don’t want to talk to those people
You may recall Mayor Pam Iorio brought up the need to improve public transportation in Tampa. Now County Commissioner Mark Sharpe wants to begin discussing Hillsborough County’s transportation issues. I’d link to it, but I cannot find a copy of his letter to the Tribune (published May 18) online. Without question, the subject of long-term local transportation needs to be addressed. And if you look at Sharpe’s letter, you’ll see this is really only the beginning of an undertaking (we hope it goes further!).
Assuming Sharpe is serious about addressing this need, and he really wants “community buy-in and broad… political support,” I have a suggestion. Get a website. If you want to promote this (or any) idea, you need to be a part of the new millennium, and add your voice to the internet. Sharpe (and Ronda Storms) campaigned and won without any type of VoteForMe.com, .net, or .org, but you can only find additional support if your voice is easily found on the web.
You’ll notice that very few of your elected officials use this cheap and effective communication. Look at all this dead space that was alive and kicking just six months ago: Brian Blair and Mel Martinez are still campaigning for seats they won. Ken Hagan also won, so he let his expire. The losers let their websites fade to nothing, or even worse, continue to campaign for past elections (except those who try, try again).
The only candidate to continue using her campaign website to stump for change is Betty Castor. She now is driving a campaign for fair redistricting in Florida. But even she let go of the BettyBlog.
Every elected official should maintain a personal website at their own expense to communicate with (or at least to) his constituents. It just makes sense to recycle their campaign space. If those candidates who were not elected truly want to help their community, they should use theirs too.
It’s interesting that yours truly and a host of other regular citizens do more to communicate with their neighbors than the people who work for us.
Tags: tampa
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