Here is the schedule for the budget and finance committee (comprising me and Councilors Cameron and Cronin) to review the mayor’s proposed fiscal 2013 line items for every department.

You will note a public comment exists at the beginning of every session if you have any comments about any department or program to be discussed that night. If you cannot attend that public comment but would like to email me to have it read into the record, please click here to email.

Thursday, May 17

6:15 Public Comment
6:30 Information Technology Department
6:45 Assessor Department
7:00 Auditor Department
7:30 Treasurer Department
8:00 Council on Aging Department
8:15 Newburyport Public Library
8:30 Veterans Services Department
8:45 Parks Commission

Saturday, May 19

10:30 Public Comment
10:45 Collective Bargaining, Longevity, Vehicles, Other
11:30 Mayor’s Office / General Administration
12:00 Legal Services
12:15 Human Resources / Health Benefits
12:45 City Clerk Department
1:15 City Council
1:30 Board of Registrars
1:45 Paid Parking

Tuesday, May 22

6:30 Public Comment
6:45 Health Department
7:15 Harbormaster Department
7:45 Fire Department
8:30 Police Department
9:15 Emergency Management Department

Thursday, May 24

6:30 Public Comment
6:45 Whittier Vocational Technical School
7:15 Newburyport Public Schools
8:00 Planning & Development Department, Planning Board, Conservation Commission, Historical Commission, ZBA
8:45 License Commission
9:00 Youth Services
9:15 Building Department

Wednesday, June 6

6:30 Public Comment
6:45 Water Department
7:15 Sewer Department
7:45 Highway Department
8:15 Snow & Ice
8:30 Final Reviews

-- Thanks for reading my blog! I also encourage you to sign up for my email newsletter to receive monthly updates from my council desk. If the above article inspires you to add a comment, you may do so by visiting FY2013 Newburyport Budget Workshops. Thanks!

Public Service Recognition Week was born in 1985 to honor public servants at all levels of government. Every year since, the week’s been designated by the President and Congress. In 2010 and 2011 I sponsored city council resolutions to celebrate the week locally. This year, Mayor Holaday issued a proclamation of the same.

The Newburyport City Council unanimously received the proclamation during its April 30 meeting.

Newburyport 2012 Public Service Recognition Week

Please thank our city employees this week.

From those working in city hall to other municipal buildings and out on the street, our city would not be our city without them.

Thank and recognize Newburyport servants — and those in other levels of government too.

-- Thanks for reading my blog! I also encourage you to sign up for my email newsletter to receive monthly updates from my council desk. If the above article inspires you to add a comment, you may do so by visiting 2012 Public Service Recognition Week. Thanks!

The Society of Professional Journalists maintains a code of ethics for its members, which includes the following bullet:

Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public. Use of such methods should be explained as part of the story.

The Daily News readership should be told how information is gathered, says the SPJ. Yet in a story published this week about a proposed compromise to the LHD plan, the reader is only told that “the mayor sent an email to councilors” as the basis for quotations in the story.

This is true. The mayor did email the council.

But the mayor didn’t email the Daily News. This fact is glaringly missing from the article, as is another fact that the DN only learned of the email exchanges through a leak.

Please understand me. I have nothing to hide. But I expect the daily newspaper of record to be ethical and honest in how it gathers information and sharing that manner of gathering with the people. Reporter Dyke Hendrickson should have written that he was leaked a copy of emails between the mayor and Councilors Sullivan, Cronin, and me.

By failing to share how the Daily News gathers information, the newspaper is disregarding the above SPJ bullet. And this troubles me.

-- Thanks for reading my blog! I also encourage you to sign up for my email newsletter to receive monthly updates from my council desk. If the above article inspires you to add a comment, you may do so by visiting Ethical Omission in Daily News. Thanks!

The Local Historic District Study Committee proposes property owners may not be able to replace street-facing windows without approval by a to-be-created LHD Commission.

Opponents cry foul, wanting their property rights preserved and demanding the ability to change their windows to whatever type and material they choose.

This is the Newburyport landscape today, with houses and fences placarded with YES and NO signs and letters to newspaper editors being published weekly — about a proposal that has yet to be entered into the city council docket.

While the proposed LHD does not allow you to change your windows today, who’s to say the proposal will not be amended down the road? Nobody can predict the future — and because of such, the above headline may or may not be true down the road.

Aren’t you glad you’re taking a side on a proposal when that proposal may change?

-- Thanks for reading my blog! I also encourage you to sign up for my email newsletter to receive monthly updates from my council desk. If the above article inspires you to add a comment, you may do so by visiting LHD Lets You Change Your Windows. Thanks!

Taking 5-year-old data from the the EPA’s Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database and running the power profiler form from their website, the results may surprise you.

This first graph compares Newburyport’s electrical mix to the national average. You can clearly see that 40.8% of our electricity in zip code 01950 is sourced by gas power, and 27.9% comes from nuclear plants. We are much higher in these fuel sources than the rest of the country, which is based more on coal than anything else.

This second graph compares Newburyport’s emissions to the national average. Thankfully we’re lower across the board.

-- Thanks for reading my blog! I also encourage you to sign up for my email newsletter to receive monthly updates from my council desk. If the above article inspires you to add a comment, you may do so by visiting How Clean is Newburyport Electricity. Thanks!

The Newburyport City Council meets again tonight, April 9, 2012, at 7:30 p.m. in the council chamber on the first floor of City Hall. You can access the agenda by visiting my civic blog and accessing the dropdown box on the right side.

The agenda is fairly mundane but who knows what might happen during the committee reports. Will the controversial Storey Avenue rezoning proposal be removed? Will the tree ordinance be removed? We shall see!

-- Thanks for reading my blog! I also encourage you to sign up for my email newsletter to receive monthly updates from my council desk. If the above article inspires you to add a comment, you may do so by visiting Newburyport City Council: April 9, 2012. Thanks!