Variants of the following text have been circulated by email through different people and organizations in recent days. Can I ask you to emulate them by copying and pasting the below, substituting your name where there is an underscore in the second paragraph, and sending it to as many people as you know? Only through wide distribution can more nomination forms be submitted.

–BEGIN HERE–
If you know about the Google fiber initiative please go to http://fibernbpt.com to see how you can help. If not, please read on and share with your friends and colleagues…

Google wants to build an ultra-high speed broadband network and increase Internet access speeds by a factor of 100 in a handful of communities across the United States — and Newburyport hopes to be one of them.

_______ is pleased to join Mayor Donna Holaday, the Newburyport City Council, the Newburyport School Department, Senator Steven Baddour, Representative Michael Costello, Anna Jaques Hospital, PortMedia, and other supporters to nominate Newburyport to be a national trial community for Google fiber.

Please visit http://fibernbpt.com for background and instructions about how you can help. If you have any questions, please email fibernbpt@gmail.com.

–END HERE–

Thanks! I’m sponsoring a community brainstorming event on Sunday afternoon at the library, as elaborated here. Hope you can make it.

Help NBPT Get Noticed! is a blog post from: City Councilor Ari Herzog

A search for federal loan recipients in Newburyport in 2009 yields one result: The Inn at Newburyport received a $236,000 certified development loan from the Small Business Administration.

Cognizant federal spending data is available for you to search in detail as I shared above, the state of Massachusetts is not far behind with their work-in-progress open data initiative. And locally? Do I need to tell you what detail about financial spending can be found on the city’s website? The auditor’s office acts as accounts payable; does their website satisfy your thirst for seeing where money is spent?

The Budget & Finance Committee met last night and we briefly discussed our common desire to share more information online than in years’ past. More conversation is necessary, and we need to include the mayor and information services director to share ideas and better ascertain what’s possible with city technologies without using cloud services. Stay tuned.

If there is specific financial information about the city you would like to see online that you can’t find today, what would you want to see?

Show You the Money? is a blog post from: City Councilor Ari Herzog

City councilors receive electronic and/or print copies of agendas in advance of posted council meetings. The city clerk’s website has details about the inclusiveness, adding that late file items may be added and/or removed on the council floor.

Cognizant of a process to follow when changing data on the city website, PDF links of agendas at the above link are sometimes delayed. Taking advantage of my pre-existing Scribd account (which I use for uploading and sharing assorted documents), I decided to take initiative and share the agenda for the next meeting scheduled for March 15.

You can see the embedded document below and/or link to it directly here. If you have any questions, add a comment below.

Newburyport City Council meeting agenda: March 15, 2010

Want to View City Council Agendas in Advance? is a blog post from: City Councilor Ari Herzog

The U.S. Census Bureau mailed advance letters to 120 million households this week. I received mine yesterday. I think the letter was a waste of money, but if it helps someone remember that a subsequent form is coming, I suppose it’s money well spent.

From the Census blog:

Every one percent of the US households that return a completed questionnaire will save $85 million in taxpayer money that would have to be spent sending people out to interview households in person. The research is clear that the advance letter can save money for all of us.

The letter mentioned the 10-question form will be mailed to me in about a week. I can’t urge you loud enough to please fill out your census form and return it promptly to the bureau.

My reasoning is simple: USA Today wrote an eye-opening piece yesterday that a new report indicates U.S. states, counties, and municipalities received $447 billion in federal aid in fiscal 2008 as a direct result of Census data.

In fiscal year 2008, 215 federal programs used Census data to guide the distribution of about $1,469 a person, according to the report.

“Given the fiscal crisis that states are experiencing these days, they have a particular interest — even greater than normal,” says Andrew Reamer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Reamer compiled the first ranking of states, counties and metropolitan areas and the amounts of federal money they received based on Census population counts.

The Census count costs more than $14 billion but will be used to dole out close to $5 trillion over 10 years, Reamer says.

“It’s a huge return on investment,” he says. “It’s spending, relatively speaking, a little bit of money to make sure that the federal government is distributing a whole lot of money on a fair and equitable basis.”

