22 - Summary Report - West Paris Town Hall Meetings

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In addition to the home visits, following each town hall, we began processing the various input we were receiving to identify potential tasks we could address right away. The goal of this was not to wait until after all five events took place before citizens saw some response from the City, but rather if an item of immediate opportunity presented itself, we would attempt to work it as quickly as possible. This has required a redirection of city resources to focus more attention on this effort, but given the public attention this initiative brought with it, we knew that immediate tangible and visible responses was important. Until we are able to raise more resources and/or direction is provided by the City Council, our ability to sustain this focus will be limited, however we will be working as hard as we can for some time going forward to address more of the concerns raised during the town halls. It is important to state as this point that while it is difficult for any individual person to see the full scope of work we do as a city across the entire community, I would like to assure anyone who reads this report that to the best of my observation, while we can never claim to give every citizen, block, street, or quadrant of the community a perfectly equal amount of attention and/or resources as others during any set measurement of time, we are in fact doing our best to try and serve as many of our residents all over town as fairly as we possibly can. Unfortunately, with limited resources including staffing, time, and especially funding, priorities must be made and worked. This is not made any easier when we include changing codes, policies and politics. And at the end of the day, city officials, from the city council to city management to city staff are human, attempting to do the best they can, when they can, and with what they have to do it with, for the most good possible. Nevertheless, we always strive to improve and we continue to want to hear from citizens regarding any issues they see out in the community so that we can try to address them. Another important point to raise before we dive in to the summary of the meetings — it was often stated that citizens were having difficulty getting responses from city officials (council, management, and/or staff). Having been here for over three years, unless something predates me, I can attest that nearly none of these instances raised during the meetings was ever brought to my attention by the citizen. Therefore, I would like to encourage every citizen that should they ever experience difficulty getting information and/or responses from a city official, particularly a staff person, please reach out to their supervisor and ultimately if that were to even fail, reach out to my office. While we can never guarantee to provide a response that a person desires to hear, I would like to at least make sure that they get a response. SUMMARY RESULTS: Having completed all five of the town halls, we have attempted to compile all the feedback. This report contains a summary table, pie chart, and an itemized listing of all comments we took note of (see the end of the report). Without listing each response verbatim, we have attempted to reasonably compile each response while creating some uniformity and commonality in the verbiage where possible. Please know that we took summary meeting notes of all five meetings; Page 3 of 12