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Constance Heuss simply wanted to see the agendas for her city's
commission two years ago. And the only way to access those agendas
required her to get in her car and drive to the local supermarket
where the agendas were sometimes posted, if someone hadn't removed
them from the bulletin board.
Large tracts of land were being developed and annexed into Alachua, Florida.
An industrial warehouse for Dollar General caused residents a great amount of
concern because the city was buying the land and donating it to the corporation
to entice them to Alachua. Constance just wanted to be informed when those items
came before the Commission for a vote.
For years the Alachua City Commissioners ministered to the business community
in the town of 6,000 residents. Many of the elected officials since the sixties
also served the town as real estate agents and developers. But new residents
began to question policies and commission voting patterns when they found public
documents were not readily available to them.
So when Constance met with resistance on requests for public documents about
the Dollar General project and a rumored 1,700-acre industrial and commercial
development near the warehouse, she decided to do something about it.
Constance and her husband Michael, who own Cyber Studios, a web site development
and Internet hosting business, decided to use their knowledge of software and
their need of information to create their own source for news.
As a result in October of 2000, Alachua Post, an online news source, made its
debut on the Internet.
But before the Heuss' could put anything on the Post, they needed to find a way
to access public records in Alachua, not always an easy task. A few citizens
had just formed a loosely structured group with the intent to help the public
become more informed about the issues facing Alachua.
This group, the Alachua Leadership Alliance, provided Constance with the necessary
tools to make sure that city hall became responsive to her needs.
Robert Perez, president of ALA, said, "Constance came to our group's meetings
because she was having trouble getting access at city hall, and we had established
methods."
The High Springs Herald, for years the only local weekly newspaper, has benefited
from the easy access to public documents provided by Alachua Post.
Bo Turner, Executive Editor of The Herald, said, "It was difficult for us
to get information so I can't imagine the difficulty for the average citizen
in getting information.
"I read Alachua Post," Turner noted. "The most positive effect
they have is the posting of agendas for the public."
Alachua Post became more than just a source to find the agendas and minutes of
the meetings in Alachua. It became a place to find out exactly what was happening
in the city. Constance used her passion for finding the story to report on commission
meetings. The Post also presented information to the public on the issues.
"When they went online, Alachua Post provided an alternative method of obtaining
local news. You didn't have to wait until the weekly print papers came out." Perez
said.
"Constance was energetic in doing issue-oriented stories," he explained. "We
never had anything like that before. If there was an issue, she dealt with it
in depth."
Alachua County Commissioner Dave Newport agrees that Alachua Post fills an important
need in the community.
"Alachua Post does a great service to elected officials like me," Newport
explained. "The value is in the depth of coverage they give to important
issues. I don't think print newspaper has the same news hole available. They
don't have to try and be all things to all people."
And with the online news source at the Heuss' fingertips, the news is reported
almost instantaneously. Recently when the Alachua City Commission voted 3-2 to
oust its current city manager in a surprise motion, Constance had the news brief
online even before the 11 p.m. news on the local television channel.
Alachua City Commissioner Tamara Robbins believes the Post's attention to the
news makes it a valuable tool in the community. "I like the Post because
it gets information out fast," she said.
"Information is dispersed immediately, and Constance is very responsive
to getting that information out to the public."
University of Florida journalism professor Jean Chance notes that prior to the
debut of Alachua Post, the media in Gainesville largely ignored the happenings
in rural areas of the county.
"Without media scrutiny, the governing bodies of communities such as Alachua
have lacked any true measure of accountability," Chance explained. "Enter
the Alachua Post. Surprise. Surprise. Citizen activists began to stir; candidates
emerged to challenge the Establishment; Gainesville Sun and TV-20 reporters began
to attend meetings. What a healthy change."
Challenging the status quo in Alachua began with the election of 2001 when two
women emerged from their positions as concerned residents and ran against the
establishment's candidates.
Tamara Robbins had been active in Alachua for several years and attended almost
every city commission meeting. She wanted to see the commission become more responsive
to the public and decided to run against an incumbent. Governor Jeb Bush had
appointed Jean Calderwood in February of 2000 when another commissioner retired.
She won the seat in April 2000 for a term of one year, which finished out the
previous commissioner's tenure.
Calderwood, a licensed real estate agent, is also a land acquisition agent for
Suwannee River Water Management District. Serving on the board of directors for
the SRWM district is David Pope, and Project Manager for WACO, Inc., the
developer who brought Dollar General to town and proposed a 1,700 acre development
called Alachua West.
Residents like Robbins were concerned that the possible conflict of interest
with Calderwood and Pope would mean the blind passage of site plans and development
orders if Calderwood retained the seat on the commission.
In the other race in April of 2001, Bonnie Burgess, who had been working diligently
on the Alachua Historical Society, ran for office again. She had run against
Calderwood in 2000. Her opponent, Gunter Hirsch, also a real estate agent seemed
to be the favorite until it was discovered that Hirsch had lost his real estate
license in the late eighties for misappropriating funds.
During that crucial election of 2001, Alachua Post kept the voters informed by
posting interviews with each of the candidates and kept them up to date on happenings
of the campaign trail. Burgess and Robbins won handily and the Alachua Post increased
its readership by a huge percentage during the month preceding the election.
However, the majority of commissioners still remained tipped toward unchecked
growth.
In the election of 2002, the incumbent and current Mayor Gib Coerper ran for
reelection. Coerper, who began saying he was against the Alachua West development
during his campaign, showed a voting record that belied his words. Dianna Kosman-Rothseiden,
a member of ALA, ran against him. Again the Post began covering the campaigns.
Coerper repeatedly told Constance that he didn't have time for an interview even
though he gave interviews to all the local print media organizations. Kosman-Rothseiden's
interview ran for weeks on the Post and she won the election. The balance of
the city commission had been shifted to resident concerns about growth in Alachua.
"Those three commissioners didn't stand a chance in hell of getting elected
without the Alachua Post," said Turner.
Tana Silva, an adjunct instructor of reporting in University of Florida's journalism
department, credits Constance with bringing democracy back to her community.
When Constance came to Silva's class to speak about the Post's accomplishments,
one of the students stood at the end of the presentation and said, "You're
like the Erin Brokovich of your town!"
Silva appreciated the analogy. "Constance showed the students that power
smart, dedicated people can make democracy work as it was meant to work," she
said. "This is no small feat in a time when mass media serve corporate interests
largely to titillate and numb people, in effect turning citizens into mere consumers."
Robbins believes that the Alachua Post has enhanced her city's government. "The
more people who know information about meetings, it has to help," she explained. "It
is important for citizens to get access to information regarding their government."
With added media scrutiny placed on the workings of government in Alachua, access
to public documents has become less of an issue.
"Competition is healthy and Alachua is much, much healthier since the Alachua
Post came along," said Chance.
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