Considering the city receives federal funding for Police Department, Youth Services, and Council on Aging grants; FEMA storm relief; and this and that in the School Department, it is important to realize that the formula for federal funding distribution includes census data.

The more people in Newburyport who are counted in the U.S. Census, the more likely the city can receive increased federal funding — and thereby relieve taxpayer burden. Something to think about when you receive that census questionairre.

Dear Newburyport: Please Complete Census Forms is a blog post from: City Councilor Ari Herzog

This is not an article about Newburyport — but it could be.

This is not an article about Newburyport teachers — but they may be included.

In an enlightening public policy study released today, nearly 1,000 U.S. public school teachers of Generation Y students speak out on incentive pay, standardized test scores, and unions. Their answers may surprise you.

Please click the above link for the complete story with graphs, but here are the essentials:

1. Most Gen Y teachers support incentive pay for teachers who consistently work harder and put in more time and effort than other teachers. Seventy-one percent of Gen Y teachers favor giving financial incentives to teachers who consistently work harder, putting in more time and effort than other teachers, with 25 percent “strongly” in favor.

2. Gen Y teachers are deeply concerned about using standardized test scores to measure their performance. Only 10 percent of Gen Y teachers think that how well students perform on standardized tests is an “excellent” measure of success as a teacher, and 72 percent of them believe it is unfair to tie teacher pay to how well students perform when so many things that affect learning are beyond their control.

3. Teachers’ concerns that unions sometimes protect seriously underperforming teachers have risen in recent years. Sixty-six percent of all teachers agreed that unions sometimes fight to protect teachers who should not be in the classroom, as compared with 48 percent of teachers who agreed with this statement in 2003.

Considering the Newburyport School Committee is amid interviewing two candidates for the position of school superintendent, I encourage them to inquire how the candidates feel about the above issues.

Merit Pay, Student Tests, and Unions: Teachers Speak Out is a blog post from: City Councilor Ari Herzog

In the wake of Thursday night’s very windy nor’easter that plunged the city into darkness, uprooted trees and barns that fell on cars, and exploded shingles and glass windows onto sidewalks below, many residents in Newburyport and the region used their mobile devices or found places with free Wi-Fi and turned to social networking services like Facebook and Twitter to ask questions, share news, and post pictures. I was no exception, having used such tools during my campaign last fall; and I used my BlackBerry to send updates from City Hall on Friday morning and elsewhere later in the day.

In time, as people logged onto Twitter and searched past tweets with the #nbpt hashtag or saw my Facebook update pointing people to the same link as earlier in this sentence, people learned the facts and promulgated them to their neighbors, networks, friends, and followers.

Present in the mayor’s office yesterday at noon when she convened an emergency roundtable meeting with officials from the police, fire, DPW, emergency management, and council on aging departments, along with the city clerk and the local Salvation Army captain, I subsequently tweeted facts in rapid-fire order. The below is an extract of those tweets in broadcast style, shown in reverse chronological order:

I presumed throughout the day that 5,000 homes would be without power for several days (proved true when Kerri tweeted me before midnight that her house on Hoyt’s Lane had no power despite neighbors with it — moments after my apartment also got it back) and, thus, I used Twitter for constituent relations and crisis communications, such as asking Comcast about their infrastructure and seeing a quick response. I tweeted important items throughout the day, such as this one about shelters, in the hope that others would retweet it on.

…and they did, from Anna Jaques Hospital to Newburyport Today to Cider Hill Farms and everyone in between:

No different than my walking into Richdale’s and Angie’s and informing the owners what was going on outside their establishments, I’m glad my actions online helped whoever needed them.

Before I fell asleep last night, I saw tweets of appreciation from numerous residents, such as Evan, Julian, Gail, and a mystery mother, among others.

There’s much cleanup to do, with newspaper pictures exposing the devastation and local blogs here and there attesting to loss.

