Regular readers may or may not know that Skip and I have another blog, GilfordGrok, where we cover issues relating to our home town, Gilford, NH. Both of us also happen to serve on the town’s Budget Committee (GBC) that passes final judgement on town and school spending proposals the voters ultimately vote upon.
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GilfordGrok has become yet another source for townsfolk to become informed about the myriad of issues faced by the town as a whole. At the beginning of the budget season, a subcommittee of the GBC conducted a comparative study of salary data between Gilford and 32 similarly sized towns in NH. The executive summary is published on the blogsite, along with approximately 90 tables (!) of supporting data for all who care to see.
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Given the free-wheeling spirit of the blogosphere, at times you can imagine that the topics and thoughts that get posted can get mighty hot. And they have been. There has been reports of repeated grumbling on the part of those who wish to continue "business as usual" as far as out of control spending goes in our town. Certain elected and bureaucratic persons within the town and school governments have been heard openly complaining about the "stuff that’s up on that website, you know, the ‘Grok thing…"
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What really irks them is that they no longer have full control of the means to communicate with the citizens. Prior to the advent of the blogosphere, the main source of information for ordinary people was through the carefully filtered (yes, even at the local level) "mainstream media" like newspapers, TV, and to a lesser extent, radio. Now, anybody with a keyboard and a website address can help disseminate news and opinion.
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Today’s UnionLeader.com carries a story that demonstrates the growing power of blogs in the political arena at the local level. Correspondent Nancy Foster reports:
Milford – In the era of MySpace.com and The Drudge Report, it seems that everybody who’s anybody has a blog. Sending one’s opinions out into the infinite ether of the Internet has become part of daily life, and in Milford, it’s beginning to shape the town’s political landscape..