THE OBSERVER CORPS 19 MONTHS LATER

By Diane Oltorik, Chairperson, Observer Corps

Two hundred plus is the number of meetings our dedicated observers have attended.  On January 9, 2008, at the first annual IOPNA meeting, the Observer Corps was initiated.  It had several names of origin until “Observer Corps” was finally settled on.  But the desire to create a successful corps of observers did not need any impetus!  And so, on January 10, ONE DAY AFTER the first IOPNA organizational meeting, we were off and running and the first observer attended the Accommodations Tax Advisory Committee meeting, commonly known as ATAX.  And this dedicated, service oriented cadre of residents is still attending the city meetings faithfully. 

At first, it was difficult to get enough volunteers so that each meeting would have at least two observers that could take turns covering a meeting.  Most of the meetings are during normal working hours, so that made it impossible for working people to volunteer. But eventually we managed to work the Corps up to a group of 26 volunteers.  And we never missed one meeting as we built our volunteer list.  It didn’t take us long to find our rhythm and become a smooth operation.   Originally, the Observer Corps covered 13 meetings a month as follows:  Public Works, Public Safety, Personnel, Recreation, Real Property, ATAX, Planning. Board of Zoning Appeals (commonly known as BOZA), Water & Sewer, Ways & Means, Livability Court, City Council, and IOP Bus Council.  The latter is now defunct, so as of last fall, we cover 12 meetings a month. 

Our observer reports are just that, observations and not minutes.  The city creates minutes, and sometimes those are not available for a month, but our intention is to observe nuances, what discussions lead to votes and to take notes, without any possible sanitizing.  The reports are sent in a timely fashion by e-mail to either me or our President, Catherine Malloy.   All the reports are then posted on our IOPNA web site.  Many have told us they get an enormous amount of information from these postings.  Even the former mayor commented to several of our members that this is where he learns the most about the issues on our island! 

At first the idea of an observer corps was ridiculed by some and many were perplexed by what we wanted to accomplish; but eventually, we caused our government entities to sit up and take notice.  It is now a foregone conclusion that a member of the IOPNA’s Observer Corps will be at every meeting the City of IOP holds.  The Observer Corps was the IOPNA’s early and first major success.  It has made a difference in quality of life issues and shown that the IOPNA is an organization that wants to not only be a voice for residents’ concerns, but also to be a unifier by creating a balance between residential and business interests.  It just reinforces the concept that an engaged citizenry is an informed citizenry.