I am sorry about the downed wires that led to power outages. While we are helpless if transformers blow or substations fail outside the city’s boundaries, there is one thing that I can do as a city councilor to prevent outages where we do have control, as I scribbled on my Facebook wall Thursday night:

I want to touch base with the mayor and city council president next week to request a pow wow meeting of the council’s general government committee and/or local technologists — in the hopes that I or others can train someone in public safety — maybe the police department’s computer forensic expert? — on the why and how of using Twitter for crisis communications.

Cops and firemen across the country recognize the benefits of Twitter for public safety — from the Los Angeles Fire Department to the Houston Fire Department to the Boston Police Department, and there’s no reason for Newburyport to be in the social networking dark. If nothing else, we can start very simply by the city sending an official tweet whenever the snow emergency blue lights go on. All it takes is one tweet and scripts to watch that tweet for residents and business owners to learn the contents of that tweet quickly.

Related: If you are free on Monday, March 1, please consider attending a public forum I am sponsoring at 7 p.m. in the city hall auditorium to talk candidly about Google and chat about innovative ways the city could benefit from a fiber optic broadband network. My brain ticks with ideas. Please visit the Newburyport Google Fiber blog for details.

Also, to plug my day job as an online media strategist, I’m leading a workshop at the Enterprise Center at Salem State College on the morning of Thursday, March 4. I will share case studies and best practices to improve business operations through social media. Over 70 RSVPs were received by Thursday morning, and there are plenty of seats remaining. You or your colleagues may register to attend by clicking here.

How I Use Twitter in Newburyport for Crisis Communications and Constituent Relations is a blog post from: City Councilor Ari Herzog

The Planning Board and City Council’s Planning & Development Committee jointly meet next week to discuss the latest iteration of the wind energy conversion facility ordinance, last updated in November 2009 by the P&D Committee.

Please scroll to the bottom of this blog post (click here if you are reading this in email) to view embeds of both the proposed ordinance amendment and the recommendations for revision by the Energy Advisory Committee.

To my knowledge, neither document exists in the same place online until now.

I’ve perused through the information and I’ll be attending next week’s meeting to hear what residents and stakeholders have to say.

There has been a lot of talk and many more rumors about how this person or that group feel about erecting wind turbines in Newburyport. Many have asked for my take, and I am officially on the fence — although I mused about wind energy generation in a blog post last fall. I support alternative energy generation (solar, wind, wave, geothermal, biomass, etc.) to avoid increased usage of coal-fired and nuclear power plants. I’d rather generate energy from naturally-occurring phenomena than using man-made materials to do it.

Sustainable development was a prong of my campaign last fall, and I support efforts to make Newburyport more green. I recognize that nobody is anti-green and that, despite popular opinion, one’s frustration and anger does not necessarily translate into anti-turbine development. The most vocal proponents of strict ordinance language are not anti-wind; but despite much subjective opinion, I’ve heard few objective thoughts.

Let me be candid. While this ordinance amendment is based in part on the residential feedback and fervor from Mark Richey Woodworking’s installation of a 292-foot turbine (which the company allegedly only needs 20% of the current generated electricity), this is an ordinance amendment to not merely to protect against turbines being built that could affect residential abutters but also to set policy on how sustainable the city can be.

The real question is not whether one is pro-wind or anti-wind, but whether turbines should be erected to promote sustainable development or its owners be held to legal limitations to protect homeowner rights. Do you see my dilemma and why I’m listening to all sides?

You may join me on Wednesday, March 3 at 7 p.m. in the city hall auditorium. The joint forum will also listen to perspectives on a proposed movable sign ordinance.

Here is the proposed ordinance amendment by the P&D Committee:

NBPT Wind – Ordinance Nov 2009

Here are the proposed recommendations by the EAC:

Nbpt Wind – EAC Recommendations

P.S. The above picture shows wind turbines atop a residential development in Croydon, England. It’s slightly intriguing to me nobody is proposing such turbines in Newburyport.

The Future of Wind Turbines in Newburyport is a blog post from: City Councilor Ari Herzog

You shared your thoughts with me two weeks ago on the subject of police surveillance cameras in the form of blog comments, Facebook reflections, and email messages — and I mentioned I’d follow-up.

