San Mateo - Service Academy Dinner
The City of San Mateo citizens service academy concluded with a dinner on 21 May 1997. These are some of my notes and pictures...
What would an eleven or twelve week "course" be without a graduation?
The City held a graduation in the City Council chambers complete with certificates.
After handing out the certificates we briefly discussed what we liked and
didn't like about the academy and what we learned that most amazed us
during the academy.
I hope that other cities hear about this and try something like this. Not only is this a great way to get come citizens more involved with their city and their city government, but it's a great way to change an otherwise adversarial situation into a more friendly situation. Quite a few of us at this academy were involved with the Beresford Hillsdale Neighborhood Association (I was president of the BHNA for two years) and could often be seen at City Council meetings and elsewhere debating various issues. Now, when we debate in the future, we'll have a different perspective of the people with whom we'll be debating.
After the presentation and discussion we went to the atrium for dinner. Most of the City Council members were there for the dinner. Mayor Gary Yates, Jerry Hill, Sue Lempert, and Claire Mack.
Many of us asked that we have a roster of everyone who went through this "class". Unfortunately, we weren't given a roster, so I don't have everyone's name... but here are some pictures during the dinner -- I hope my fellow classmates see themselves and enjoy the pictures...
I took another picture of KG Ouye our City Librarian. She wasn't smiling
in the picture I took when we were at the Library so... Here's a new
picture. Go back and check-out the page from when we were at the Library
to see the difference.
Although my wife didn't want her picture in here, she did take my picture...
I brought my PowerBook and Ricochet
wireless modem with me to the dinner so people could look at this web site.
Some people had wondered why I had been taking pictures during this "class".
Now they know...
Last night someone asked how long it takes to create a web page and what do I do to create the page. I use a Ricoh digital camera. Download the pictures directly to my Macintosh. Use Photoshop to crop and re-size each picture. Then I use a WYSIWYG web publishing program called Globetrotter to generate the pages. It's so easy and well integrated on the Macintosh... everything from the pictures to the web publishing to setting up the links on the web page. I spent about 20 minutes in Photoshop selecting which pictures to use (I took more than what's here) and cropping them. I spent another 30-40 minutes or so writing this web page and just dragging and dropping the pictures where I want them. I finally select the menu item that says "publish to the web" and it's online. And voilà it's done.
I hope that if you find this series on the Citizen's Academy interesting that you'll let me know. I hope that if you live or work in San Mateo that you'll please consider attending a future Citizen's Academy.
Thanks
Go back to the Citizens' Service Academy page