Beyond today's Tea Parties

This is only the beginning. Posted by Winston Edmondson.

Tax day hasn't been this fun in a very long time. I'll be at the Southlake Tea Party today at noon, and the Lewisville Tea Party at 5pm. I hope to see some of you there.
So do you think this will be an annual event from now on? Not if I can help it. As a community, we need to get together much more frequently than once a year. We should strive to meet with our neighbors regularly and try to form small neighborhood organizations. It's a great way to keep your community informed about the issues that affect you. I have some exciting ideas that will help foster community engagement. For starters, I want to put the city council meetings on DVDs and give them to any community organization that wants a copy. Citizens can already watch the meetings online, I know, but how does that encourage community engagement? I want organizations, like the LISD Task Force, to be able to watch the city council meetings together. Let them fast forward to the parts that interest them (like when Councilman Ueckert voted for the "New DeLay Middle School" variances...before he voted against them). This is a great way for citizens to get informed together. Informed citizens hold elected officials accountable for their choices. Elected officials that know they're going to be held accountable tend to start listening to the ideas and concerns of the citizens. Now that would be a refreshing change in Lewisville, don't you agree?