An open letter to Mayor Bob Pringle;

Mayor Pringle, I expect you will be interested in having a quick look at my new blog at http://shininglightonchatsworth.wordpress.com/.

You will see that the supporting information for this week's council meeting, which was sent to me on Monday by email, is available under the tab "Council Agenda Packages." This marks the first time that background information for a council meeting is generally available.

I hereby request that council reconsider the email approach that you agreed in June (but didn't implement in any meaningful way until August). Why should people have to make a special request for information that is "public?" It would be far better for you to simply make this information available on the Chatsworth website as a matter of course. It probably takes more time and effort to maintain an email list of recipients than to simply post the information and be done with it.

As you know, the email sent to me Monday had all of the documents bundled together (there were actually 2 large packages). They are posted as received (for the record), but then I made a major improvement by separating the various supporting documents and creating links to them within the Agenda. This is much more user-friendly in at least two ways: first, there are people in Chatsworth who still have dial-up internet connections and cannot download huge packages or receive emails with huge attachments; and second, not everybody needs or wants everything.

I haven't ever heard you speak in terms of "customer service," but in large measure, that's the business that municipalities are in. With respect, I strongly suggest that you start to think and act more often with "customer service" in mind.

Finally, you will also see that my blog has a tab about the bio-digester. You may recall our first meeting about the bio-digester (in March 2013), and that I urged you to be more forthright about the technical and financial problems. Since then, I have continued to urge you to be more open. But nothing has changed, so ... if you aren't going to let the light shine in on the bio-digester, I will. Stay tuned.

Trevor Falk
Chatsworth