Janury 27th, Recreation

Santa Rosa City Council
January 27, 2015

Greetings!

I'm here to recommend that you make a budget priority of recreation.  Only not the way you think of that word.  I urge you tonight to support re-creation, and specifically budget items that support the first three letters - Resident Education and Communication.

You are all agents of change, but you have to help all of us work with each other, with you, and your staff to make those changes. Your budget needs to include:

1.     Website additions which use historical and current information in easy to understand formats to educate residents, and which capitalizes on the valuable information produced by our many talented community groups. 

2.    Multi-media coverage of all city committees, allowing easy following of issues from initial presentation to final resolution. We need to develop new ways for advanced education and communication, early and often, with and between our residents.

3.    Support for your staff to work with the public and volunteers.   My recommendation for the highest budget priority is that you challenge yourselves to recreate a city ready to fully partner with your residents.   That may mean changing the work hours of your staff to allow them to meet when the public is available.  It probably will mean adding staff time.

For housing re-creation, parks re-creation, area-planning re-creation, utilities re-creation, city re-creation.  It's all of our jobs, and your budget priorities need to reflect that.