Cell Phones for the Council?
If you have been watching this site lately you know we have had a ton of trouble getting the budget workshop meeting video online. It looks like we might never get it going. However, I had clipped out a discussion about the various cell phone options and contracts at the city. This discussion includes a rather interesting exchange concerning the City providing "city paid" cell phones to all Council members through a special offer from one of the cell service providers. This discussion is worth watching, but it will also serve another purpose. Watch this video and let me know in the comments if you had a problem playing it. We are experimenting with a new service and would like to get your feedback.
If you are viewing this content through a news-reader
you might not be able to see the videos below.
you might not be able to see the videos below.
This is how the video appears via the new service we are evaluating:
This is how the video appears via Google (what we've been using):
Feel free to discuss the concept of the city providing the Council with cell phones in the comments below and while your at it, let us know if the top video played properly for you and how you think it compares to the Google version below it.
Labels: Budget, Cell Phones, Council, Overland, Video Testing
posted by Overland Sailor @ 11:40 AM 
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Anyone notice that Owensby can't shut his pie hole throughout the entire recording. No matter who is speaking he can't keep his mouth shut.
I really don't understand Councilman Owensby on this one.
Perhaps he has been in government too long to realize that most people, whether they need a cell phone for work or not, pay for their own. Even if they are one of the luck few to have a company provided phone they are almost always responsible for the bill if it goes over the alloted minutes.
It's a bit of a surprise for me to see Councilperson Owensby, a man famous for saying "did you go out for competitive bids?" and "I want an itemized bill be for I vote to approve this expense," not to mention his obvious concerns about financial management at City Hall considering his constant calling for a "State Forensic Audit", to be the only one on the Council passionately championing the type of spending. Unnecessary spending in my opinion.
Councilperson Keller said she would like to have a phone as well, but she didn't seem near as committed to it as Councilperson Owensby.
BTW, I don't think Councilman Owensby would have the phone for long if we did provide them.
His April bill was for 1463 minutes with only 553 minutes covered under the off-peak / promotion (according to the bill). That made for a $218.40 bill for one month's use.
What I found interesting was the large numbers of calls the Kirkwood and Ladue. I wonder what constituents Councilperson Owensby was referring to.
He said on the video that he represents constituents located throughout the City because the respective Council person doesn't care about citizens in their wards. So in May he spent approximately 40-50 minutes everyday working on constituency service.
But wait, if you back out the personal calls Kenny makes to constituents who do not live in Overland, we can estimate that Kenny spends on average 60 minutes a day working on constituency service.
I guess he doesn't realize how easy it is to conduct a forensic audit of his personal use of the City's cell phone.
LOL
OK folks, I added the same video to Google's video service to get your opinion on which is better.
It looks to me like the top video is cleaner, but the Google video player is more functional. I'd like to hear what people's preferences are.
I may still need to switch to the new service because of the host of services they make available.
I prefer the Google videos the best
Sailor,
The first video worked fine on my computer.
When has councilman Owensby published his city paid cell phone # to his Ward 3 constituents?
To the best of my knowledge he has not (though he could of course be giving it out individually).
However, based on last month's cell records there are very few calls to his phone number from Overland Residents that are not politically involved (like former Council members and the like).
We ran a poll on this issue. Those results showed that our readers overwhelmingly oppose the city providing cell phones for the council. about 25% of the respondents thought it would be OK for the city to provide $40.00 a month to Council members to get their own phones.
I imagine the big concern is having the residents stuck with outrageous cell phone bills.
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