This is in response to the talking points regarding the concerns that there was a lack of communication after the storm, originally posted by Mike Brown.

The City of Woodlawn Park purchased a message board and it is placed on city hall at 4327 Wingate Road.  As reported in the bi-annual newsletters, the purpose of the message board is to provide an additional means of communication beyond the web site to post meeting minutes and other announcements to the city.  Mike was at the meeting where the amount of $10,000 was approved to provide storm clean up.  The clean up was the immediate focus and I believe we performed very well considering the amount of the debris caused from this event.  I am reviewing costs to date and expect we will need to do one final clean up for those who are now getting piles to the edge of the streets.

We posted the web message about the storm clean up and did rely in a large way on word of mouth among our workers and our neighbors to communicate our actions.  We filled six dumpsters with small limbs, apparently the message got out.  We had no information of merit to provide about power restoration as we were all in the same situation regardless of address or city position. While sending out individual flyers and/or mailings would have improved our communication to our residents, it did not come up as an idea during the council meeting when the funds were approved for storm clean up.  I agree would have been a good idea and hindsight is always 20/20.   I will add this as a meeting topic so we can consider this or another means of getting information to residents when normal communication methods are strained as they were during this catastrophe.

I want to acknowledge the efforts of our city council, Mike Brown and the many other neighbors who stepped up to help during and after the storm.  It is unfortunate that the momentum of negative postings tend to overshadow the true efforts and performance of your city council.  We welcome the feedback, but I think it would be a more fair assessment to compare our services and reaction to this event to other small cities as a true evaluation of how we performed.  I look forward to seeing this posting.   

Thank you,

Mayor Tim Robertson

This is a fair and reasonable response by Mr. Robertson to concerns made in earlier postings, including mine. I think we can all agree that the council went above and beyond regarding clean up.

I personally wished I would have found a way to question communication methods without criticizing the ones that were taken, as the criticism seems to have overshadowed the questions that followed. They were good questions. Reasonable questions, that need to be addressed. It is also unfortunate that clean up efforts and communication methods seems to have been inseparably bundled. That really clouds the issue.  

I do want to encourage the council to add crisis communication as a meeting topic. I feel especially encouraged by Mr. Landford's idea (in separate thread of posts entitled "Communicating During Difficult Times") to evaluate the flow of communication through Block Watch Captains.

Is it too much to ask you to volunteer and head-up a disaster communication distribution committee to impliment your ideas in a meaningful effective manner beyond the continuing discourse on this forum.

It would be inappropriate for me to assume anything outside of the city council. They are the decision making body for our city. I have always aspired to serve on the city council, but work prevents my attending Monday evenings.  So I settle for communicating through this web site... one of it's purposes, I believe. I also believe that this web site offers meaningful and effective discourse. I am complimented, though, that you feel I should head-up such a committee. Thank you.