Last Friday, I tweeted the following...
So - @CityWL had their Agenda for Tuesday's Council meeting up at 4pm and then pulled down an hour later with no explanation. Not sure how this is good for community members interested in Council business... :( #cariboopoli #williamslake
This morning, at 11:22am, I had received the following from the City (entire email quoted):
Good Morning Steve,
As I understand it, you have made the following comment via Twitter with regard to the City of Williams Lake January 10th, 2012 Regular Council Meeting Agenda link that was published on Friday, January 6th: “[The City of Williams Lake] had their Agenda for Tuesday's Council meeting up at 4pm and then pulled down an hour later with no explanation. Not sure how this is good for community members interested in Council business...” If I may, I would like to provide you with an explanation for this. I finalized this agenda via CivicWeb, as per our usual practice, mid-afternoon on Friday. As it was the first agenda for this calendar year, both Ken MacInnis and myself double-checked that the main link and all attachments were working. Unfortunately, our back office support team did some formatting fixes for us later that afternoon, which, unawares to us, caused our public link to stop working. First thing this morning, as I received several E-mail notifications to this extent, I corrected this problem. I apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you, but would ask that you do us the future courtesy of contacting our department directly with concerns of this sort before distributing negative and false accusations via social or other media outlets. We are certain it was not your intent to insinuate that the City was attempting to mislead the public in any way and would appreciate you seeking clarification first re future concerns. We assure you that if at any time in the future we are aware that an agenda will not be available on the Friday afternoon, we will post a notice on the City’s website. I hope that this speaks to your current concerns.
Have a wonderful afternoon,
Rena Schill
Corporate Services / Records Management Coordinator
Now - while I acknowledge and agree it certainly was not my intent to suggest that the City of Williams Lake knowingly was misleading the public around tomorrow's Council Agenda - I still think that "someone" between Council/Staff could have road tested the Council "hours later" given how unreliable "CivicWeb" - (name of site that hosts City Council Agendas) has been to the City previously... and yes - City of Williams Lake, that does address my concerns and thanks :)
However I disagree with respect to the following:
before distributing negative and false accusations via social or other media outlets.
With all due respect to Council/Staff at WL City Hall - At no time - did I attempt (and nor have I) to contact "traditional" media... and if traditional media pick up on my tweets/blog posts and uses them to do their own stories then I can't stop that from happening
This blog will not hesitate in the future to express my views on local government... (and same applies to provincial and national politics) whether or not local governments (and its' politicians) like that or not...
2 comments:
In fact, more "traditional" media might consider paying closer attention to your blog posts. A retweet takes a single click, and inquiring minds wanna know.
Perhaps you need to be a bit more carful in your wording. Your tweet can easily be read as if you are accusing someone at CWL of maliciously pulling it down to conceal something, when this was obviously not the case.
Not saying you meant it that way but i can see how it could be seen that way.
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