Jordan Independent - city officials - Comments

I spoke to Police Chief Bob

Mathias Baden — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:17:56 -0500

I spoke to Police Chief Bob Malz and City Administrator Ed Shukle yesterday. They said that code enforcement is a high priority of the city council. Since it has a full-time community service officer, the police department recently upped the amount of time it spends on enforcement of ordinances. But your elected officials also gave the police direction to do so.

(Mathias Baden is the editor of the Jordan Independent. He can be reached at editor@jordannews.com.)

We were told a while back

westender73 — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:44:54 -0500

We were told a while back here that eyesore citations were not a priority to the city. In stead of writing weed tickets, maybe the police should concentrate on slowing down the traffic roarring thru downtown.

I’ve walked that section

Brandon — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 08:36:00 -0500

I’ve walked that section of road before, and I never really thought anything of the fact that there was no sidewalk. I understand that it would make the walk to Lagoon Park safer for children and families in the area, but I guess that was never really an issue when I was a kid – we walked on the street all the time because there often weren’t sidewalks for us to use.

I am a Hillside

J-Town Knitter — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 08:18:45 -0500

I am a Hillside Avenue/Stuart Drive neighborhood resident and frequent visitor to Lagoon Park. I often walk "the loop" north through the Lagoon Park, up Sunset Drive, through the school campus area, and down Hillside Drive. Many people (joggers, parents with strollers, dog-walkers) take this route through Jordan's neighborhoods. I'd like to see sidewalk or tar walkway along the stretch of Hillside Drive from Stuart Drive to Park Drive. It seems odd that we provide safe walkways in the form of sidewalks up until this point, but on the last block pedestrians walk to the park, we force them to walk on the street. Though there is less traffic along this stretch than there used to be, there is still enough to warrant a safe route. There are many children in the Stuart Drive and Chad Circle neighborhoods who would enjoy a safer walk to the park if there was a walkway.

But here's the rub: It's so

Mathias Baden — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 11:27:51 -0600

But here's the rub: It's so difficult to understand one meeting if you haven't been to several others. It's almost like there is a secret language at government meetings -- I've begun calling it governmentese, although I adopted that name from somewhere else.

(Mathias Baden is the editor of the Jordan Independent. He can be reached at editor@jordannews.com.)

Students in the Jordan High

Brandon — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 11:23:53 -0600

Students in the Jordan High School leadership class are required to go to meetings like the city council or, as more students usually choose, the school board. And I think that’s a great idea.

I had never seen a meeting run under parliamentary procedure until I was a junior in college. I didn’t know how school boards and city councils really operated until an internship in Alexandria the summer before my senior year of college. I wish I'd seen these earlier.

The topics covered at the meetings aren’t always interesting, but seeing public entities like city councils, county boards, planning commissions, or school boards in action is pretty remarkable. You can’t really understand the magnitude of local politics until you’ve been to one of these meetings.