Yesterday evening at Lee Jr. High, the City of San Angelo’s Public Information Officer, Anthony Wilson, was the guest at Councilwoman Elizabeth Grindstaff's monthly neighborhood chat. Every month, Grindstaff holds a public meeting at a different location in her district, Single Member District 5, with a various guest speakers.
Wilson is in the local spotlight often for being the city’s go-to person for information about city operations. You may have seen him on SATV (the city's cable channel), YouTube, on the noon news, at the YMCA, the airport, or strolling around HEB hooked into his ear buds. He's everywhere! He even appears in the LIVE! daily email as the publisher's ghost writer.
According to Wilson, in order to quickly get information out to citizens, he formats his information into AP style stories and delivers them in Microsoft Word format to all of the media outlets in the city. The ready-to-publish stories, in Word format, rather than Adobe PDF, makes the news items easier to cut-and-paste into newspaper layout software and websites. To Wilson, making the information highly accessible to busy newsrooms facilitates quick dissemination of information about the City of San Angelo. Wilson's experience as a journalist gives him insight into how newsrooms work.
“I spent 20 years of my career as a newspaper editor and reporter,” Wilson said as he introduced himself to the group of about a dozen people gathered in the school’s cafeteria. “At my last newspaper job I was the managing editor of the San Angelo Standard-Times from 2004-2007. And then, I got hired by Mr. Carl White,” Wilson said as he pointed out Carl White, who was sitting across from him on the other side of the circle. (Currently White is the Director of Parks and Recreation at the City.)
“Carl hired me as the civic events manager for the city; I oversaw the coliseum and other city facilities. Then, in September of 2012 (then-Assistant City Manager) Liz actually hired me, before she left the city, as the public information officer.”
Both While and Grindstaff (and LIVE! publisher Joe Hyde ) are in the Class of 1986 of Texas A&M. Wilson is in the Class of 1989. So there's an Aggie connection, too.
Wilson went on to highlight the city’s successes resulting in state and national awards over the past couple of years, the updated city website and increased programming on SATV. “I’m amazed at the number of people who watch SATV,” he said. “I’m acutely aware of that every time I go to the grocery store, so sometimes when I want to be left alone I’ll put my ear buds in whether I have music playing or not, it doesn’t always work.”
Wilson won’t be able to escape for long. The city will be installing new equipment for the council chambers that will broadcast in high definition, and as Wilson said, make the viewing experience more pleasurable to those in their living rooms.
He passed out copies of a list outlining the ways one can connect with the city, and ways the city is connecting with the citizens. The city does have a Facebook and Twitter to follow, and according to Wilson, The City of San Angelo has more likes than the similar Facebook page for Austin.
Grindstaff asked Wilson what he would say to those that feel the city does not inform the public well. “I’m gonna sound like a parent here and say eat your broccoli,” Wilson said as a few chuckled. “I think sometimes people don’t get engaged unless they are touched personally,” he said. “But the information is there on the city website; you can sign up for the email notifications and even tailor that to your preferences, SATV, Facebook, Twitter, and the media all act as a beacon of information for everyone.”
The topic of discussion then drifted towards the city council agenda, and omitting all of the legal mumbo jumbo from them, and then on to some city council agenda items this week. Grindstaff asked Wilson to explain the city charter and some of the changes that could be made.
“The city charter is initially our municipal constitution, it tells us what we can and cannot do, and like the state constitution it gets amended from time to time,” he said. “The city council approved a charter review committee made up of seven citizens, and they’ve been pouring over the charter looking at things that might need to be improved upon. Ultimately the voters have to decide whether or not to change the charter and how. The city council will decide what goes on the ballot in November,” he explained. “Right now there are seven proposed changes, and some of them are housekeeping matters to insure that the charter is in keeping with the state law, the state law may have changed and so we will need to change the charter to comply with that. I think there are particular points of interest on the charter.”
One of the points Wilson brought up was the fact that city council and the mayor would be up for a raise. As it is now, the mayor gets about $50 a month and a councilmember makes about $42 monthly. Grindstaff voiced her opinion on the matter.
“I’m not going to advocate for that because I personally think talking about compensation for council is tacky, I always have. I think it’s our civic duty, and I think more people should see it that way,” she said. “It wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference and it would get people upset that you are asking for money. I’m not going to ask for that.”
There will be a town hall meeting regarding city charter changes today at 5:30 p.m. at the McNease Convention Center downtown. Visit the city website for more information here.
Follow the City PIO on Twitter and LIKE the City PIO on Facebook to more closely connect with San Angelo’s city government. If you don’t have cable TV, you can catch Wilson’s video productions about city issues on the official City of San Angelo YouTube channel.
Wilson’s team also includes Brian Groves who is the City’s Multimedia Coordinator. Wilson will be the first one to admit that it is the man running the camera, Groves who makes it all work.
Subscribe to the LIVE! Daily
Required
Post a comment to this article here: