For more than a year now, as you’re Citizen Auditor, which is defined as a fellow citizen committed to holding our government(s) accountable for transparency to the public and all ‘people’, I have promoted a transparent and accountable city website. It is time to define what those terms mean. According to the dictionary: 1.) Transparency is defined as able to be seen through and easy to notice or understand; 2.) Accountability is defined as the quality or state of being accountable; especially: an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions.
During the last year we have endeavored to encourage Mayor Procop and City Council members to provide updates on a timely basis (timely is defined as less than two weeks, hopefully less than a month) the agendas, minutes, videos of meetings, and financial/operational information to the city website: www.mytwinsburg.com for all of the public meetings of the Council, Commissions, and Boards. Just for the record, the city code (see below) mandates all public meetings to be in the Council chambers and audio/visually recorded:
111.18 UTILIZATION OF THE AUDIO/VIDEO EQUIPMENT IN COUNCIL CHAMBERS.
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Our elected representative’s performance in providing for transparency and accountability at the city website is just unacceptable in our modern electronic age. There is still not a single budgetary or financial document available at the city website, except that provided by the Auditor of State’s office (thanks to ACT you can see a webpage dedicated to Twinsburg’s finance reports at www.activecitizensoftwinsburg.com ). City Council has budgeted and authorized the spending of $54,000,000 from our City Treasury this year and with a full time IT department and 165 full time employees our city website is a travesty and disappointment at best. Take a look at Macedonia or Solon websites or the Twinsburg Schools and you will see what a commitment to providing the public with timely information, well organized and an intuitive website looks like. This city can do better, why the reluctance to maintain a current and updated website? If you want to know you will have to contact Mayor Procop or your Council members, their contact information is available at the website. Good luck.
An example of transparency and accountability would be the following: Every five (5) years our City Charter requires a Charter Review Commission (CRC) be appointed to review and propose amendments to our City Charter. This year the CRC began meeting in February and ended on May 5th with nine (9) proposed amendments scheduled for presentation to City Council on Tuesday, May 27th at 7:30 pm by the various CRC members. I ask you, the shareholders of Twinsburg, if you have seen any meeting announcements, meeting agendas, or other notifications that would inform or encourage you to attend one of the CRC meetings in any media formats? Most of you will say, no. Why is that? Is this intentional? Is this deliberate? Don’t you know that your suppose to go hunting all over for this information, you should visit City Hall or the library to find this information posted on a wall or hidden in a box, there is always the sign in front of City Hall, you just need to drive around to a few places with all your spare time. If you were looking at the city website, you will find amateur CRC agendas with no information on what was proposed to be discussed only the meeting date and times and ‘OLD BUSINESS’. What effort was put forward by the CRC members to promote public participation? Most citizens are working and busy keeping up with family obligations, why should anyone have to jump thru hoops to be informed so that they might consider attending a CRC meeting? “Information is the currency of democracy”, as Thomas Jefferson said. If you want to be informed, start by viewing the meetings of the CRC, all of them, from beginning to end at the Active Citizens of Twinsburg website: www.activecitizensoftwinsburg.com and click on the Charter Review Commission tab.
It is my opinion that the Charter Review Commission members should be elected by the ‘people’ so they would be more independent, not obligated to any politician, and committed to learning exactly what a Charter is and what it does for the people and to the people. History has taught me that secrecy is the primary facilitator of abuse of power and corruption in government and that is why there are ‘Sunshine Laws’ folks!
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For those that accuse me of never having anything good to say; I would like to commend the public safety forces (police/fire/emt), service departments, and the parks/recreation city staff members on their website areas. They are professionally presented and administered. Thank you.
Currently, if you visited the city website looking for CRC information, you would have found only 2 of the 9 meeting minutes available. Yes, of course the city will inform you when they get good and ready to, but that hardly meets the definition of transparency or accountability. There will plenty of excuses to go around, just wait and see. Did you ever hear what excuses actually are, I was once told: They are lies wrapped in the skin of reason!
What would be so difficult in providing a webpage dedicated to the CRC with meeting videos (this does not include wandering all over YouTube either), what are the proposed amendments being discussed or considered, and putting the items on the agenda: Isn’t that what professional organizations do? The CRC only happens every five (5) years and our Charter is the most important document for the people to control our government! There are some who believe we Citizen Auditors are just too picky and say cut the Mayor and Council a little brake here! Well, if it were not for watchdogs, the news media, and citizen auditors the public would never know anything most likely, until it is too late or would only hear what the ‘politicians’ want us to hear. There have been over one million Americans who have died and more millions that have endured serious life changing injuries/issues for any American to simply give away any ‘freedoms’ or ‘rights’ so dearly fought and paid for in blood. I for one intend on keeping the public informed until I draw my last breath in this world and I will not be deterred by anyone! Freedom is not free! Thank you veterans for all you do and have done for all of us in America, God bless you all.
I thank God daily for what he has blessed this nation with and continually pray that we as Americans reunite behind the principals that our founding fathers put forth in this great nation and return with a repentant heart to our Creator whom endowed us with those inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I do thank all those whom serve us as public servants and only ask that our elected representatives dwell upon their oaths of office and serve all the people and not just some or those they agree with. Mutual respect is a character trait that we all need to work more on achieving, me included. Visit the Citizen Auditors of Ohio website, become informed and learn what governmental accounting is and how to understand it at www.citizenauditorohio.com . For more of the local news about your government in Twinsburg, visit the Active Citizens of Twinsburg at www.activecitizensoftwinsburg.com