City Council Inundated With Emails – Technology Provides an Answer

Nick Callahan

There is nothing like a tax hike to elicit emails from constituents. In order to deal with unusually high email volumes, some Councilmembers have turned to Microsoft’s auto reply and cut & paste functions for help. Since making the most of these features, District 3 City Councilman Richard Clark, has been receiving glowing responses from constituents thanks to his use of a formatted response.

Regardless of the contents of a constituent’s email, the same return message is sent anytime the message header seems to reference the current millage debate or budget related items. Unwittingly, many of his constituents think that they are getting a personal invitation to Wednesday night’s Town Hall meeting and gratefully reply to the following form-generated reply thinking that they are being heard.

“Thank you for your email. I hope you can attend our Town Hall meeting on the City Finances/Budget Wednesday, July 15th at 6:00pm at the FCCJ Deerwood location. Many of my fellow Councilmembers will be in attendance with me and would like to hear from you. - Richard Clark"

It is always good to see the discourse of representative democracy at work, but the use of rote replies calls into question the industriousness and sincerity of a representative’s response.

Tags: Fix It Now, Jacksonville District 3, Local Politics, Millage Increase, Richard Clark, Tax Increase

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 7:44 AM and is filed under Local Politics, State Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.