Brownsboro Area Business Association

Ways of communicating, or lack thereof, has come up on several recent posts, particularly regarding the storm and power outage.  I'm wondering if anyone would like to comment on what you think or what you have experienced.

First of all, I want to say that I realize the Mayor and the city council work hard out of love for their community. I do not doubt that one bit. But I also recently found out that they pay themselves (our taxes) for doing so. So I'm going to be a little critical here, and feel I have the right to do so.

(Also, a disclaimer of sorts. I also suspect that I have possibly been the victim of council nepotism in the past and therfore it would be resonable to assume I have other agenda. I have hard feelings over some of the past and certainly do not feel I could ever get a fair hearing from the council, but I believe my comments here stand on their own).  

It seems to me that the Mayor and Council fumbled the ball more than a little bit regarding communicating to the citizenry some important information: The Church providing food and electricity, the expensive ($50,000 and counting) tax dollar renovated city hall's availability throughout the week, etc. Sure they posted things on the web site. Let's think about that for a moment. During a massive power outage that effected 90% of the neighborhood, they only posted info. on the website!

Someone suggested leaving notes in people's doors. That seems reasonable to me. If we can have a Woodlawn Park Dept of Homeland Security, it seems we could develop a network of volunteers that could mobilize during a crisis. Wait a minute. Seems like I read somewhere in Council Meeting minutes just such a thing. Maybe it had to do with block monitors. Or maybe it had to do with our Police Cheif and Homeland Security Director going to some disaster preparedness trainings. Does anyone recall reading that too. I'll do some research.

Do we have disaster preparedness plans? Could we develop some? If we have them, were they used during this crisis? Did they work? What is your evaluation as to how things went?

And what are reasonable expectations of the Mayor and council in general, and individually, all of whom have homes and families of their own to worry about?

And PLEASE!!!!! Mr. Mayor and Council Members, PLEASE resist the temptation to dismiss all of this with the ubiquitous "you need to come to a council meeting" post. There are other ways to discuss things. But feel free to discuss this at a council meeting also. Please!

On the front page of our city website under Police and Safety is our cities Emergency Disaster Plan.  We are basically under the Metro. Emergency Disaster Plan and we follow there lead.  There was a sign placed in front of our City Hall advising that it was open and the times it was opened.  During the storm the Mayor and other Council Members were out  acessing the damages. I  walked from my home to TLD to give them an address of a tree that had fallen and had blocked Green Meadow Circle.  The tree was later moved from the street as were other trees that were blocking our roads.

 I attended training with the Citizens Emergency Response Team-CERT and have yet to be called out for any emergency.  

Hopefully there will not be a next time, for such a disaster.  I know in the past several writers have complained and I have stated if they wanted to meet with me we could address the problem and come up with a solution.  I have yet to have anyone call and ask to meet with me if they have a problem.

George Langford-Councilman