A Tale of Two Cities
… and who gets the best value from their councilors
Although we’re a relatively small web design and search optimization business here in Hervey Bay we have a global reach. We have clients in Europe, Canada and the United States and a lot of our business comes through word of mouth as one satisfied customer goes on to tell their friends of the good service we gave them. So we weren’t surprised when we were approached by a small town council in North Dakota in the US to build a new website for their town.
While talking to the town councilor who contacted us I began to get an interesting insight into the town and the way it’s run by the people that the residents of the town elect. In that small town councilors are paid a total of $300 a year … that’s not a typing error … they get just $300 a year for the time they put in to managing the affairs of the town.
There are no car allowances for the councilors in that town. They get nothing for their phone bills and no one has ever suggested that the residents should pay for new computers for the councilors, any fuel for the councilor’s cars or anything else for that matter.
Most of the councilors are local business people and if the residents want to talk about a local problem they don’t email their representatives … they just walk into the councilor’s business and talk to them over the counter.
There are no endless meetings, committees and stalled decision making in that town. Instead the councilors work for the whole community and they work hard at keeping the community informed.
Their old website is simple and easy to use because the councilors know that not everyone can handle all the bells and whistles that are included in some council websites. The new site is going to incorporate features that allow locals to post local news and discuss matters of local importance and give them a chance to have even more input into the way the town is run.
Compare all that to the value that we get from our highly paid councilors. Imagine what it would be like for for Hervey Bay and the everyone else in the Fraser Coast Regional Council area if things went back to the way they used to be … when councilors where paid very little but served on council out of a sense of civic duty. That didn’t seem to impede local growth back then.