I exchanged email communications with the police marshal and the mayor, and verbally chatted with the city clerk, and we arrived at a consensus that the marshal is a department head who reports to the mayor. Because Mayor Moak approved the grant request with the marshal, that was apparently the end of story.

Not necessarily. I suggested to the mayor that because the city council approves the appointment of department heads and also approves the appropriation of municipal budget expenses, and furthermore that because public perception does not distinguish between council-approved funding and grant funding, there is a deficiency in checks and balances — else, why wouldn’t the council have been privy to discussions about the grant at the time?

It’s a question worthy of an answer — and one is coming.

I commend Councilors Connell and Jones for arguing the same merits at tonight’s meeting. I chose to keep silent as there was nothing I could add at the time that wouldn’t be raised in future weeks.

My last clause refers specifically to a $6,300 budget transfer from free cash to a new grant writer position that the mayor submitted to the city council on February 8. It was sent to the budget and finance committee, of which I’m a member, and we discussed it tonight. You can see the text of the mayor’s description here:

Councilor Cronin and I had reservations about approving the transfer at tonight’s meeting (which met before the council meeting), so we’ll take it up in the coming weeks. I imagine the subject of police cameras will rise to the occasion again once we bring it out of committee.

Head over to Councilor Cronin’s blog for his take on the surveillance and grant position.

Surveying Surveillance Camera Opinions is a blog post from: City Councilor Ari Herzog

Newburyport resident Orren Fox, 13, would like the White House to erect a chicken coop alongside its organic garden and swarm of bees. He thinks visitors would enjoy seeing and petting happy chickens during presidential visits…. not to mention the eggs would be nutritious for White House breakfasts.

Because local laws currently prohibit households to have chicken coops, Orren takes care of his 25 chickens at Oak Valley Farm in Newbury. You can meet the chickens and learn more about Orren through a profile in Newburyport Today and an interview about his use of social networking last fall.

Orren, who tweets as @HappyChickens, emailed me a copy of a letter he sent to President Obama. I think it’s well-written and worthy of duplication here. Orren agreed, as he’d like more people to know about him and his letter.

Dear President Obama, Mrs. Obama, Sasha, Malia, Chef Comerford and Chef Kaas,

Hello, my name is Orren Fox. I live north of Boston in Massachusetts’ smallest city Newburyport. It is an awesome place where the Merrimac River and the Atlantic Ocean come together. Oh! I think President Washington often visited Newburyport and maybe even bowled in the basement of The Dalton House on State Street. Really. We have a little downtown, a beautiful beach, and some ocean cooled farmland. In fact one farm was founded in 1683! I have met with some of our local farmers to understand their methods and I often take my most social birds to our farmer’s market, so that I can introduce these cool birds to more people. I think farmers are awesome, actually one of my hero’s besides Rajon Rondo of the Boston Celtics is Will Allen. I know he was at the White House last week to help with Let’s Move. He is great isn’t he! Congratulations.

I first became interested in chickens when I was in fifth grade. I think I just woke up one day and loved chickens. A little different, I know. Well, in fifth grade at my school we have to prepare a year long research project. Not surprisingly mine was on chickens. I find them fascinating animals and have over the last 4 years have learned so much. When I first started raising chickens I kept an online journal. That journal has now evolved to a blog. My blog is – happychickenslayhealthyeggs.blogspot.com. I have so much to learn, I have made mistakes, but I am doing my best and I would be happy to share what I know. Oh, by the way I am also going to be raising bees starting this spring. Bee School starts in about two weeks.

I am so happy that you have a White House garden and White House bees. It is really inspiring. One thing though. You are missing something: happy chickens.

I believe that adding a small chicken coop to the White House garden would provide you and your chefs with tasty, nutritious eggs, and I am sure all of you would love the hens. Aside from super tasty eggs, the hens could help “weed” and fertilize your garden and hoop houses. I let a few of my hens into the garden and they like to eat the weeds and sometimes the pear tomatoes… It is really fun to listen to them march around the garden while I am working. Actually they are all really hilarious. I have one hen, Paprika, who is The Boss. I do whatever she says. They all have very diverse, interesting and individual personalities. I have some shy chickens, some bossy ones and one very protective rooster.

