Staff Writer 

Cape Elizabeth residents have another month before they will vote on a proposed school budget, but that isn’t stopping residents from voicing opinions now. Town Manager Michael McGovern said the town has made an effort to increase resident communication through new online initiatives since January.

“In the 21st century, to limit communications to cable television and newspapers is silly,” resident Joe Guglielmetti said.

McGovern said his budget blog, a Web site devoted to the formation of the municipal budget, has generated more than 525 hits since its launch in March. Once on the site, visitors can read updates as the municipal budget works its way to final approval, vote on whether they think the municipal budget should be increased, stay the same or decrease, and respond to McGovern’s dialogue. Some of the posts regarding McGovern’s proposal to regionalize the town’s dispatching service – a change he wrote could save the town more than $127,000 a year – have nearly 20 responses ranging from a few sentences to those with several thousand words. 

Not all postings are positive, McGovern said.

“Since January 2009, I have gone from a native resident who believed that our local government was for the people. I now know ‘you can’t fight city hall,’” one anonymous respondent wrote concerning the regionalization of town dispatch.

Although McGovern said there is no screening process to ensure those posting comments are Cape Elizabeth residents, more than half of the blog visitors accessed the site from within town hall.

“I take it to mean that people at town hall are reading the citizen comments,” he said.

McGovern said he attributed most of the online responses to former Town Councilor Carl Pearson, who is the first to admit he frequents and posts anonymous messages on the site on a regular basis. 

“They know it’s me, they’re written in the same style as my emails,” Pearson said. “They know me, whether or not they take me seriously, who knows.”

McGovern’s blog isn’t the only place Pearson is making an online presence; he said he also posts on Superintendent Alan Hawkins’ school budget blog – although not as frequently – and communicates with councilors via the email link on the town Web site. In January, McGovern said messages sent to all town councilors through the link were forwarded not only to the town council members, but to an online inbox available for the public to browse. Since its launch, he said the public inbox has received 763 hits, nearly 200 from inside town hall.

Guglielmetti, one of the first to use the link, said he was impressed by the town’s efforts to stay transparent.

“Not sure who came up with the idea but I want to thank them for allowing citizens to have an open forum on town issues where they can say our piece,” he wrote. “You might say it’s a virtual town meeting.”

For frequent users of the system, Pearson said some pitfalls quickly become apparent. 

“It’s still new, they’re still trying to work out the bugs,” he said. “A lot of messages I sent in didn’t make it to the public box, whether or not that is some kind of censoring or bugs within the system, I don’t know.”

While all emails distributed to the council through the email link on the town Web site will be posted for public viewing, McGovern said private messages may be sent directly from a private email address. 

While Pearson said online communications may not mean much to residents who are not as “computer literate” as others, McGovern said the online database is a useful, and precarious, tool for town officials.

“People can see 10 years of what has been said. Over time perspectives change and it can be funny to look back and say ‘Did I really say that?” McGovern said.

To visit either the school or municipal budget blog follow the links on the town Web site, www.capeelizabeth.com.