Editor's Notebook: Changes for Government

Earlier this week, we put up newly appointed Springfield Mayor Ziad Shehady's speech in its entirety. There were a couple of elements in it, particularly in his stated goals for his one-year-term as Mayor, which I wanted to pull out for analysis. Neither items reflect policy or ideology. Rather, they concern the mechanics of how government is run.

The first is that the Township Committee will hold two meetings a month instead of four. Workshop meetings, previously held twice a month on Monday nights at the fire department headquarters, will be merged with the twice-monthly Tuesday night meetings held in the Kenneth Faigenbaum Committee Chamber.

This is a positive development. During the workshop meetings, town decisions and issues were discussed and debated; having those discussions be part of the better attended formal township committee meetings will hopefully bring more visibility to those conversations.

Also, the workshop meetings often conflicted with the twice a month Monday meetings of Springfield's Board of Education.  This is a great benefit for me personally, as I often had to make what I called a Sophie's choice between which meeting to cover (on a separate, but related note; if you are a talented education reporter interested in covering BOE meetings, please contact me at adamb@patch.com). And, arguably, this is a boon for Patch readers who can now enjoy increasingly robust coverage of both meetings.

Shehady also stated his intention to broadcast the Township Committee meetings on public access television. While I don't yet have details (UPDATE: Mayor Shehady added some information in his comments below), I am cautiously optimistic about the plan. Not only will it give people a clear window into how the government works, it could make for some fun TV if lively incidents like the discussion over the deer cull at Baltrusol Golf Club or the flare-up between then-Mayor Bart Fraenkel and resident Sandy Weiner occur again.

One suggestion: how about broadcasting and archiving the meetings on the Internet as well as television?