I very much regret that Village Hall does not receive the kind of investigative reporting that citizens of communities deserve.

Without these type of serious observations citizens cannot keep up with what is taking place on the surface, let alone below the surface.

And I don't know what to do about it. I can only suggest that Village Hall has some responsibility in keeping the public informed.

Perhaps more complete minutes, explanatory-type records could be made and regularly distributed to the public. This might eliminate any slanting or bias-type reports.

The fact that this type of accountability is not available, it further discourages  transparent government, clouding views of what is actually going on.

One of the first obligations of representative government is to the people, that they are kept well informed and that government should see to it, that first of all, everything is transparent and secondly that it all is honestly reported.

Obviously the media sees no reward in maintaining this complete type of reporting so that neither the Journal-Sentinel nor some local newspaper is able to make the daily observations and required reporting. 

I recall when extraordinary news required extra editions and newspapers were sold on the streets, the newspaper boys calling "extra, extra, read all about it."

There's not much extrraordinary news in Shorewood, but I believe that serious thought must be given to this idea of openness, among other required innovations, in order to  improve our government's accountability to its citizens.

If we cannot do this, we can only expect less information from local government and even more inclination toward secrecy.

Again, it seems that the suggestion for old fashion town meetings, at least once a month, might be a good way for doing more than mere reporting, especially without the old fashion newspaper reporting. 

In our private affairs most of us want to be private and “not air out our dirty linen in public.”

Government on the other is a public process and needs ultimate airing and transparency. Public linen whether clean or dirty usually takes on a soiled appearance if it's not in the sunlight. Sunlight is in the interest of community.

It has become apparent that in early workings of our local government that what we wanted done at our river's edge in Shorewood,was not considered, because the Board didn't know what was being considered, nor did we the citizens know. 

We must remedy this disability immediately.  We must  stop this project now.  The Board knows that we have taken a wrong turn, we must stop and get new directions.  This proposal is not for us.

We have then two serious questions to consider, what to do with this river oriented land and how to get the public involved in these projects from the early stages?

On the first question, I believe that we must put this land in the positive control of the community and not be in position of waiting for hit and miss proposals.

On the second question, the Village Board must as soon as possible hold a public hearing to deal with the manner in which we will handle these situations in the future, as how to keep the public informed and involved from the early stages of these projects.

We must limit or eliminate behind-the-scene manipulations. Government is a public business. It is not a secret agency; therefore requires plenty of sunlight.

This situation as it has developed summarizes real concerns and my suggestions are constructively intended. This is not going to go away until we attend to it properly. Let's stop and revise the process.

Obviously, if we had a town meeting situation, all of us would be in the know, including the Board members.  Town meeting situations would not allow these silent prelimanry operations, out of sight of the citizens and perhaps unknown to some members of the Board.  I don't believe these concerns are going to go away.   

Democratic government as devised by our forefathers aimed at the inclusion of all citizens and was based on equal representation and equal treatment.

To a great degree its structure imitated that from which it separated itself. If Washington had not been our first president, for example, perhaps precedent would have been set for electing the president as king for life.

As to equality, slavery was included in the constitution itself, in terms of counting slaves as a proportion of the population for purposes of representation And although one of my most favorite heroes Thomas Jefferson championed equity, he held slaves.

Democracy, for as good as it is in practice, and because it involves people and their desires may sometimes be thought not to quite reach the ideal. Perhaps nothing reaches its ideal.

Winston Churchill said that, “democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I have all my life believed in it and have fought for country and democracy. I would do everything to bring it closer to the ideal. In fact that goal is among one of my main drives.

I am concerned about those things that work against democracy. Secrecy in government as I see it, is one of the greatest enemies of democracy And I've been trying to call attention to its undemocratic nature here on a local basis.

Recently I called for town meetings for Shorewood which would bring actual government closer to the people. They would bring up issues and even review actions that have been made or held secret. I believe that the people of Shorewood should engage in discussion as to the benefits of town meetings at a town meeting. I shall be stressing various means for more democratic government as time goes by.

Specifically closed door meetings should have more of a justifying basis than they presently have. The State specifications are too broad and we should increase the means for restricting meetings behind closed doors and more or less secret discussions among our elected representatives.

Town meetings might be a good solution and work in that direction and toward making our elected officials more representative of the view of the general citizenry, especially as our board members do not have constituencies nor do they have directives from even those who vote for them.

Today our elected representatives cannot publicly take on a particular view that they know  represents a group, who voted for them because they don't know the view of those who voted for them. They don't know who voted for them.

Let's experiment by having one town meeting every two months on the Monday between the two Village Board meetings.  A good time to start might be in mid-March of 2008, after our local election.