Public Service Platform
How I think about local government, and an invitation to work on it together.
I hold these ideas loosely, and I'll keep refining them in the open.
Government should be a platform, not a bottleneck.
Its job is to lower the cost of taking part in civic life. Not to be the gate that everything has to queue through.
A good government multiplies what residents can do. A struggling one rations it.
Most of what frustrates people about government isn't about ideology. It's about information.
The rules exist. The data exists. The meeting happened. But you can't find it, can't read it, or can't act on it without hours of effort most people don't have.
That gap is where trust breaks down. And it's where a small number of insiders quietly gain an advantage over everyone else.
I look for transparency with affordances.
It isn't enough for information to be technically public. It has to be discoverable, understandable, and actionable.
The test is simple. Can an ordinary resident find it, make sense of it, and actually do something with it?
If the answer is no, the work isn't done. No matter how many documents are online.
I also believe in a sequence. First, make the system legible and give it real feedback. Then, push decisions closer to the people they affect.
You can't responsibly hand decisions to the edge until the edge can see clearly. Get the information right, and good local self-governance becomes possible.
Three efforts. They're really one idea applied three times.
A budget you can actually read
Public budgets are technically available and practically unreadable. I want a budget a resident can navigate, question, and understand. Not a document you need a degree to parse.
A shared civic data commons
The facts of a city should be open, usable infrastructure. Its facilities, services, schedules, and spending. Something residents and builders can rely on, and build on.
Civic infrastructure for participation
Plenty of kind, capable people want to contribute and can't find the door. I want to lower that barrier. To make it easy to find civic work and do it together.
The data commons is the foundation. The readable budget is what it makes possible. The participation tools are what we build on top.
I'm trying to build an umbrella for people who are kind, constructive, and serious about making things better.
You don't need a title or a side. I'm independent of any party, and this work is too.
If you care about getting the basics right — clearly, honestly, and in good faith — there's a place for you here.
The best way to start is a conversation.
I'd genuinely like to hear how you see it.