My June 2020 Supervisor Activities: Getting Back to Normal

In June 2020, as Bucks County moved into the COVID-19 "Green Phase" when some businesses re-opened, I spent 56.2 hours on official supervisor business. Although that's still below the average of 63 hours per month in January and February before COVID-19, it is well above the 33 hours for June 2019. There were more committee meetings to attend, which required more preparation time.

The height of each bar represents total hours spent on official business that day. This includes time spent at meetings. Blue indicates a required meeting was held that day, orange indicates it was a more-or-less optional meeting.
BOS = Board of Supervisors

Log of Hours Spent on Official Business

My log keeps track of the time spent on the following:

Attending “Required” Meetings
Preparation for BOS Meetings
Attending Optional Meetings/Activities
Interaction with Residents
Travel To & From Meetings

What This Report Does Not Include

My log of Supervisor-related activities does not include the many hours I spend posting to this blog, maintaining my personal website, writing a newsletter, creating and posting video clips from meetings, hosting podcast interviews, summarizing decisions made by the Board of Supervisors (BOS Definition), etc. Also not included is the time I spend posting to my personal Facebook page, Twitter account, and Instagram account. These activities are NOT part of my official duties as Supervisor, but represent my personal views.

Interaction with Residents

In my opinion, personal interaction with residents regarding their concerns is an important part of my responsibilities as Supervisor. I want to be sure that I spend enough time reaching out to and responding to residents via personal contact, official email via my johnm@newtownpa.gov account and via my personal john@johnmacknewtown.info account, and via phone and/or Facebook.

In June 2020, I spent 6.6 hours (12% of my total logged hours) interacting with residents in my official capacity as supervisor.

What did I discuss with residents? Here’s a partial list (some items are not included for confidentiality reasons):

Promoting Newtown businesses
Incident at Starbuck's in the Borough (read "Let's Make Sure Racism Has No Place in Newtown!")
Toll Bros project (read "Residents Urge Newtown Supervisors to Abide by Spirit of Conservation Management Zoning Ordinance"
Helping organize the June 17, 2020, Human Relations Commission Zoom meeting on racism (read "Newtown Area Residents Discuss Ideas for Combatting Racism"

I decided to keep track of my activities as a Supervisor on a monthly basis partly because I want to be accountable to residents, but also to make sure I am making the best use of my time. It's really an honor to serve the community! I learn something new every day and have met many fine people and volunteers who also put in a lot of time without any compensation at all. Thanks to everyone who help keep Newtown in business and safe.

Posted on 05 Jul 2020, 01:08 - Category: Open Records/Transparency