Hall Monitors: A growing online community focuses its attention on the city
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At first glance, Resolution #11013 looked mostly ceremonial. On Aug. 22, Tacoma City Council was expected to vote on naming a newly completed downtown public space at the corner of 17th St. and Pacific Ave. in honor of a former mayor – Harold M. Tollefson. In Tacoma, as in most U.S. cities, naming parks and streets after former city leaders is hardly rare or controversial.
But for Tacoma resident Kevin Freitas, this was different.
"A council action to rename the plaza without wider (a.k.a. outside the council meeting forum) participation seems shallow, and I think our city can do better," wrote Freitas on his blog KevinFreitas.net. "Although I don't care for how the suggested name rolls off the tongue in casual conversation, I'd far prefer having a list of choices to consider. What do you think? Who’s in favor of holding a contest to rename Pacific Plaza?"
What started as an online debate among people familiar with Freitas's blog turned into a back-and-forth that affected the council agenda and was reported and editorialized in the pages of The News Tribune (Freitas's editorial squaring against Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma's; the mayor supported renaming the plaza after former mayor Tollefson).
What's more, says Freitas, the decision was coming on the heels of a workshop conducted by Project for Public Spaces -- a New York-based non-profit organization that aims to create and sustain public spaces that build communities. "I felt that it was just going forward without really looking at the spirit of this public spaces workshop and the recommendations that came out of it," says Freitas -- a Web programmer, Pacific Lutheran University graduate, and Tacoma resident -- during an interview at Metro Coffee on the UW Tacoma campus last week. "The thing that frustrated me was that the mayor was at this public spaces workshop. He was aware that it was going on and that people were trying to activate and energize that particular area of downtown. I felt like that whole process was being completely disregarded. That’s a blunt way to put it."
Over the next two weeks, Freitas blogged about the issue. He ran a contest inviting readers to rename the plaza: 62 people voted; "Pacific Plaza" -- the space's original name -- received the most votes, 23. He created an e-mail form -- pre-addressed to City Council -- so readers could directly contact City Hall. And Freitas, along with others who commented on his blog, spoke during public comment before council voted on the issue. In the end, however, council voted to rename the plaza after the late, former mayor (though it did agree to recognize the space as a “plaza†instead of a "square").
"This issue has helped breach the topic of urging our city government toward new ways of gathering feedback (cough-blogs!), and staying better in touch with the citizens of Tacoma," wrote Freitas after the meeting.
How much impact Freitas had on the final vote is debatable (the space, after all, was named after Tollefson). But what is known is that a civic interest online was sparked.
"I hadn't been to a city council meeting," recalls Freitas. "I hadn't paid attention to any of that stuff -- at all. It just came to my attention that it was going to be named this. On the surface, I didn't think the name evoked anything I really identified with. Once I talked to some friends -- friends who are lifelong Tacoma residents -- they didn't identify with it either."
In Tacoma, two blogs receive the most attention: KevinFreitas.net and Exit133.com. Others include Tacomaness.com, ThriceAllAmerican.com, and a blog run by the downtown Tacoma Business Improvement Area (BIA). All are collected online at FeedTacoma.com. Tacoma's blogging community is growing into a not-so-quiet (yet wholly civil -- you would be hard-pressed to find flaming comments on these sites) force that at times, according to some bloggers and downtown stakeholders, get some play inside City Hall.
(Full disclosure: local blogs frequently link to articles that appear in the Index; the Index has also provided free photographs to Exit133.com’s 'Tacoma 365' photo project).
In the last three months, Tacoma bloggers have weighed in on a range of issues.
Last week, bloggers questioned construction of a donor wall being built near the Washington State History Museum on Pacific Avenue. The wall was designed to honor donors who helped save Union Station downtown. Bloggers argued that such a wall would hinder pedestrian access to the Chihuly Bridge of Glass and Thea Foss Waterway. The story hit the front page of The News Tribune in an article that included comments from Freitas and discussion posted by bloggers. City Hall issued a stop-work order after Councilmember Julie Anderson raised similar concerns at the Sept. 27 city council study session. Whether Councilmember Anderson took action after reading the blogs is uncertain (she did not respond to a request for comment for this article). Local blogs lit up with comments on the issue. For two days on Exit133.com, Sept. 27 and Sept. 29, 55 comments were posted by nearly 20 commenters (even Washington State History Museum Executive Director David Nicandri weighed in -- twice). Similarly, four posts on Freitas's blog included drawings of the proposed wall, video of the council study session showing Councilmember Anderson reaising the issue, and links to local newspaper articles.
The latest issue gaining momentum online?
Support for two developers' plans to restore the 81-year-old, 12-story Winthrop Hotel in the city's Theater District.
BUT HOW MUCH impact do bloggers have on staffers at City Hall?
"I think they're paying attention," says Paul Ellis, director of metropolitan development at the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber. "Blogs are collecting opinions and viewpoints, and presenting information." Ellis points to the Tollefson Plaza debate as an example of bloggers and City Hall intersecting and connecting on an issue. "I think there's no doubt, because it was centrally organized, [that blogs] had an impact on Tollefson Plaza."
Ellis is a blogger, too. He started the BIA's blog shortly after the Project for Public Spaces meeting last summer. It was initially designed to keep people engaged and informed on issues growing out of that workshop. Since then, however, his blog's scope has changed.
