100 Days- fuel and food crisis

I have added a commitment to convene a Fuel and Food Crisis Summit. Go to the 100 Days page for more.

100 Days update - promise regarding gaol

I have made some additions to my 100 Days document. These include a promise to address urgently the impact on Nowra of the new gaol. Click here to read - the amendments are in red.

map

You can click on the image to enlarge. 

I have placed a map of our electoral wards - derived from the map at the council's web site - alongside an image of the coast from GoogleEarth. 

The lower lip of Jervis Bay is missing from the ward map - the Federal Jervis Bay Territory is not in NSW or the Shoalhaven. 

wikipedia

I have not written much here but have written lots of other stuff in recent days... as well as meeting lots of people. It is an enormous privilege of my situation to be able to listen to many different people and hear their stories and concerns.

I have written a 'letter to the editor', which may or may not be deemed fit for publication somewhere or other. I mentioned to someone that I had quoted the Wikipedia definition of 'Rule of Law' - something we lack around here in certain important regards. I was asked '"since when has Wikipedia been an authoritative resource". I replied that the Wikipedia is a wonderful example of the things that can be done by community, as distinct from things that can be done by an obsessive group of people tucked in a back room exercising power. Wikipedia has these three rules which are monitored by its devotees:

1. neutral point of view
2. verifiability
3. no original research

 For a delightful account of how the process of developing Wikipedia entries works, read this article in the New York Review of Books.

I have made some minor entries in Wikipedia, and made some additions. As mentor to some empowerment projects in Africa, I have been concerned to bring more knowledge of the 'real' world into the 'virtual world' where more and more people seem to live. As for example, needing to connect Amina's project and its arguments for support of women in the Congo to the mainstream of thinking about such things, I added a 'Status of Women' section to the Wikipedia entry for Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since I wrote that, someone else has added a photo and someone has linked to another, more substantial article on the same subject.

You will see in that article reference to a project by women in Bukavu. That links, via the Bukavu article in Wikipedia and more immediately via a footnote, to this project for which I have been mentor (Amina's project).

It will always be my intention to relate local government back to community. 

D

p.s. and when my youngest grandson was named Darliston, for the name of the town in Jamaica where his dad was born, Darli's mother Bindi and I sat down at the computer and put Darliston (the town) into Wikipedia. Someone out there will add flesh and bring that entry up to date sometime!  Small steps, recorded and added to, make the big picture reflect reality rather than run over lesser people and circumstances.

Important developments

The Department of Local Government has decided that there must be a period before the elections where council make no major decisions. Read the statement here.

On Friday 20 June, the Department issued a Model Code of Conduct which provides a positive basis for a new council. 

This fits well with my document issued this morning on how I would seek to shape a new kind of council culture within 100 days.

Quote of the week

I have been to various communities over the last few days. Write to me if you want me to visit your community. Copy and correct dennisargall[at]gmail.com.

I was finishing several points about difficult times ahead. I said: "... but in the end, Council can't solve all the problems." To which the instant response:

"... but it doesn't have to make the problems worse. In the last four years Council may have created enough disgust to make people act. The Council [majority] may be the catalyst in its own downfall."

Finally, though, I have met someone, just one person, who has responded to my offering my pamphlet saying: "we'd better not get onto that." We didn't I took this as support for the mayor. I take note, however, of a comment last night that over several elections everyone seems to want change, but it doesn't happen. 

other ways of doing things

Here is a Canadian paper about ways community can decide on local funds allocation. Can we do that?

And here an Australian paper arguing the importance of diversity for communities to prosper.

The South Coast Register has called on me to come up with specific policy. Among my specific objectives is to avoid pulling specific decisions out of my pocket. This seems an important core concept. Somewhere, in the process, firm decisions have to be taken on projects and on broad plans. But it is not for me to go to an election with a whole bundle of specific commitments invented out of the air. 

Systemic change is a very specific objective. Saying that we must, with communities, find new ways of integrating community with council process is very specific. I do not venture to say exactly how it is to be done. Plants (and people) grow from seeds. This is a seeding idea. I place those links above not to suggest they provide the answers but to make clear that such things are being ventured elsewhere and ought to be ventured here. The worst thing you can do in any innovation process is say -especially for government to say - do this. Which inevitably turns out wrong, because it wasn't developed and agreed in a team environment, there is no commitment to it, it is just another imposition. Which is what we have to escape from...