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Twitter as snow-removal tool
By adamg on Thu, 01/07/2010 - 8:04pm
Doug Haslam reports how a photo he took today of a stupid sidewalk on a Newton Corner bridge that never gets plowed in the winter wound up on the screen of new Newton Mayor Setti Warren - who promptly got the sidewalk plowed.
Via Dan Kennedy.
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Comments
Is this on Washington Street?
Is this on Washington Street? The marathon route? Always amazed to see runners trying to cross that bridge.
nope
...Newton Corner, above the Mass. Pike.
I know that Cory Booker,
I know that Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, is big with social networks and famously (in the political twitter world at least) upon receiving a Tweet asking for help shoveling out an older resident jumped up and did it himself.
In some circles Twitter is becoming the phone call of the modern age, especially among savy politicians (who know full well that Twitterers are the types who vote AND are more likely to campaign for someone in the future.) My main concern would be to watch out that those areas with active Twitter followers do not get more attention from local leaders in regards to potholes and other issues then those areas with smaller Twitter populations. I do admit though that I like Twitter and commend any politician that uses it as you can not hide on Twitter. If someone calls you out the entire world can see it and there really is nothing you can do about it. In the long run that makes people more accountable to their constituents and that is a good thing.
The Mayor and Twitter were
The Mayor and Twitter were both involved unnecessarily. You would be better served by contacting our DPW directly: http://www.ci.newton.ma.us/DPW/default.asp I would bet that 99% of the complaints on twitter.com go unnoticed. (the 1% makes the news) The best way to guarantee that the sidewalk is cleared is by actively submitting a request to The City. Do you expect city officials to peruse social networks searching for passive requests/complaints?
I am quite well versed in how
I am quite well versed in how to get a publicly owned sidewalk shoveled and I have to assume that 99 percent of Twitter users are as well. In the days before Twitter and the internet (and in cities without many Twitter and internet users) you would call the DPW and if they did not fix the problem you would call your local city councilor/alderman/town committeeman or your friend who works in city hall and tell them. This is not a new phenomenon.
As for expecting city officials to monitor the internet and social networks for complaints, well of course I do not expect it. On the other hand politicians and city officials have always had a thing about information. It used to be all about newspapers with interns scanning every paper looking for names of people/places/things of local interest. Then a newer crowd came in and decided to do the same thing with the internet and set up Google Alerts looking for that info. Now we have the newest crowd that will also search Facebook and Twitter looking for information and intel. So while it is not the ideal method of complaints I am not shocked that they found it so quickly... I am sure they are reading this thread as well...
You must not live in Boston
Every year we make frequent calls to city hall to ask them to remove the snow from the sidewalk in front of the city-owned rock wall at the end of our street, where the property is sloped downward and creates a big icy waterfall of the entire sidewalk and street adjacent to the property. They have never removed the snow in the five years we've lived here. Same with pretty much any other city-owned stretch of sidewalk. I don't think they actually do snow removal.
I do not live in Boston and
I do not live in Boston and honestly do not know much about their snow removal policies as I live in Chelsea and have spent a great deal of time in Salem, Lynn, Cambridge and other cities around Boston for work and school. Obviously Boston operates differently being larger then the communities I am familiar with. If you ever find yourself living in Chelsea and have the same problem send me an email and I can help you out.
The street
That's the bridge across the pike in Newton Corner- Washington and Center, though I get mixed up on which is which on the Circle itself. It's looking against the traffic where cars get on the Pike Westbound.
In short,my Tweet (which was triggered through other services, clumsily explained in my post) caught the eye of the Newton TAB's publisher, and the Mayor's office noticed his Tweet. Just as impressed with the new Mayor's reaction as with the media through which it got noticed.