Following Town Council

I've lived in Leesburg for six years, and during that time I've paid attention (as best I can) to what goes on with our Town government. I served on a Town commission, got involved in local campaigns and (obviously) started a blog focusing on politics in and around Town. When I started, I would spend time digging through the Town's online documents repository to review the minutes of Council meetings and reading the papers for quotes from our elected officials. In the past few years, however, the methods available to track what's going on with the Council have improved markedly.

Witness what may be the best development in Town Council transparency yet, the running Liveblog of Council meetings that Leesburg Patch's Christian Brown runs every month. It's one thing to read the news stories published after a Council session, but a running liveblog gives the reader a real sense of the flow of the meeting, which can help explain the nuances of outcomes that might otherwise go underreported in an article the next day.

And for those who really want to indulge their civic geekiness, there's Comcast Chanel 67, the Leesburg Government Channel. You can literally watch council sessions, live, on TV. It had been my plan to go to the Council meeting last night, to express my support for the R.O.C.K. program, but due to circumstances beyond my control, I couldn't attend. Instead of going to Town Hall, I watched the session live on TV. (Or, watched as much of it as I could before I had to go to bed to be up with the kids in the morning.)

In addition to these methods of following Council meetings, live, some members of Council have stepped up their personal online presences. For example:

• Councilman Dave Butler has both a Facebook page and a Twitter account.


• Councilwoman Katie Sheldon Hammler also has a Twitter account.


• Councilman Kevin Wright has a Facebook page.

And those are just the ones I could find with a quick search. I'm sure some digging will turn up others!

It's great to see the Town and it's Councilmembers participating in the wonderful electronic media that enable them to engage with Leesburg's residents frequently and fully, and it's nice to know that even if I am not at the Council meetings, I can still be part of the discussion, online.