There was a time when elected officials considered their responsibility to be confined to the public sector — streets, parks, public buildings — and complaints about private property, depending on the type of complaint, were referred to the police or city or town inspectors.
Smart elected officials followed up complaint calls with the municipal employee assigned to investigate the complaint to determine what action, if any, was taken on behalf of the town or city against the property owner.
With increasing frequency, local elected officials are turning this largely-passive model for addressing complaints upside down and jumping right into the proverbial fray.
Take Saugus, for instance, where the Board of Selectmen gave Main Street and Pevwell Drive residents plenty of time during a meeting last week to complain about what the residents described as contractor yards being operated out of residences on those streets.
Board members zeroed in on what Main Street residents described as parties frequented by large numbers of teenagers, with Board Chairman Anthony Cogliano declaring, “No one should have to put up with this.”
As sympathetic as they are to neighbors’ complaints, Cogliano and his colleagues made it clear that their role is ultimately defined by traditional boundaries: As elected officials, they can forward residents’ concerns to town officials, including Town Manager Scott Crabtree.
What elected officials can no longer do in the social-media age is to ignore complaints. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other outlets ensure that complaints ignored by elected officials don’t die from neglect.
Quite the opposite. Complaints left unaddressed or ignored by elected officials take on a life of their own as more and more social-media frequenters pile onto the complaints, offering their own online critique, solution or pointed barb aimed at elected officials who, by their silence, are perceived as neglectful and even complicit.
Lynn’s newest City Councilor, Coco Alinsug, is a social-media-friendly elected official who, just days after taking office this month, stepped beyond the ward councilor’s traditional role as a conduit for complaints between residents and city officials and named a team of five “precinct captains” distributed across the four precincts Alinsug represents in Ward 3.
The captains, Alinsug told The Item ” . . . if they are aware of an issue in their precinct, they will report to me and I’ll bring that message to the City Council.”
It will be interesting to see how many concerns and requests involving private property in the ward are forwarded to Alinsug. As councilor, Alinsug’s responsibilities are confined to the public domain. But the private citizens deputized by him face no such constraints and sorting out and acting on concerns forwarded by his captains may pose a surprising challenge to Alinsug, who indicated he will also “vote as (a) team” on ward matters with his captains.
Hyper-local politics are not strictly a product of the social-media age, but elected officials know they dare not ignore social media even when it nudges them beyond the public domain.
