The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
By Jonathon Naylor If you have a computer and an open line to the Internet, there is almost no information to which you lack access. Among the valuable tidbits I've learned courtesy of Google: ÊWheel of Fortune's Vanna White has two cats. Their names are Kiki and Stella. The world record for most jumping jacks belongs to Ashrita Furman, with 27,000 over a span of five hours. Mel Blanc, the original voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots. ÊIn the State of Alabama, it is illegal to flick boogers into the wind. (Seriously). Okay, so maybe those aren't such important facts after all. It's not like any of them involve tax dollars or a city's plans for the future. That is important information. Which is why Flin Flon City Council's move to bolster transparency through its website is not only welcome, but overdue. The revamped City of Flin Flon website, set to launch this spring, promises easy access to city reports, budgets, and bylaws. You can already get this information at City Hall, but the added convenience means more residents will see and analyze it. And they will thus enjoy a greater understanding of how their money is being spent and might be spent in the future. Development They will know, for instance, that the city doled out just $376 of its economic development budget in 2009, and be able to question their mayor and council on this miniscule expenditure. They will see what changes individual council committees are proposing before they come to a vote, and have greater opportunity to provide council with feedback. And they will have access to the minutes of meetings held by the Committee of the Whole, the all-councillor group that makes many key decisions. It is not clear how precise any breakdown of city spending will be, but council would be wise to replicate the City of Toronto's approach. As the National Post's Chris Selley noted, Toronto's new mayor, Rob Ford, has called for "every kernel" of data on that city's spending to be put on the Web. "Sure, people might freak out at insignificant expenditures. (Too bad, I say. It's their money)," wrote Selley in his opinion piece. "But they might also come up with some great ideas for cost savings that city staff hadn't thought of." Selley is right, not just in terms of finances, but in general. When it comes to government Ð excluding national security issues and the like, which are certainly no issue for the City of Flin Flon Ð there is no such thing as too much transparency. Hopefully our council keeps that in mind. Local Angle runs Fridays.1/31/2011
