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An Open Forum Regarding the Failure of the Mayor's Page to Provide Links to Baltimore Neighborhood's Home Pages |
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An Open Forum Regarding the Failure of the Mayor's Page to Provide Links to Baltimore Neighborhood's Home Pages |
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This page is being presented with the sole purpose of urging Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke to provide links from his Community Page to our Community Pages. If you agree that this is an important issue, please email Mayor Schmoke to express that view.
We hope you find the following informative.
The following reply was sent to Mayor Schmoke on November 3, 1997. (If anyone tries to find the link to EncorebaltiMORE, please let me know how long it took)
November 2, 1997
Dear Mayor Schmoke:
Thank for your letter of October 21, 1997 wherein you reply to my earlier request for links to various community association web pages in Baltimore.
I am very pleased that we are in agreement that a link to EncorebaltiMORE is mutually satisfactory as a jumping off point to neighborhood pages. They are a fine organization with a well managed web site. However, I must take issue with your statement that the link is "in a very conspicuous location." On the contrary, it is almost impossible to find for a person looking for neighborhood links on the Baltimore City site.
I'd like to reiterate my request for a brief meeting with you, your webmaster, and Ms. Hunt. I would like to show you our neighborhood pages, how difficult it is to find theEncorebaltiMORE link, and when found, the lack of any explanation as to what EncorebaltiMORE represents. Most important, I would like to have an actual dialogue about what would constitute an appropriate placement for the EncorebaltiMORE link.
I realize this request could be considered an intrusion on your very busy schedule. However, I do consider this a matter that is worthy of your attention. The neighborhood webmasters of Baltimore work very hard to promote our neighborhoods and the City of Baltimore. A slight modification in the location and formatting of the EncorebaltiMORE link would be major assist to our efforts.
The following correspondence from Mayor Schmoke was received October 25th in response to the letter below. We are extremely pleased that we finally have a dialog. However, we were hoping for a more accessible link than the one that was actually provided. We will be writing him to that effect and will post the letter as soon as it is sent.
October 21. 1997
Mr. Barry S. Glassman
Webmaster
Dear Mr. Glassman:
I am writing in response to your letter of September 22, 1997, in which you
expressed concern at the absence of a link between the city government
web page and the various community association web pages in Baltimore.
I have discussed this matter with appropriate members of my staff in an effort
to resolve your concerns and those of your fellow Baltimore neighborhood
webmasters. I am pleased to inform you that those who visit the City's website
at http://www.ci.baltimore.md.us will now be able to link directly to our neighborhood web
pages via EncoreBaltimore. This link has been added in a very conspicuous location
where the Department of Planning maintains information on many of Baltimore's
splendid communities.
Among the qualities that make Baltimore really special are our people and our
wonderful mix of neighborhoods, and I'm excited about the fact that we've been
able to assist the fine work that you and your follow neighborhood webmasters
are doing to tell the world about it on the World Wide Web.
Thank you for writing to me about this matter and please continue to work
with us to make Baltimore even better.
Sincerely,
Kurt Schmoke
On September 26, 1997 Councilman Bob Curran personally delivered the following to Mayor Schmoke on our behalf.
The Honorable Kurt L. Schmoke
Dear Mayor Schmoke:
I am writing on behalf of my community, the Butchers Hill Association, and my fellow Baltimore neighborhood webmasters to request a meeting with you. At issue is our request that Baltimore City provide links from its web site to Baltimore's community and neighborhood web sites.
Over the past year, we have had several conversations with your staff and have not been able to come to an agreement on how to incorporate these community association-approved web pages into your Baltimore City web site. The group of community webmasters have discussed this issue at length and feel that there is a fair middle ground between our original requests and the reservations expressed by members of your staff.
We are proposing a partnership between the City, public sector entities, and the communities of Baltimore. We see this relationship as one that will fulfill our desire to promote both our neighborhoods and the City of Baltimore, without any significant additional work to your staff. Our proposal entails your web site providing a link to three independent sites that have shown that they are willing to track and encourage community websites. By linking to them your staff avoids the necessity of frequent checks, implicit endorsement, and refereeing potential controversies. The proposed links with neighborhood listings~s are as follows:
"Baltimore, Maryland" (http://www.baltimoremd.com/community/index.html),
We are very anxious to work with you to promote the City of Baltimore and its neighborhoods. Let's continue the meaning behind our bicentennial slogan, "A City of Firsts," and be one of the first city-sponsored web sites that works with its community web sites to do what is best for Baltimore.
