2010022502

Do Raleigh City Council Members Check Emails?

By Edward R. Brown, The Raleigh Telegram

Week Of Thursday, February 25, 2010

RALEIGH - If you’re trying to reach city leaders in Raleigh about an issue, sending an email is probably one of the easiest ways of communicating to them.

The Raleigh City Council and Mayor Charles Meeker even have their email addresses listed for your convenience on their home page.

However, after a couple of complaints from citizens in Raleigh and from this newspaper’s own experiences at trying to reach some council members unsuccessfully, we tried an experiment by emailing the leaders in town hall to see if we could get through.

Earlier this year, we emailed Mayor Charles Meeker and each of the Raleigh City Council members including James West, Bonner Gaylord, Mary Ann Baldwin, Thomas Crowder, John Odom, Russ Stephenson, and Nancy McFarlane.

Our effort was meant to gauge at how responsive city council members are, particularly since they are elected officials. In addition, the Raleigh City Council members are paid for their time with councilors receiving $10,000 per year and the mayor receiving $15,000 per year from the city.

Our results might startle you, particularly since at least one city council member says that emails are “ the primary tool constituents use to communicate with us.”

Limited Response

An email was sent to the “official” email addresses of each of the elected leaders in January of this year.

The message was sent from our Raleigh Telegram newspaper email address and was very plainly titled with the subject line “Do City Council Members Read Email?”

Each email was sent directly to each council member, was signed by our editor, R. Gregg, and was not “cc-ed” to other council members.

In other words, the respective council member was the only recipient in each email sent, reducing the chances it would land in a spam folder.

Although the Telegram has waited for almost two months, the newspaper only received responses from three out of eight elected officials.

The three that bothered to reply were Mayor Charles Meeker, Council member Bonner Gaylord, and Council member Mary Ann Baldwin.

It should be noted that we cannot guarantee that all of the council members actually received the emails or not. However, we did not receive any “bounce backs” or error messages.

Further, the fact that some council members replied back shows that the email system is likely not a culprit here in the lack of response from five of the eight elected leaders.

Bonner Gaylord’s Response

One of the youngest elected officials ever to serve on the council, newly elected Bonner Gaylord is manager of the North Hills Mall and was the first elected official to reply to our email.

Gaylord replied on the same day that we sent out the email and sent a response from his portable Blackberry device.

“Yes, I have had to get a new system set up, but I read every one,” said Gaylord.

Gaylord also offered to meet personally with any Raleigh citizen that had trouble reaching city council members by other means.

Mayor Charles Meeker Responds

Next to email back to us was well-known Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker. Mayor Meeker emailed us three days after our original email.

Responding from his work email at the law firm of Parker-Poe in Raleigh, Mayor Meeker took the opportunity to explain how many emails that he gets in his inbox.

“I receive approximately 50-80 e-mails a day at City Hall,” said Meeker. “They are screened by the staff, and certain of them are forwarded to me for review and/or response. Many of the e-mails are regional or national vendors promoting their products.”

Mayor Meeker also gave some advice on sending emails to council members -- don’t send them in bulk.

“I review personally all e-mails sent to me at my office, about 80-120 a day, including work e-mails,” Meeker added. “When e-mails are sent to a number of people, they are less likely to receive a response than e-mails sent to one person.”

As the elected leader of the City of Raleigh and often seen as the public face of the city, Mayor Meeker also said that in addition to normal contact from citizens, he receives a lot of media requests for quotes from the media.

“If you need a response from me personally, please call Public Affairs at 996-3100 or call my office directly at 996-3050,” explained Meeker.

“I respond to approximately 20-40 media requests for information or a comment each week,” he said. “Between e-mails and media responses, I spend several hours each week staying in touch.”

Councilor Mary-Ann Baldwin Sends Thoughtful Response

At-large council member Mary-Ann Baldwin replied back around five days after we sent out our initial email. In her thoughtful response that included the most details of the replies that we received, she emphasized the importance of using email as a communications tool.

“Yes, I do read email. Lots of it! As an at-large councilor, I am often copied on emails sent to district representatives, and I obviously receive emails sent to the entire council,” she said.

“Email is the primary tool constituents use to communicate with us, and reading email is an important way to gauge public sentiment,” she added. “It’s also a primary way to provide constituent service. Often, I will forward email to appropriate department heads when citizens have concerns or problems.”

Ms. Baldwin added that using email “enables me to follow up and ensure service issues are addressed.”

She also added that, she tries to read and reply to the emails she receives at her official email address.

“I try to respond to everyone who asks for a response, and I try to call everyone who asks me to call them,” she said. “I also try to respond to people, simply to let them know I received their message. I do not respond to emails that are abusive or profane, however.”

Like Mayor Meeker, Ms. Baldwin also said that people who send messages to the council need to understand they receive a lot of emails.

“But I’m the first to admit — I am not perfect,” she said. “Occasionally an email will slip past me due to sheer volume or time demands.”

Ms. Baldwin added that she often relies on her assistant Jean Babson for follow-up replies and tries to be accessible by telephone.

“You may also notice that when I respond to constituents, I always include my home phone number,” she said.

In Conclusion

So, the question remains, if you have an issue that needs to be sent to a Raleigh City Council member, should you send an email and will they bother to read it? Is it better to call instead?

Based on our experiences and the comments from other citizens and business owners who said they have often not received a reply to emails, it seems clear that some city leaders are more tech savvy than others.

Obviously, Mayor Meeker, and council members Mary-Ann Baldwin and Bonner Gaylord seem to be managing their email communications effectively.

In the case of these public officials who took the time to respond, you at least get the feeling that although they are receiving hundreds of emails per week, they at least make an effort to respond to the citizens that they represent.

As for the others, we can’t say if they even know they have an “official” email address, as we did not receive a reply to this email or others that we sent in the past. Perhaps it’s a technology issue and you need to make a phone call instead.

In sending emails, others have had a similar experiences, including one business owner we talked to who owns three different retail businesses in town. If public officials won’t respond to a newspaper or multi-million dollar business owner, will they respond to your average tax-payer and voter?

Perhaps the council members who didn’t respond to our multiple emails could take some public relations lessons from Ms. Baldwin, who summed up her role as an elected representative pretty well.

“If you have any questions, please let me know,” Ms. Baldwin said in her email to the Raleigh Telegram. “I will be happy to respond. As a public official, that is expected.”

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