The Day the Transparency Died...in Davidson

"I’d like to emphasize that once we have a clear plan in place, we will communicate to our citizens via multiple methods, to ensure they are aware of our plans."

Those are the words of our town's Public Information Officer, Christina Shaul, regarding the $6.3 million Capital Improvement Program which passed unanimously Tuesday night. (The actual long-term number will be even higher as the Town still didn't include over $2 million for a new fire station.) Ms Shaul's comment was in an email I received back on October 22nd - plenty of time to get the word out about how much money the Town would spend prior to the vote.

Here is the agenda item for the CIP from the Town Board meeting where it was passed. The below was posted up through late Tuesday morning without even the attachment of the details. The link now has the attachment - added just hours prior to the meeting.

Normally, agenda items have a detailed summary. Normally, there are attachments giving the details. Normally, this information is available to the public before the meeting.

Normally, local governments possess a sense of obligation to keep their citizens informed about important decisions.

The Town has spent considerable time and expense upgrading it's communications infrastructure in the past few years. However, this infrastructure was not used to distribute detailed information for this most expensive decision since the Mi-Connection purchase. Not an email blast, not a Facebook post, not a Twitter tweet on the final details or cost. There was not a public hearing. There was not a PSA over the Town's phone messaging system.

There were 50+ emails from the Town over the past three months. Dozens of Facebook posts and Tweets sent. Not a single one of them was dedicated to giving the public any details about the financial impacts of this decision or the assumptions behind it.

Now, here's the truly sad part.

After last year's election cycle where transparency was a campaign issue, one would have hoped the Town and elected officials would do better to see that this type of thing does not happen. Several candidates who are now elected officials even stated their support for putting large expenditures to a vote of the public. While the CIP does not require a public vote, the level of spending is significant. One would have hoped it might have reminded those officials that clear communication to the public about spending has an impact on public trust in government.

Those hopes were dashed Tuesday night.