Editorial Editorial (December 19, 2003)

Sender beware: We're reading your e-mails

Thumbing through the several hundred e-mails that City Hall received on the proposed California Splash waterslide expansion plan - and then seeing how these e-mails influenced the voting at last week's Planning Commission - we're more aware than ever over how this popular and easy process is changing government-constituent communications. These e-mails, sent over the seven-month period since California Splash filed for approval of a $7 million expansion plan, have come from many parts of Pleasanton - from homemakers, business people, young and old. They range from 1-1/2 page letters (long for an e-mail) to the more typical one-and-two sentence messages: "Why ruin our small town..." or "We need more trees and trails, not amusement parks and fast-food restaurants." But they all make a point and show that they're paying attention to community issues.

We're great fans of e-mails. At the Pleasanton Weekly, much of our reader communications come that way. This gives us a chance to move story ideas, letters and photos on to others on the staff quickly, effortlessly and accurately. We're not yet a paperless office. Like the city planning staff that printed out those hundreds of e-mails, we still like to have the printed copy of our work to review, but when it comes to inter-office communications, we've long since stopped sending notes and letters to each other and find e-mail even preferable in most instances to telephone voice mails.

Pleasanton's municipal government and the Pleasanton school district are also seeing major increases in e-mail commentaries, with fewer letters and a drop-off in constituents who used to crowd the City Council chamber and school district board room. They still come when controversial issues are on the agenda, but more now are utilizing e-mail to voice their opinions. The thousands of e-mails each week have caused both agencies to provide administrative help in sorting out the messages to make them more manageable for officials to read. Still, the influx is having an impact as leaders are hearing, often for the first time, from parents, taxpayers and voters who never took the time to go to meetings, but are now more closely following news in the community and offering their views.

As these communications increase, writers need to take some care. Reading some of the e-mails city planners gave to us include at least one whose author's name was atop a company signature line. That company might be surprised to find its name on a letter opposing a project favored by the East Bay Regional Park District, one of its clients. Another came from a newspaper columnist, not ours, whose views on an issue she might report on are now widely known. Other e-mails offer strong opinions, but give no address, leaving us to wonder how non-Pleasanton e-mails might influence local decisions. Still others contain poor grammar, misspelled words and little punctuation, hardly a credit to those whose names are on them and include teachers and business executives.

Yet, for all the drawbacks, it seems that most of us like and use e-mail, including elected and appointed officials, teachers, commissions and task forces that are receiving more commentaries than ever before. So e-mail away, but sender beware. Take a good look at the message before hitting the "Send" key. If it's going to public officials, it'll become a public document and could end up in a council, planning commission or school board packet like the ones in our newsroom.

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