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The Palo Alto site of WeMatter.com will be a hub for the elections of the city council and then for the city government, This page discussed the plan and schedule for the development of the site. |
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Discussion
Forum T.B.D.
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Stage 0 -- Design
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Stage 1 -- Definition
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Stage 2 -- Posting
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WeMatter.com > Issues > PaloAlto > Site Plan
WeMatter.com is a project to develop an Internet Town meeting, hub that assists in connecting the citizens with their government officials. The
Palo Alto "site" is a first attempt to apply this project to a local government by providing a central area for information and links to candidates and other organizations that evaluate the candidates. In addition the site is coordinating a set of issues that allow the candidates to show how they differ from eachother.
Stage 0 -- Initial design -- There will be an election for 4 of the 9 members of the Palo Alto City Council on November 9 and this site is being designed to coordinate the information for this election. An initial contact will be made to all the candidates and the media to inform them that this site is being developed. The following will be available at the initial stage:
- A discussion of council, elections and job
- Links to the Candidates biographies, E-mail, Profiles, Issue
positions
- Other sites -- Links to other information sites.
There will be "place holders" for the issues area and the forum as these will not be defined or implemented during Stage 0, but their general form will be defined and implemented later.
Stage 1 -- Issue and Forum definition -- In addition to linking to the information generated by the candidates and the other groups involved in this election, the WeMatter.com site will host a set of issues that it is hoped will allow the voters to distinguish among the candidates in an unbiased objective manner.
- Issues -- Rather than selecting the issues that are of
interest to a specific group, e.g. the League of Women Voters, or
the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, etc., the issues will be
selected by the incumbents, and rather than asking the candidates
to "open ended-ly" state their ideals, WeMatter.com will
ask them how they did or would vote on the specific issues.
These issues will be chosen by asking the Incumbents to provide a set of 3 votes over the last year that were important and that were not unanimous among the candidates. This procedure was developed so that:
- The issues would be concrete, e.g. specific votes rather than general positions
- The issues would be considered important by the incumbents as representing their position as different from that of at least one other incumbent rather than having them chosen by an external group
- The procedure would require little extra effort on the part of the candidates.
- Though the Incumbents are able to choose the issues, this
"benefit" is compensated by the fact that the Challengers
are not on record as to their vote.
Associated with each issue (by Stage 2) will be:- How each Incumbent voted or how a Challenger says they would have voted.
- A text form of the issue that was voted on, and a link to the City Council minutes that contains discussion of the issue.
- Any short comment that a candidate wants to make to elaborate
on their vote.
Note: If I don't get a sufficient number of issues from the incumbents than I may ask the challengers and other Palo Alto groups to contribute their set of issues
- Budget-- All candidates will be asked to state how they would "balance" the budget.(Probably by Stage 2) -- I believe that there is a city budget that was proposed that was in debt by $10m. One objective way to understand a candidate is to see how they would change this budget to balance it. This will allow the voters to determine the priorities of the candidates. The way this will be done is:
Note: I have contacted the League of Woman Voters and will be coordinating with them and the other groups in the area to ensure that any information I collect can be used by them and that I do not overlay their approach.
- The baseline budget will be defined. At this time, I believe that there is one, 2003-2005 Proposed Operating Budget
- It may be that this budget is incorrect and changes in the revenues can balance it, but for the sake of our study, we are proposing that each Candidate that this as a baseline.
- Each candidate should alter 10 budget items, expenses and revenues
to alter the overall budget by $10m (i.e. increase the Revenues
- Expenses)
- 10 is arbitrary, but I think it will help to allow the voters to look at a limited number of budget changes
It is understood that the actual budget process is more complicated and that the candidates proposed changes are not meant to be a commitment, but just an indication of their priorities.
I expect that in this stage the candidates will have some input as to how this way of showing their budget priorities can be improved.
- Forum -- An open ended discussion forum, http://paloaltoforum.com
will be set up so that any voter can submit an issue that they think
is important and other voters can discuss the issue. The candidates,
and their representative can also post their comments on this forum.
I am also looking into, in addition, defining a moderated forum
for each candidate who wants so that they can control the postings
that they want to discuss.
- The un-moderated forum will allow a free flowing discussion of Palo Alto issues.
- How issues are added to this forum, how "inappropriate" language, postings, etc. are controlled, and other forum governance decisions are not yet made, but will be posted so that the participants know how the forum is controlled.
- The candidate forums, if they choose to participate, will be fully under the control of the candidates.
Stage 2) -- Information posting -- Once the site is defined and the issues, baseline budget, and the procedures are defined, the responses from the candidates will be collected and posted. These will be
- Issues -- The comments, and votes for the challengers on the issues
- Budget -- The alterations in the base line budget that decrease its deft by $10m and any comments
- Forum -- The addition of topics of interest as they develop from the Forum.
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July 27, 2003 17:08