| City Council: Bill Shacklett |
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Posted: Monday, April 19, 2010 3:01 pm
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Bill Shacklett
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Name: Bill Shacklett
Occupation: Photographer
Education: Hobgood Elementary, Murfreesboro Central ‘69, MTSU, BS in Urban Planning ‘73
Why are you running?
I deeply love our city and care about our citizens. I want to work for and with each of you to make Murfreesboro an even BETTER place to live.
These are challenging times for any level of government, but particularly local government, because its limited streams of revenue (sales and property taxes and growth-related revenue) are dramatically affected by our slow economy.
Local government must be innovative and make some difficult priority decisions to continue to provide essential services to our citizens. I want to use my knowledge of our community, my relationships with a wide variety of our citizens, my ability to think creatively and my experience to help bring government and the people it serves closer together as we make these tough decisions.
What is your position on district versus at-large representation on the City Council?
I am proposing a change in the structure of City Council. (Enlarging the circle of influence by providing additional voices to improve the decision-making process.)
Our city has dramatically changed in numbers, complexity and diversity over the years. The present council structure in many regards has served us well (we live in a great community), but what is good CAN be made even better.
We have the opportunity to create a BETTER CONNECTION between GOVERNMENT and the PEOPLE it serves by adding district representatives to our council structure.
I believe it’s time we to improve opportunity and accountability restructuring our city council. This will profoundly affect the quality and effectiveness of the deliberative process on every issue before City Council.
I believe that realizing this opportunity with our citizens will be a healthy and productive process for our entire community. Specifically, I’m advocating for a hybrid City Council composed of both at-large and district council members … taking advantage of the positives of both forms of representation and offsetting the challenges of both.
The process begins with YOUR vote… Do you care enough to make our local government even BETTER by extending opportunity to serve to others and making accountability more realistic?
With our citizens, the mayor and the city council, I pledge to provide our voters with a district representation option in our city elections.
What is your position the economic issues facing the city?
For many of our citizens the MOST critical issue is the economy and how they are going to meet the challenges of unemployment or underemployment. Folks from all strata of our community are struggling to make ends meet. These are also difficult times for government at ALL levels, but especially for local government because of the limited streams of revenue allotted local government.
All of these are drastically affected by the sluggish economy. I feel that it is imperative for our local government to do what each family and every individual has had to do: LIVE WITHIN OUR MEANS.
This means making some tough choices. We must be willing to listen to the public, prioritize and make some hard decisions. Local government must continue to look at innovative and efficient approaches to providing all public services. Local government also needs to encourage and facilitate the private sector’s efforts to create more jobs and meaningful employment opportunities for our citizens.
Government MUST in these difficult economic times encourage and nurture the entrepreneur spirit of its citizens to provide jobs and services. Government will never be able to solve ALL our problems (nor should we expect it to), but I believe government should ALWAYS practice and model good business in all that it does determine to do for our citizens.
What is the most pressing city issue and your possible solution?
CITIZEN INVOLVEMENT
One of the greatest challenges for these times is how to engage our citizens with the government that serves them as evidenced by the low voter turnout in most local elections (9%-2008, 13%-2006, 13%-2004 City Elections).
Every issue and decision of government can be addressed more effectively with citizen involvement. Complacency, apathy and shear laziness is slowly robbing us of our freedom.
Despite these challenging economic times, I believe that we stand at the threshold of opportunity in Murfreesboro – opportunity to value and learn from our past as we press towards the future – a future that is bright with promise for generations to come. These challenging times will pass. Today is OUR time to prepare the field of prosperity and opportunity for our children and grandchildren.
It is a legacy that has been passed to us from generations before us and allows us to live in the greatest city in the greatest state in the greatest country in the world. This is OUR time; and we must not fain from the task or neglect our responsibility.
I’m asking every citizen of Murfreesboro to commit themselves to better government at all levels. Government that can better do the work of government and that work is simply to “serve the people” -- government “of” the people, “for” the people. It’s not really a new idea; it’s been around since the birth of our nation.
Better functioning government begins with the people (you and me); each of us must accept the responsibility to make government efficient and effective. We need to get off our best intentions and do something that makes a difference. We need to encourage our family, friends, and neighbors to become informed and participate in our local elections.
It’s our right; it’s our responsibility.
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