"I've been encouraged by others to continue it and broaden the scope," says Ellis, who spoke Monday after a meeting of more than 30 Tacomans to discuss the Winthrop Hotel. "We have broadened it since then because there was interest in issues like parking, certainly the Winthrop, and other general development issues."
Young and Freitas have watched interest in their blogs grow.
According to Freitas, who started his Web site in 1997 as a way to communicate with family and friends while in college, blog activity has grown "tenfold." He reports 100-200 views per day on any given post. "If it's a hot-button issue, there's usually more," he says.
Young has seen a similar spike.
"Generally speaking, traffic has increased by between 12 and 20 percent per month every month," he says. He logs 800 to 1,000 unique visitors per day, and 3,000 to 5,000 page views per day.
But whether blogs directly influence City Hall policy is uncertain.
"I see it as another means of all the informal networking that's going around," says Councilmember Tom Stenger. Though he says he doesn't regularly read the blogs, he has run Google searches for his name, which have led to local blogs. But he's unsure whether blogs get anymore play inside City Hall than, say, someone who writes a letter or phones his office. "The people who are blogging are the people who otherwise would be leaving me a phone message or stopping me on the street corner. To me, it's just another outlet of the ongoing conversation in civic and government life."
"Now, I guess, it's just a new technology," says Councilmember Mike Lonergan. "Instead of making an announcement in a newsletter, for example, those same kinds of issues are being broadcast through blogs." Councilmember Lonergan says he has learned of blogs through some of the 30-50 e-mails he receives each day, as well as articles in The News Tribune that reference blogs. "What I tend to see are reactions of people who have read the blogs."
But does he regularly follow the comments on blogs?
"A lot of times, it's all I can do to keep up with e-mails and [regular] mail that comes to us," he says.
BUT EXIT133.COM FOUNDER Derek Young says much of the discussion on his blog has carried over into council meetings. When councilmembers and public citizens comment on issues during City Council meetings, Young has noticed that many of the discussion points were generated earlier on local blogs. One example: the Winthrop Hotel. While developers Chester Trabucco and Tim Quigg want to develop the building into a historic hotel, another developer wants to turn the building into a blend of market-rate and low-income affordable housing. On Young's blog, Tacoma residents researched track records of both developers and posted their information on the Web. "The evidence that people were putting out there about AF Evans or [Tim] Quigg -- the stories that were coming up were the same anecdotes or stories that then came up in the city council meeting a few days later -- both from the citizens and also from Council."
Young also checks his Web traffic to see who visits his blog. He says City Hall registers "in the top five" of large-scale or corporate entities on his site.
"I also get e-mail and contacts from people at City Hall," he adds,"so I know it's being read. It's having some sort of impact. Also, just going to city meetings and having people [from City Hall] who I have never met or heard from before coming up and saying they're all reading it. To me, at least within the last two months, it's gotten to be a much bigger thing."
"I think councilmembers are [reading the blogs]," says Marty Campbell, president of the Downtown Merchants Group. "I think they would be foolish not to be. But a councilmember using it as their only source of conversation would be foolish. I read it to be aware, but it doesn't become my only source."
Campbell says blogs have forced some to reconsider existing processes for creating public policy. He specifically points to Tollefson Plaza and the wall at the Washington State History Museum as two examples. "Blogs have recently really pointed out a complete need to redo or reevaluate the public input process," he says. "I think the blogs are at least a path in which the public can communicate."
Developer Chester Trabucco has seen interest in his Winthrop Hotel development plan grow through discussion online. "I think what the blogs do is let people know that it's a sustainable, legitimate discussion in town and they're here to hear about it," says Trabucco, who spoke after a Winthrop development meeting Monday. "Instead of 10 people here [for today's meeting], there's 30 people here.
"But I think it's difficult to tell how much momentum was created as a result of the blogs," Trabucco adds. "It may not be that they're here because of the blogs. But a lot of the interest from City Council, from what I have been hearing, was generated by the blogs. Supporters, typically, won’t come out. They don't come out and go to meetings. But it's easy to get onto a blog. I think [councilmembers] have more appeal and support for taking a kind of unpopular position because of the bloggers. They kind of represent the masses."
Still it's difficult to gauge how much bloggers represent the city as a whole.
"I would never argue that the blogs, as a group and a collective group, are a snapshot of Tacoma," says Exit133.com's Young. "But I think it might be a better snapshot of the people who care. The advocates."
Young says the city's size has contributed to his blog's success. "It's a small enough city that you can make an impact," he says. "Once I started meeting people because of the blog, I started realizing I've been seeing these people for a long time. It’s a very small, core community."
He also says it's easier to be a writer in Tacoma because there aren't that many online voices.
"If you go to a big city, or a bigger city, or a more wired city, there are so many voices out there," adds Young. "It's hard to get noticed. Even if we were writing good discussion, if you're in a city where there's a much broader range of things to read from and multiple sites are taking different perspectives, City Council probably wouldn’t care as much because everybody could find something online that backs up their own thoughts. We have, effectively, a solid-wall front that says, 'Here’s what we think.'"
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For more information about Tacoma blogs mentioned in this article, visit the following:
1. KevinFreitas.net -- http://www.kevinfreitas.net
2. Exit133.com -- http://www.exit133.com
3. Feed Tacoma -- http://www.feedtacoma.com
4. Tacoma BIA -- http://tacomadowntown.blogspot.com
5. Thrice All American -- http://www.thriceallamerican.com
6. Tacomaness -- http://www.tacomaness.com
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