We look forward to the opportunity to sit with you, to discuss our proposal, and hopefully, to find out what we each of us can do to promote Baltimore.
Very truly yours,
Barry S. Glassman
Webmaster & Treasurer
cc: Jeffrey Adams, Webmaster, Tuscany-Canterbury
8-27-97 On August 26th, the Baltimore Sun had an excellent story about the efforts of a number of Baltimore neighborhood Webmasters with some references to the issue of links. The story genereated quite a bit of email to this site, and hopefully to the Mayor also. I'd like to share the following mail with you that I feel reflects the spirit of all the correspondence received to date.....
I have read with great interest the article in the Baltimore Sun of August 26th concerning the web sites being developed by the many neighborhood associations of Baltimore City. The greatest strength of our city is the true sense of neighborhood that can be found throughout Baltimore. These neighborhood organizations are performing a public relations task for this city that you could not buy with any amount of money. To not provide a link to these outstanding web sites is to toss away a chance to show the true spirit of Baltimore and the people that make it a fine place to live.
As for the comments by your spokesman, Clinton R. Coleman, that your Web team has determined that it would be too difficult to establish and maintain links to every community association, may I suggest that you consider getting a Web team that understands the process involved in establishing and maintaining a link. The actual HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) coding for a link is literally child's play.
I can only hope that you will reconsider your policy of not linking to neighborhood associations web sites. Baltimore is in a position to move to the forefront of an information technology neighborhood. That neighborhood will encompass all those who have access to a computer and to the Internet. Failing to take fullest advantage of those people willing and able to help to
disseminate a positive picture of our city would be a grave mistake.
Following is the reply from the Mayor's Office to Delegate Rosenberg's letter below dated May 19th (Two comments on this reply from the Butchers Hill Webmaster -- There are currently only six neighborhood sites and it only takes 15 seconds to check a link! That comes out to 90 seconds a month.)
June 24, 1997
Dear Delegate Rosenberg:
We have considered your suggestion regarding the City's web page.
Unfortunately, we are unable to implement links to Community Associations
at this time.
There are over 700 recognized Community Associations in Baltimore. Maintaining links to Association web sites would be unmanageable given our limited staff. The sites would have to be reviewed and checked regularly to be certain the links were up to date. Our web staff is already constantly busy developing and updating the City's web site, which includes all Departmental pages.
The Planning Department is considering publishing the Community Association Directory on the web. At that time, we would provide web addresses along with other information about the organizations. Also, as I explained when we spoke, this larger policy issue has been
referred to the Mayor's Information Technology Board for further review.
Thank you for your suggestion. I appreciate your interest in this matter.
Sincerely,
Barbara Bostick-Hunt
I recently spoke with your Deputy Chief of Staff Barbara Bostick-Hunt, to determine your office's position about providing links from your Internet page to various community pages. I was very disappointed to learn from her that the "the subject is closed" and that such links will not be provided, due mainly she said to the limited resources of your office
This an appeal to you to personally review this matter and revise your position. There are many reasons for reconsideration; for now I will offer only two. First, the "Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke Page" is the closest thing we have to an official Baltimore City page. People from all over the world seeking information on Baltimore will visit and benefit from your page. For those visitors, it is customary on the Internet to provide links for further information on a subject. Second, neighborhood webmasters, myself included, spend untold hours on these pages with only one purpose in mind - to promote our neighborhood AND, therefore, the City of Baltimore. By not providing links to us, you are demeaning our efforts; and more seriously, you deny visitors to your page an opportunity to learn more about Baltimore.
Finally, I was told by Ms. Bostick that the Department of Planning might offer links to us at some time in the future. This would be unacceptable as their site is buried deep within your pages and the average "surfer" would be unlikely to visit a Planning page in order to learn about city neighborhoods.
