, however, that as of July 1, 2010, new guidelines for enforcing the Open Meeting Law went into effect:

• Except in an emergency, a public body must post a meeting notice on a registered official web site at least 48 hours in advance, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays.
• Notice must include date, time, and place of meeting.
• Notice must include a listing of topics the chair reasonably anticipates will be discussed at the meeting, with enough specificity that the public can understand what is to be discussed.
• Public bodies are encouraged to update the notice with new topics arising within the 48 hour period before the meeting.
• Chairs should not post notices so far in advance that there is a high likelihood of new topics arising.

Proposed Solution

The Beat Reporter Proposal describes a self-organizing framework for gathering information systematically and in a distributed manner. This will have the following benefits:

• Asserting the right to citizen oversight. By showing up, each Beat Reporter asserts our collective right to participate in the running of our city, state, and country.
• Developing knowledge. By long-term observation of an issue or organization, the Beat Reporters get to know the policies and actors of that issue or organization.
• Distributing knowledge. By pooling the knowledge of many Beat Reporters, a clearer picture of what is happening can be constructed.
• Nucleating public participation. Each Beat Reporter is the center of a group of friends and acquaintances who are potential participants in public forums and other actions.
• Preventing burnout. When the burden of information gathering is on a small number of people, these people become tired and may drop out.

The following table summarizes the capabilities and tasks required of a Beat Reporter at the various levels of participation. People of different capabilities may team up to perform these tasks for a particular organization.

Beat Reporter Roles

Media Support

I propose that we use the existing blog Somerville Voices as primary media support. I envision the following new SV features:

Beat Reporter Topic Category

There would be a new topic category, Beat Reporter, in parallel with the existing categories such as Accessibility, Development and Zoning, Transportation, etc. When added, topics would be assigned category Beat Reporter in addition to whatever other category might apply and appear on the Beat Report list.

Beat Reporter Root Page

There would be a Beat Reporter root page that would provide access to the following information in appropriate format:

• Introductory paragraph describing the origin, motivation, and ground rules of the list.
• Link to list of Beat Reporters, by name, with Summary Descriptions of their interests. A Beat Reporter may be signed up to track one or more issues or organizations. Clicking on a list item would bring one to a profile containing the following information:
  • Orientation [Issue-Oriented | Organization-Oriented].
  • Level of Commitment [Tracker | Reporter | Researcher].
  • Full Description of the issue or organization. This might include the Somerville Voices content categories postings will usually be associated with.
  • Name and e-mail address for the Beat Reporter.
• Link to list of Organizations or Issues represented by Summary Description. Clicking on a list item would bring one to a profile containing:
  • Full Description of the issue or organization. This might include the Somerville Voices content categories postings will usually be associated with.
  • List of links to profiles for the Beat Reporters covering it.
  • Link to a registration form for covering an issue or organization, including the level of commitment desired.
  • Link to a form for adding an item to the list.
• Beat Reporter topics in blog order (latest first). These take the following form:
  • Event Tracking Posts. These give the date, time, and other information for a coming event. If possible, background information and links should be provided to indicate why this event is important. To aid in searching, the date should be included in the title.
  • Beat Reports. These should describe what actually happened at the meeting that was important, providing if possible necessary background information and links. Some may prefer to simply provide annotated meeting notes. If this is a Beat Report for a tracked meeting, the Beat Report should contain a link to the Event Tracking Post for the meeting, and a Comment should be added to Event Tracking Post containing a link to the Beat Report. To aid in searching, the date should be included in the title.

Signup forms would be premoderated, as would the Beat Reporter topics themselves. To encourage responsible behavior, we would encourage people to sign up under their own names. We cannot prevent beat reporters from injecting their own opinions into Beat Reporter write-ups, but we can at least ask that they provide value in the form of facts.

