Pulling the old Switcheroo!

Perhaps bait and switch is a bit harsh, but near the end of Tuesday night’s City Council work session, after council discussed the situation with the sewage treatment plant in Petersburg, the reworking of City Code to address parking in residential areas for personal use campers, boats, and recreational vehicles, and commercial vehicle parking, City Manager Tom Mattis, said, “And we have one more matter to address and I held it till the end because it only requires a vote.”

By that time, most of the 60-odd people in the audience had already slipped out the door for private discussions.  And so just like that the city introduced a new pay scale for planning requests that run the gamut from signage costs to plan reviews.  In fairness, the cost increase make sense because they are directed at a specific person and the requirement to advertise legal ads can get pretty costly, ranging up to $300 per ad times as many as four printings.  I’m not as concerned about the cost for an employee to do the work, after all that’s why they have a job in the first place.

Still, it’s pretty shocking to see the costs jump by as much as 300 percent or more.  And while it is perfectly understandable that the project should pay at least most of its own way, it makes one wonder why we waited so long to increase the fees.  The costs that are not covered by the fee are paid for by “we the people” and come out of the General Fund, otherwise known as your tax dollars.

Still, it’s hard to swallow having to pay so much for something that could, and probably should, be handled differently today.  To me, the newspaper industry is nearly dead.  This is especially true of smaller papers, but even the big ones have a hard time keeping up.

Papers like the Richmond Times-Dispatch might as well ditch covering International and National news and put the stuff in a roundup column on page 3. By the time you read it in that paper, the news is at least two days old.  If it isn’t time to shed advertising in the papers, it’s so close that municipalities ought to petition to change the “must be advertised” clause that forces them to print legal notices in a “newspaper of record.”

While I realize there are still a few Luddites (people opposed to … new technology) out there who are not “plugged” into the Internet and its various wonders, the number grows shorter with every obituary.  Most people today have access to the news, for whatever it’s worth, either by computer or through a smart phone.  We know almost the instant something happens, think “I-reports.”  Big news events are online the instant they happen.

The ISIS attacks in Paris were out almost before the police knew it had happened.  Posting a video to snapchat or any of the too-many-to-name social media sites happens in the blink of an eye. Someone is there, someone has a video, someone has access, and someone knows how to use it.

Even here in the US, the video of the cop gunning down a man who was running away.  The cop didn’t shoot that video, a passerby did.  And yet, it was out in the public domain faster than fast.

So, if we believe that to be true, then why do we waste our time and our money, and this does cost us mind you, in paying for Legal Ads?  Why not just allow the municipalities to post their own legal ads on their own websites?

Think of the cost savings.  In this day and age when things are getting more and more expensive, why shouldn’t we take advantage of our investment in technology?  Back in the day, back in ancient times, like the 1980s, computers were not so prolific, websites were not so numerous.  There hadn’t been a huge push to get an “Internet presence.”  Today we have it.  Today everyone knows about Google, in fact Google is in jeopardy of losing its brand name because it has become a verb.  Who hasn’t said, “You can just Google it,” I mean other than the few remaining Luddites like my brother, Mike?  Remember Xerox? It took them forever, and a clever Saturday Night Live skit, to get people to call it making copies, instead of saying, “Can you Xerox this for me?”

The fee increases probably will never affect me.  I doubt I am ever going to need it.  I will either move out of the city or be buried in it before I have to have any zoning done.  But doesn’t it just make sense to stop paying the newspapers for Legal Ads when posting the information on the City Website would be just as effective, if not more effective, and would save the city and the residents some money to boot?

Raise the fees if you must, but if it were up to me I would look at getting rid of the fees altogether.  That would be a greater benefit to the community and to the city itself.