The World Wide Web offers incredible potential for dissemination of information. Please help us let the world know about our wonderful neighborhoods and the fine city which we are a part of. I will be opening a forum to provide for an interchange of ideas on this subject. I hope you will be one of the first to reply.
Very truly yours,
Dear Mayor Schmoke:
I am prompted to write by the Cyberpunk column in the City Paper about the City's refusal to provide linkage to the web sites of community associations on the City's official home page.
The City That Reads should facilitate access to these worthwhile sources of information. Recognized community associations should be given the exposure that such linkage would provide. Residents of the
communities with web pages would benefit from accessing these sites, as would other residents of the City, not to mention potential homebuyers and visitors.
If there are legal problems that need to be addressed should the city provide such linkage, I am certain that they can be resolved in a manner that provides access to communities without incurring liability for the City.
Your serious consideration of this request to provide these linkages is appreciated.
Yours truly,
Last winter, when Jeffrey Adams created a page for the Tuscany-Canterbury Neighborhood Association, he hoped the city would link to this page from its own official site, the misleadingly titled Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke Menu Page. Makes sense, right? Adams E-mailed the city's then-Webmaster Andre Wilson to see if this could be done. He got no response.
Frustrated, Adams called Barry Glassman, designer of the Butchers Hill Association site and found that when Glassman lobbied for linkage between the city's site and the Butchers Hill site last June he was told by Wilson that the decision needed to be made by a committee of mayoral staff members. That was six months ago, and Glassman's site remains isolated from the city page. When Adams posted his gripe on the Baltimore News' community bulletin board, Webmasters of the Belair-Edison Community Association's site and the South Baltimore Home Page piped in with similar stories.
Alonza Williams, the mayor's deputy press secretary, tells me that its policy is not to link outside sites to the Schmoke page: "We feel that the Planning Department has a really good Web site and there's no need for outside links to anything." True, the city page has its own community directory with neighborhood descriptions and histories, but it misses the updates and news found on the community sites. What could be so potentially problematic about these sites? Williams curtly responds that the three-member Web development team doesn't have time to check "every community association page, and say 'yes' to some and 'no' to some."
Why would that be so complicated? Williams doesn't say. Is the mayor's office worried about links from community-association sites to pornography or bomb recipes? A tour of the sites turned up no such dangers. (Glassman even offered to sign a letter pledging that no inappropriate material would be linked to his site.)
Concerns about unofficial rogue community sites asking to be linked would be handled by a quick check with the city Planning Department's directory of recognized community associations. So what kind of material could the city possibly be worried about being linked to the Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke Menu Page?
Butchers Hill Association
Mayor
cc: Honorable Samuel I. Rosenberg Honorable Robert W. Curran
Mayor, City of Baltimore
City Hall
100 N. Holliday St.
Baltimore, MD 21202
The Baltimore Sun's, "Sunspot" (http://www.sunspot.net/ourtown/links/),
and encore baltiMORE (http://www.encorebaltimore.org/neighbor/neigmenu.html)
Butchers Hill Association
Thom LaCosta, President & Webmaster, South Baltimore Improvement District
Kelley Ray, President & Webmaster, Belair-Edison Community Association
7-9-97 On the reply to Delegate Rosenberg, he was told "this larger policy issue has been referred to the Mayor's Information Technology Board for further review". Very interesting who is on the Board and the possibility that they would have the slightest interest in this issue. They are as follows:
Anybody who thinks we got stonewalled, please raise your hand!
William Brown, Director of Finance
Daniel P. Henson, III, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development
George G. Balog, Director of Department of Public Works
Jesse Hoskins, Director fo Personnel.
The following letter was emailed to the Mayor on June 3, 1997 by the Webmaster of the Butchers Hill Association, speaking on his own behalf and not necessarily for the Association:
Barry S. Glassman, Webmaster
Butchers Hill Association
State Delegate Samuel I. Rosenberg sent following Letter on May 19th, 1997:
City Hall
100 N. Holliday St.
Baltimore, MD 21202
Samuel I. Rosenberg
This is reprinted with permission from the City Paper from their Cyberpunk Column dated May 14, 1997. It was written by Joab Jackson.
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