Austin to educate residents through class and website

Austin to educate residents through class and website

By Melissa Mixon Friday, 28 August 2009

New 10-week course covers all 31 city departments

AUSTIN — Raj Luhar knows his share about government. For the past eight years, the 29-year-old Austin native has worked in Washington, D.C., splitting his time between a political affairs job at the White House and the U.S. Department of Energy.

He even spent time on the campaign trail, helping with successful re-election bids for U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul.

But, when the Texan returned to Austin earlier this year and started following the city’s high-profile mayoral race, he realized he was clueless when it came to city government.

“I’d sort of been following what was happening in the change of the city council makeup, and I was trying to see if any of the policies have changed and been implemented [since the May elections],” Luhar said. “But I sort of felt that I didn’t have my head wrapped around what made up the City of Austin’s government system.”

It is a sentiment that is likely shared by most Austinites.

To counter that, the City of Austin is beginning a new program next month that city officials hope will clear up the gray areas on how city government works.

The program, known as CityWorks Academy, is a 10-week course that is part of a bigger initiative to make the city more transparent and accessible to residents, said Patricia Fraga, the city’s marketing manager.

In recent weeks, City Manager Marc Ott started writing a weekly blog to update residents on what is happening in his office and around the city. The city also added features to its website allowing residents to sign up for e-mails covering city news.

The city is also in the beginning stages of redoing its website to make it easier for residents to navigate, Fraga said.

“The technology is still pretty old,” she said of the current site.

Councilman Mike Martinez said the city’s recent initiatives to open its government, departments and staff up to the public—specifically through the CityWorks program—are part of a longstanding mantra to be as transparent as possible.

“People that work in the city know and understand that, ‘Whatever decision I make, I need to know that that decision can be on the front-page of the newspaper tomorrow,’” he said.

CityWorks

When Luhar moved back to Texas, he tried reading local newspapers, but he still felt in the dark about how city government worked and the specific services that it offered. So, when he heard about the CityWorks program, he quickly applied.

The program will meet once every week starting Sept. 8 for two-and-a-half hour-long evening classes. If it is successful, city leaders said they would like to continue the program. The classes will not have one set curriculum, but will instead focus on presentations created by each of the city’s 31 departments. The classes, which are free to participants, will include a mock trial at municipal court, a tour of the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and a visit to a fire-training center where students will participate in a drill with firefighters.

The program will accept 30 people, which, Fraga said, will be selected by a committee of city staff based on how long they have lived in Austin and their level of involvement in the city.

“We want a cross-section of people. That can include age, ethnicity, level of interest or level of experience that they have in the community,” she said. “We want someone who is maybe new to Austin or someone who’s been here all of their life.”

Fraga said more people have applied than expected. As of mid-August—with the application deadline a week away—there were 275 applications, including Luhar’s.

Above all, the class is meant to educate participants on what it is that each city department does and how it operates. Often, Martinez said, the public does not know—something he experienced firsthand as a firefighter for the city for 12 years.

Many times, he said, residents would have chest pains and call 911 to ask for an ambulance. When the fire department pulled up to their home, the resident would be surprised to know that firefighters responded to those calls and could help them.

“Until you need that service, you really go day-to-day through the city and you don’t understand what services are provided and who provides them,” Martinez said. “We’re going to have citizens out there helping to pour sidewalks, pick up garbage and connect with our police and ambulance and even the administrative side. We’re going to connect them with scenes that normally go unnoticed.”

Students of the program are encouraged, but not required, to continue participating in city operations by volunteering to serve on commissions or boards, Fraga said.

If accepted, Luhar said he would eventually like to be a part of local government.

“Right now, I don’t feel I have the basic sort of foundational knowledge on how the city operates and how I could actually play a role in that,” he said. “I think this [program] is a great step.”

Also in the works …

City blog and Twitter

The city is reaching out to the public via the web by launching a Twitter account, starting city news blogs by City Manager Marc Ott and creating an e-mail-based newsletter called Austin Notes. The newsletter, which started earlier this summer, includes news on parks and recreation activities, neighborhoods, library programs, the city’s climate protection plan and other citywide happenings.

To follow the city on Twitter, visit www.twitter.com/austintexasgov. To sign up for Austin Notes, visit www.ci.austin.tx.us/news/notes/index.cfm. To follow Ott, visit www.ci.austin.tx.us/citymgr/cm_update.cfm.

City website

The city is also in the early stages of redoing its website, which was first launched in early 1995 with just 300 web pages. Today, it has more than 40,000 pages. Requests for proposals to redo the site are being accepted by the city until Sept. 17. Patricia Fraga, the city’s marketing manager, said the biggest complaint from residents about the site is that it is difficult to navigate and hard to search or find items. She said the city is not releasing how much it will spend on the site, so as not to interfere with bid proposals.