Times committed to improving Accountability in Community
Leadership project that seeks to inform readers, improve
communication and increase accountability
The Morgan Hill Times is in the midst of an exciting new effort – an Accountability in Community Leadership Project, launched in early March by the newspaper’s editorial board – and we’re learning as we go along.
The goal of the project is to educate readers about ongoing public issues, to measure their satisfaction with public officials’ job performance, to hold local public officials accountable to taxpayers and to establish a dialogue between residents, the newspaper and public officials. When we began this process, we were careful not to dictate goals to trustees or council members, but to use goals submitted by the heads of these panels.
We started with the school district, asking the public, trustees and the editorial board to grade the school board on goals that were submitted by Board of Education President Peter Mandel.
It was gratifying to receive many responses from readers to our request for grades. One improvement we’ve made in the grading process was to add a status section to the report card presented to readers.
We’re also improving the way we seek reader participation by reaching out the public at community meetings, events, sessions with the editor and publishing the report card in each edition of The Times and on our Web site.
Those improvements are reflected in the grade forms we’ve published for City Council.
While our process is clearly not scientific, it remains a valuable tool to achieve our goals of education, communication and accountability.
There have been bumps along the way. The Times was originally confronted with typical human-nature reluctance to undergo scrutiny.
For example, Mandel ironically declined to grade himself during the first round of review on the very goals he provided to The Times. Two other trustees also refused to participate in the first quarter review.
Last week, Mayor Steve Tate published a guest column declaring that he would not change any actions based on the project’s grades, before the first quarter grades were even released. Councilman Mark Grzan declined to offer grades objecting to project’s criteria and Tate gave himself passing grades and one incomplete, not the letter grades we solicited.
We hope that as the process continues, public officials will see the Accountability in Community Leadership Project as a valuable tool instead of as a presumptuous annoyance.
We agree that the project needs improvement. As we continue the periodic evaluations, we will enhance the process and we welcome suggestions.
However, we also believe the project can be valuable to public officials by keeping them on track and holding them accountable more than once every four years at ballot box.
Tate gave The Times a poor grade for implementation of the Accountability in Community Leadership Project. We think that’s premature.
Instead, we hope public officials and readers will continue to give this project a chance to help our community by participating. Fill out a report card. Speak up about what needs to done to improve our community. Attend council and school board meetings. Write a letter to the editor. Suggest improvements for next year’s project.
Let’s work together, using the Accountability in Community Leadership Project as a tool, to hold public officials accountable for improving our community.
