It’s a sad day when local government is so budget-tight, that one can no longer communicate immediately with their local elected official.  The following is a recent auto-response to an email sent to Oceanside Councilmember Rocky Chavez…
 
Council Member Chavez cannot currently be reached via email or his cell phone while he is out of his office today as he is experimenting with not having a PDA/cell phone as a possible cost saving to our budget.  If you need to contact him urgently, please call him at home on (number removed) or call his Aide Janene Shepherd on (number removed).  Emails will be checked on a periodic basis in addition to phone messages.  Thank you for participating in our cost-saving experiment!

Chavez is no doubt trying to make some kind of statement, and I do commend him for providing his home phone.  On the other hand, lots of local electeds use cell phones without the agency picking up the tab.  Oceanside may need a PDA bailout, so councilmembers can be contacted in the future.  For what it’s worth.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.