Wellington City Council: Citizenship online
By Mauricio Freitas, in
Technology, posted: 9-FEB-2009 14:19
This morning I was looking through some blogs and found a link to an on-line petition, hosted by the Wellington City Council. I didn't know Wellington residents can discuss and influence local plans on-line. And looking through the WCC website I found a very fresh press release that tells me they even have forums!
04 Feb 2009 Wellington City Council has launched two new online tools - a budget simulator and a discussion forum - that give Wellington residents an opportunity to have their say on how the Council should best prioritise spending while keeping rates rises to a minimum.
The Council's Citizen Engagement Director, Wendy Walker, says the new tools are part of a range of initiatives designed to help canvass the opinions of Wellingtonians as the Council prepares to develop a blueprint for the city for the next 10 years.
"With the global economic downturn, our city is facing a lot of tough spending decisions - so it's very important that we hear the views of as many residents as possible on how we can keep what's great about Wellington while making sure rates stay affordable."
The discussion board features online forums for each of the Council's seven strategies - urban development, environment, transport, economic development, governance, social and recreational, and cultural well-being - as well as a general forum for the Council's 10-year plan for the City (Long Term Council Community Plan or LTCCP).
"People will be able to click through to the forums and leave comments about our proposals under each strategy - while also giving a 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' to indicate whether they agree with the comments that other people have posted," says Wendy.
For more information about the Council's long term plan, and to access the new online tools, visit the Getting Involved section on the Long Term Council Community Plan 2009/19 web pages or phone (04) 499 4444.
Not only this, but the WCC makes a few RSS feeds available, including latest news, citizens' views, current on-line petitions and more.
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Comment by knoydart, on 9-FEB-2009 17:20
I used the WCC website a few weeks ago to report a water leak, I got an auto response email to start with, thought it would get lost in the system as things do but got a phone call a few hours later to thank me for reporting it and a job number to boot to follow up the repair. Not bad at all