Many opportunities exist in which a municipality can take advantage of its existing activities by bringing in funds from the community. One example of this is advertising on the buses - in which an existing activity (transit system) is bringing in funds through advertising at no additional costs, effort, or conflict. Smart (note the difference between this type of endeavor versus privatization, exclusive rights, and other questionable activities often sought after by public programs).
The city sent out a wonderful calendar this past year, which included information on city services, garbage and recycling collection dates, and some municipal info. Great job on those that were involved in this project.
Next year, I suspect that the city could include one page with 30 slots - at a cost of $500 each - and open it up for individuals, businesses, non-profits, event groups, etc, to sponsor the community calendar by purchasing a slot. Not a bad deal for the purchaser - guaranteed to go to every household in all of Oshkosh. Not bad for the city, who snags an extra $15000 to offset some of the producing, printing, and distribution costs of the calendar.
Who knows, maybe the $15,000 can be saved annually until the city has enough funds to implement a blue-recycling-CONTAINER program, similar to that shown here, thereby eliminating the requirement of plastic bags.
2 comments:
Another excellent post Justin!
May I suggest that you submit a cross post in the ONW to increase the readership and get the message out?
A faithful reader-
CJ
:)
Thanks for the comments CJ. I guess the main goals I have for maintaining a site are the following:
1. Motivates me to pay attention to what's happening
2. Share my ideas publicly about things that I feel are important or funny
3. To offer an alternative to for-profit media.
The underlying rule of it all is that these goals must be accomplished with as minimal time input as possible (not the time available back when I did this:
http://www.geocities.com/
abvtimes/newsa.html
now with the two kids, house, real job, etc).
So, I have a better idea - why don't you join Main Street and become a faithful contributor. Ideally we'd have enough people to post daily, providing real stories, with real content, about our community. Oh, and why not bring a buddy.
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