See this sign? It doesn’t look like this today. This is what it looked like back in February of this year. It stands at the intersection of Prairie Center Drive and Technology Drive. If you drove by it today, you’d see a bright orange colored electronic display sign with messages about what’s going on in the community.
This sign provided my staff and me a great learning opportunity last night at our City Council meeting. Allow me to explain.
The original purpose of this message board sign was to provide the City a means of passive and inexpensive communications with Eden Prairie citizens about City plans, programs, and announcements. We built it and funded it with that in mind.
After the sign was up and functional we began to receive a number of requests from community groups who wanted to use the sign to announce their plans, programs, and announcements. We did not anticipate that, so we prepared a policy to use to sort out what announcements we would accommodate and which ones we would not. Our policy accommodated our own needs first, and then allowed School District announcements next, and then local service clubs like the Rotary Club, Lion’s Club, etc.
Our policy did not accommodate a request from the local Boy Scout troop (#597, I believe) who asked us to advertise their upcoming spaghetti dinner fundraiser. Our policy did not accommodate them because there was no apparent connection between the event and the City, and because we did not want to post fundraising advertisements for every club and organization in town. Doing that, we feared, would consume all the reasonable time available on the sign and then nobody’s message would get any attention – including the City’s announcements.
Well, the Boy Scouts came out in force last night to our City Council meeting and explained their case. The City Council redefined for City staff what the meaning of “our” ought to mean as it relates to “our” sign. The Council told us that “our”, as it relates to the ownership of this sign, means “community”, not just city government. The Council wants to see the sign used to promote community events, not just events the City staff plans for the community, but also events that community members plan for each other.
It was a good decision. We, City staff I mean, were looking at this sign very narrowly. And while our narrow look at the issue had at its core some reasonable hopes and concerns about the use of this new public asset, the big picture escaped us. In this case, it’s not about efficient use of a public asset. It’s about community use of a community asset.
We learned a valuable civics lesson from the Boys Scouts last night. One I will not forget.
