anonymous - November 18th, 2005
yes!

anonymous - November 18th, 2005
Good Idea and let's hope the new council will read it and see how we feel about things. Kelly Richards

anonymous - November 18th, 2005
This is a brilliant idea.... a place to vent and a place for council to get insight into how Whistler really feels

anonymous - November 18th, 2005
Yes.

anonymous - November 18th, 2005
yes!

anonymous - November 19th, 2005
Here’s an excerpt from this weeks Pique feature article (I wrote it) that illustrates the importance of websites like this…. In November 2000, Rick Mercer asked Canadians to call for a Federal Referendum - one that would require then Canadian Alliance leader, Stockwell Day, to change his first name to Doris. Over a two day period, a quarter of a million people voted online, with new names being added at the rate of 10,000 per hour. In the final tally, over 400,000 people voted. Currently, many reality TV shows count on millions of viewers to decide winners and losers of various talent contents. And the trend might be coming to the ultimate reality show - the houses of Parliament. Elections Canada reports that, “support for on-line registration has been growing in recent years, as evidenced by responses to Elections Canada post-event surveys conducted after the November 2000 general election. When asked to think ahead three or four years, 70 percent of electors stated that they would like to register to vote on-line”. This is good news for the tech savvy generations who, since infancy have faced a barrage of technology and information available 24 hours a day. Technology, if used wisely, has the potential to create democracy in ways we’ve only imagined.
Websites like this are an important new democratic tool, It would be great if successful candidates kept there websites up post election as a tool to stay engaged with the community. (NO candidates did this last election) If elected I’ll keep mine up to post records of how I’ve represented my constituents. And if you keep thi one up I’ll happily contribute! Cheers Duane!
Ralph Forsyth
ralphforsyth.org

whistler - November 19th, 2005
I agree Ralph! I will keep it up and with you and the other contributors it wouldn't a success. Duane

anonymous - November 19th, 2005
Yes! Keep it going please. Its been a great way to flesh out the issues and get inside opposing viewpoints. Thanks Duane
Coner

anonymous - November 19th, 2005
Thanks, Duane. The opportunity to give our comments was huge. We need to ensure that no more 'Trust us' dealings ever occur again. We are a strong, powerful community who deserves an opportunity to voice our opinions of the elected officials and their doings more than once every 3 years. Let's hope the next elected officials score much better at 'report card' time than the last group! Here is to a new Mayor that can get us 'Back on Track'

anonymous - November 19th, 2005
Thanks for all your efforts, Duane. A "Town Hall Blog" . Perhaps our councilors can blog the truth form their in-camera meetings!

I am curious as to how many hits you have had, and how many unique IP addresses?

whistler - November 19th, 2005
I'm not going to post that info as it is all in logs that I will have to go through. you can call me if you wish for more information.

anonymous - November 20th, 2005
Keep it! yes!

anonymous - November 20th, 2005
Duane
your time and effort on this blog is appreciated by the everyone. I hope that the munipality will fund this project as Stuart Munro has mentioned. Council has a huge job ahead of them and a blog like this would allow other people as well to vent their concerns on an ongoing basis keep this form of communication alive. Sonya McCarthy

anonymous - November 20th, 2005
Duane, thanks for all your dedication and help with this site. We desperately need great ideas like this in our community and I truly don't think there is any negative in keeping a site like this alive. The real questions would seem to be how much, who does the work, and should it be improved or done by the municipality. Thanks again!

McCaul Balmer

anonymous - November 20th, 2005
yes,yes,yes............

the site works and is needed.



stacy kohut

whistler - November 20th, 2005
Thanks Sonya, McCaul and Stacy,
Without you three, the other candidates and all the people that took part in this, it wouldn't have been possible. The input from everyone has been fantastic. Yes it has been work, but it has been very informative for me, I made some mistakes, a few people used this for posting negative things but for the most part, it was very positive, informative. I have put a new category up called ‘Information for the new council.’ You have to create an account (free) to be able to post to this category. You can use ‘suzycreamcheese’ or whatever for your user name but you have to provide a valid email address and some other minor information. This is a free blog service (‘Aeonity Blog’) so I don’t even have access to your email or other information. You can set it up so you can have subscriptions (email alerts) to certain articles and more.
I achieved even more than I was expecting, I wanted to inform as many people as to all the candidates, their goals, the issues and I think I helped to do just that. The bonus is that it has helped bring this town together even if some of us are agreeing to disagree on some issues!
I have had more than two different ideas (ex. Transparency, Community forum) from people, who have approached me for continuing this forum, anyone interested in participating, please email me.
Again, I would like to thank the people who used this site, the candidates and congratulations to the new council.

Thanks Duane Perrett

Note: See Nancy’s post election comments
here.
http://www.aeonity.com/whistler/blog/21528

anonymous - November 20th, 2005
Absolutely !

anonymous - November 21st, 2005
My message has always been about meaningful public engagement, transparency and accountability. This BLOG has been an extraordinary success in engaging our community, and I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Duane for the fantastic job he has done and the incredible amount of time and resources he has devoted to it.

I hope others will join me in encouraging Duane to continue with this project. The goal “get informed” was highly successful; however to move forward as a vehicle of meaningful public engagement we (fellow bloggers) will need to learn how to deal with those that get carried away and make false or misleading statements. For example information should be presented as ‘first hand’, and accusations could be phrased as a question instead of a statement.

Anyone else have some ideas?

Bob Lorriman
www.lorriman.ca

whistler - November 21st, 2005
Yes, I am going to go that route, if you look at the thread 'Information for the new council' you will see that it says 'You must sign in and create an account to post on this'
I'm hoing that more people create accounts (free) it doesn't matter what name they use (ex'suzycreamcheese') but they must have a valid email address. This will allow for the flow to be better also on topics as you will know who said what without the Anonymous comments.
I also have an option of creating private blogs but i'm not sure how that would fit at this point. Duane

anonymous - November 28th, 2005
Great idea - the community needs more opportunity for engagement. This seems to be successful so why not keep it going?

anonymous - December 13th, 2005
Thanks Duane for setting up this website as it helped me to make an informed vote. It`s also great that you`ve kept it going after the election so that anyone can talk about any issue. Any luck on getting any funding from the muni for the site ?