For the White House garden I would recommend about a dozen hens. If all goes well, most days you’d go out to the coop and have a dozen eggs! Collecting the eggs is awesome. I actually think it is sort of like treasure hunting. Somehow, despite the fact that I have had hens for 4 years now, I still find collecting the eggs really exciting. A few of my hens lay blue eggs. Yup, blue. Those hens are called Americaunas (also a similar breed you may have heard of are Arucaunas). Obviously there are many interesting breeds to consider for the White House garden. I would choose one heritage breed and focus on that one breed – I suggest Buff Orpingtons. Orpingtons first came to the United States in 1890, they lay large brown eggs, are very mellow, quite durable and very beautiful. While I didn’t know to do this when I was starting out, I have learned that this is a good thing to do. The reason is, each breed is a little different and may have different requirements. It is good to become an expert at one breed. Once you are comfortable raising hens you might consider branching out and adding a few fancies.

There are many great fancy breeds such as Polishes, Hamburgs, Cochins, Sultans, Sumatras, Silkies, Modern Games and many more. Those are better when acquired after the farmer has had chickens, because by limiting the number of breeds one can learn the specific needs of each breed. I actually think it is very respectful to just have one breed. Heritage breeds are breeds that have been around forever. These breeds are all reflected in The Standard of Perfection, the American Poultry Association’s book of pure breeds, – Many Heritage breeds are actually very rare, so it is worthwhile to try and help these breeds.

There are many details about keeping chickens that I would be happy to discuss with you – the coop, the food, perching, dust bathing, health, etc. There are many people who know a lot more than I do, so we can ask them for some advice, too. I wish I knew everything, but I don’t. What I do know is that eggs from happy chickens will make you happy, the chefs happy, your garden happy, and honestly, me too. I think when the chickens are happy, their eggs must be healthier (http://www.gourmet.com/foodpolitics/2009/04/egg-prices)

(There is a bit of confusion currently as to whether chickens are legal in DC, however, officials in the Mayor’s office say there is currently no law prohibiting raising chickens within city limits if residents follow guidelines on proper animal care and shelter. Washington, D.C. Section 902 of the Animal Control Code requires hens to be 50 ft. from any residence.)

Thank you for reading this letter, I sure hope you will consider this. It is bound to make the White House organic garden very happy.

Sincerely,
Orren Fox
@happychickens
@happyhoneybees

Orren’s Twitter links are above. If you’d like to send him an email, I’ll forward on anything you send me. Either click the big red envelope icon on the right sidebar of this page, or email me here. Thanks.

Sharing Teen Resident Letter to the White House is a blog post from: City Councilor Ari Herzog

Any standing committee of the City Council may meet at 6:30 p.m. before the second meeting of every month, in accordance with City Council Rule #7. The city clerk’s office has a copy of a posted notice that lists the dates of these meetings and that such meetings are open to the Committee of the Whole, if any councilor wishes to attend.

As such, the Neighborhoods and City Services Committee will meet at 6:30 p.m. in the council chamber on February 22 regarding the subject of snow emergency parking (as ordained to the DPW under Chapter 13, Section 29, in the city ordinances:

“Upon the declaration of a snow emergency by the superintendent of the department of public works, no parking shall be allowed on any street or way in the city. The superintendent, upon such declaration, shall cause notice of the snow emergency to be given by radio broadcast or other suitable media. Upon the declaration of the end of the snow emergency by the superintendent, parking shall be allowed on any street or way in the city. Provided, however, that this section shall not be construed to permit parking where it is specifically prohibited by the provisions of this chapter.”

The DPW Director and Police Marshal have been invited, as the meeting will include questions about current procedures for snow emergency parking bans (what are the criteria, who decides, communication protocols, etc.) and how we can improve public notification around “suitable media” and the like.

The impetus for this meeting was after several residents complained about blue lights either not working or not knowing when they are turned on, who turns them on, and how much snow warrants an emergency.

Questions or concerns? Please add a comment below or feel free to show up.

Reviewing Newburyport Snow Emergency Parking Protocols is a blog post from: City Councilor Ari Herzog