Discussion

The following points have come up in discussions of this proposal:

• If the Beat Reporter category were created on Somerville Voices, it would be available to all Somerville residents who wished to pursue their agenda, including a disruptive one. There is no way to avoid this. The only remedy is proactive vigilance.
• Somerville Voices already supports some of this implicitly, in the form of categories for postings. However, SV does not systematically track meetings or organizations, and there are no commitments from individuals to either track meetings or report on them.
• Not all meetings are interesting. Zoning Board of Appeals meetings, for instance, include many issues at the level of obtaining a variance to allow a dormer on the third floor of a house.  On the other hand, both the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals deal with issues that are fundamental to Somerville’s future. The only way to know if a meeting is interesting is to track the agenda closely and post on it very quickly so that people who may care about the issues can show up.
• It may be difficult to get people to make a long-term commitment. We can but ask. The scope of participation is kept low deliberately:
  
  1 issue, organization, or meeting = 1 person or team
  
  Somerville will get the level of transparency it is willing to show up for.
• There is likely to be a slow ramp-up as people learn the benefits of the program. I would count the first year of this project a huge success if at the end, twelve issues or organizations were covered by twelve people or teams.
• People should only be asked to do things they already do or like doing. It follows that people who, for instance, don’t like attending meetings shouldn’t be coerced into doing so.
• Project management should be more real than apparent. It follows that we should confine ourselves to establishing the Beat Reporter category and task guidelines, recruiting participants, and maybe holding an occasional information session.
• This proposal focuses primarily on government and government-supported organizations, which as taxpayers we have a moral as well as legal right to track and report on. There is also value in tracking other public organizations, but this should be done cautiously. Nongovernmental organizations have a right to decide who attends their meetings, and these rights should be respected.
• For obvious reasons, financial support for this program should not be sought from organizations being tracked by it.

Rollout Status

As of July 18, 2010, the following rollout actions have been taken:

1. Proposed the Beat Reporter Project to Somerville Voices. The Beat Reporter proposal was accepted in March.
2. Asked the SV sysop to add the Beat Reporter category. He did so in April, 2010.
3. Began posting to Beat Reporter shortly thereafter. I also began asking around for people to join in.
4. After noticing that some of my old event postings and notes were appropriate, asked the sysop to add them to the Beat Reporter category. He then changed my profile to allow me to edit my own posts.
5. After noticing that some other people were writing up meetings, asked the sysop of allow me to change other people's categories. He allowed this. After asking permission to add their posts to Beat Reporter, I added them.
6. Requested that the sysop make changes needed to support signing up in the SV profile.
7. Wrote an introductory posting for SV. This introduces the Beat Reporter concept and lays the groundwork for signing up, once the profile support is complete.

The following are in process:

8. Draft an introductory paragraph for the main Beat Reporter page. This contains the same material as the introductory posting, with further details about the profile support.
9. Once the profile support is finished, work with the sysop to finish and publish the Beat Reporter main page.
10. Write a follow up posting for SV, introducing the signup procedure.
11. Continue posting and continue recruiting.

Note that I do not assign people to predefined lists of issues or committees. I have concluded this is impractical. I will instead encourage people to participate as they see fit.

Appendix: Preliminary List of Subject Organizations

This preliminary list contains organizations related to transit-oriented sustainable development in Somerville. Groups with other interests will develop other lists.

Somerville City Government

1. Somerville Bicycle Committee
2. Somerville Board of Aldermen
3. Somerville Board of Health
4. Somerville City Hall Bulletin Board (changes)
5. Somerville Committee on Land Use
6. Somerville Committee on Legislative Matters
7. Somerville Committee on Traffic and Parking
8. Somerville Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee
9. Somerville Conservation Commission
10. Somerville Design Review Committee
11. Somerville Environment and Energy Committee
12. Somerville Finance Committee
13. Somerville Health and Safety Committee
14. Somerville Housing and Community Development Committee
15. Somerville Office of Sustainability and Environment
16. Somerville Planning Board (Reporter: David Dahlbacka)
17. Somerville Planning Department, Franey Road (permits)
18. Somerville ResiStat (one per ward and special group)
19. Somerville Traffic Commission.
20. Somerville Traffic Department
21. Somerville Zoning Board of Appeals

Regional and State Government

22. Boston Central Transportation Planning Staff (CTPS)
23. Boston Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC)
24. Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO)
25. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA)
26. Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)
27. Massachusetts Department of Transportation  (DOT)
28. Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA)
29. Massachusetts Toxic Waste Cleanup.
30. Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA)

National Government

31. United States Department of Transportation (Region 1 – New England)
32. United States EPA (Mystic River Region).

Other

33. Assembly Square Public Advisory Committee
34. Organizations in neighboring towns (Arlington, Cambridge, Medford, Everett).

Updated 19-Jul-2010