One of my goals since becoming Mayor was to increase opportunities for residents and business owners to offer input into local government operations and other topics that affect our quality of life.

Through a new initiative called the Mayor’s Roundtable Series, I have enjoyed hearing opinions from many stakeholders.  A couple of weeks ago, I hosted a meeting with business owners from our Industrial Park and this week, we held our third installment of the Local Government Roundtable.  These feedback sessions are crucial to ensure that our priorities align with the expectations of our citizenry.

While I had pretty high expectations for these types of meetings and their potential impact, the results have far outpaced what I hoped to accomplish. Listening to the concerns and ideas of the participants has greatly impacted how I approach my job as Mayor, and has helped to sharpen my focus on serving the citizens of the Becker community. 

In addition to these gatherings, there are other forums to offer input.  For example, Sherburne County is currently asking for community input into its Hazard Mitigation Plan, which assesses the natural hazards that pose risk to the county.  Whether it be flooding, drought, or other extreme weather, citizen input is one key to ensuring our disaster preparedness.  Please consider visiting the Sherburne County website to participate in this important action.

Now, back to the topic of listening to learn.

I’ll admit that I much prefer face to face meetings over the “input” that can be considered by perusing social media.  There’s a multitude of reasons for this, but the main argument I make is that social media often just isn’t accurate.

Over the past 12 months, I ran a little experiment and I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t scientific.  I kept track of things that I ran across on social media that could be definitively proven as true or false (not an opinion or something that could be debatable).  Here’s an example:  is Edgewood Street in Becker a city or county road?  It’s a city street, therefore any assertion that it is a county road is false.  You get the idea.

Here’s what I found: social media was “wrong” 52% of the time.  This was based on me being able to verify the truthfulness of things I came across, and not my own personal opinion.  Yes, there’s many limitations to my research, but I think it taught me an important lesson.

So, what did I learn?  Quite simply, that flipping a coin (50-50) would often lead to more accurate “fact checking” than what is posted on social media.  This isn’t an indictment on the people who post, but just a warning to us all that we need to think twice before we believe what we read.

The next opportunity for Becker residents to offer input will on Friday, February 27 at the next Citizens Roundtable. Please consider joining me at Pebble Creek at 6 p.m.  It promises to be a great opportunity to learn from one another (face to face).