My August 2020 Supervisor Activities: A Very Busy Month!

In August 2020, as Bucks County continued in the COVID-19 "Green Phase", I spent 56.3 hours on official supervisor business. That's a lot of hours for the month of August, which usually sees less scheduled activities. With meetings being held via Zoom, however, there was less need to cancel meetings, of which there were many this August!

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, EDC = Economic Development Committee, JZC = Joint Zoning Council, EAC = Environmental Advisory Council, HRC = Human Relations Commission, NFA = Newtown Fire Association, TCC = Bucks County Tax Collection Committee

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.

Lots of Meetings!

You would think that many meetings would be cancelled during the summer when most people are "on vacation," but no! I spent nearly 19 hours in August attending meetings! It's all due to COVID-19: (1) many people have not gone missing on vaction, and (2) Zoom makes it all too easy to participate in meetings even though you may be on vacation!

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 August 2020, I spent 8.0 hours (14% 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):

E30 Curative Amendment (read "Discussions of E-30 Zoning Amendment")
Toll Bros Conditional Use Application (read "Newtown Township Supervisors Deny Toll Brothers Conditional Use Application")
Road Repairs or Lack Thereof
ESI Interim Report(read "Newtown Supervisors Review Interim 5-Year Financial Plan"

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 Sep 2020, 01:49 - Category: Open Records/Transparency