Welcome to Your Kamloops!

Marking One Year....

Just past one year that I lost a pretty good job - representing the people of Kamloops on your Council. Also, just past one year, that Kamloops got one of its most balanced Councils in recent years.

The addition of Marg Spina, Denis Walsh, and Nancy Bepple has brought diversity in that these great Kamloopsians have skills, experiences, and worldviews that I think help round out our leadership team. Whether it be recent experience in the non profit sector, or an identification with the political left, or the huge amount of grassroots organizing experience, our community comes out ahead.

These first term councillors have joined a seasoned, skilled team. Led by a sharp, unassuming Mayor, this team has steered our community very well. 

Learning More About the Implications of Growth...

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/paytonc/79973436/

It's something we almost don't think about - population growth. Moreover, a lot of us assume this is a good thing. A growing Kamloops is a prosperous, proud Kamloops is more or less the conventional wisdom.

I heard City Hall planning supervisor Randy Lambright on the radio the other day, talking about how the plans are for Kamloops to grow to 120 000 in the next couple of decades. This may have many benefits, but there are also costs - to the environment, to to a sense of community perhaps - for example.

Here is a good page of information from a no growth point of view. 

5 Things I Would Like to Offer on Your Kamloops...

As I live through what is one the most interesting and insanely busy times on my life (moving, starting a Masters Program, trying to start a viable business), I have spent a bit of time thinking about how this blog can be of more use to Kamloopsians and people interested in Kamloops. Here are 5 preliminary thoughts, I'd be interested in yours:

1. Crowdsourcing the Content:
   I would like to set up informal and formal mechanisms to allow many more people to input into what gets talked about here.
2. Explain more the why and how, and focus less on the who,what, where:
   I don't remember where I read it, but I thought this was just so bang on. The tradional media does a great job of giving people the basic facts of a story. A complementary effort, and one which I think helps people be better citizens, is to explain why a story / issue is important and also to explain how something happens / happened.  And to do these in an easily understandable fashion. A tall order, but a noble one in my view.
3. Celebrate Kamloops with some depth:
   I would like to focus on positive aspects of our community. I don't want the positive stuff to be "rah rah" press release style content but to be substantive highlighting of things that are going very right in Kamloops - there is a lot!
4. Be More Personal Again:
   After not getting re-elected to City Council, I took my picture of the sidebar of the site and have struggled with how much of my own interests I should inject into the articles I write here.  After attending Blogworld Expo, and hearing again and again about the importantance of the "personality of the blogger", I think you will see my mug and my editorial influence around here a lot more.  (Note: this may sometimes come into conflict with point 1, but I am happy to "hold the tension" between the two points)
   
5. A "member", "supporter", "subscriber" community:
   I have resisted calling my efforts here "citizen journalism", but that's actually a pretty accurate description of what I would like to be. I am incredibly interested in how media influences our lives, and I would like to offer something of real added value. This will take support, (including but not exclusively) financial support. I did offer something like this early this year, and I thank profusely the handful of people who became official subscribers. The subscribe buttons are still at the bottom of the sidebar, but I don't push the offer at all. I need to work harder to figure out compelling value, and renew my offering. Coming soon to a local Kamloops issues blog near you!