Hardy Arkansas Elected Officials Contact Information Debate

Hi Forum,

Now the important thing to note is that there have been 36 visitors to this topic in just several hours. In order for there to be so many visitors, there must be strong feelings on the subject. Why not express them here and we can better understand the issue? Perhaps there have been problems we are not aware of in direct email contact. Has it been abused in the past? Are people impolite? Is it too time-consuming to answer for folks with other full-time work to do? As someone who has close knowledge of the life of a small town mayor in another state, I am aware that people can sometimes be unreasonable with local elected officials who often receive little or no compensation for a good bit of responsibility. But what's the issue here? Has email contact just not been brought up before to consider? Clearly, contact is needed in efficient ways. But the users of it must be reasonable as well.

As you can see from the following links, the state of Arkansas wants to make it easy for you to contact any elected official in the state. Obviously, it is not complete, however it is getting more in depth all the time.

It does appear that Hardy is far behind the times as compared to many other municipalities across Arkansas.

To be fair, other municipalities are lagging behind as well, but that's no excuse not to have an official email address set up for every elected official in the entire state of Arkansas. That would take very little work and cost a negligible amount of taxpayer money.

It is widely agreed on by elected officials nationwide that an official email address is preferred so as not to have to use any of their own personal contact information.

http://www.votenaturally.org/where_when_how_vote_elected_officials_guide.html

http://www.sos.arkansas.gov/officials/search.aspx

Also for your reference, here is the Arkansas FOIA information you may find helpful.

http://www.arkansasag.gov/pdfs/The_Arkansas_Freedom_of_Information_Act.pdf

Topix is generally known as a filth and nonsense forum, but every now and then a valid issue pops up. There is a debate going on right now about how the town of Hardy appears to refuse to make it easier for people to contact their elected officials. One of the posters, Hal, is making a valid point. He's not asking for a kidney folks. He's simply asking for an easier, more modern, and now a very generally accepted way to contact elected officials in Hardy.

This is not new, nor is it not done in Arkansas. Elected officials all over the state of Arkansas, including Cherokee Village, have their contact information posted on their respective municipality's website to make it easy and efficient to contact these elected officials. Each municipality should set up an email address for these elected officials. The elected official should not have to give out any personal email address, phone number, or any other personal contact information if he or she does not want to. That is perfectly understandable, but not having a way to contact these elected officials except for a main city telephone number and a general and very unprofessional yahoo email address is not acceptable at all in 2010. Small towns and large towns alike all over Arkansas and the US do not think this is acceptable either.

Again, this is a generally accepted practice all over the United States at ALL levels of government and the town of Hardy should seriously consider implementing this just as hundreds of Arkansas towns and cities have already done. Whether these elected officials choose to answer any emails they receive is a different story altogether, however those that tend to ignore their constituents in this era of "throw the bums out" run the risk of being voted out of office come election time. That is their choice to make.

This debate can be seen at http://www.topix.com/forum/city/hardy-ar/TQGITNPLPTHH7I673

and

http://www.mainstreethardy.com/how-to-reach-your-city-of-hardy-alderman/

What are your thoughts on this issue?