The Rogers Park Review

A Little About Us

The Rogers Park Review believes we all can benefit from an open forum where together we can discuss the complex and sometimes overwhelming issues facing our neighborhood. We will attempt to provide that space. We will encourage healthy debate and dialogue on current topics that, we believe, will become important issues in this election year. We have lots to talk about and we also encourage your suggestions for relevant topics, so we have set up this e-mail for that purpose:

RogersParkReview@hotmail.com

We will do our best to accommodate your requests.

The Rogers Park Review has contacted some people we think would be interested in contributing guest commentary on this blog. We believe Rogers Park needs fresh voices and some new ideas. We have many new neighbors who have recently moved here from other parts of the city and we think they, as well as all of us, could benefit from an understanding of where we are, where we're going and where we've been as a community.

So consider this an invitation for new or long time neighbors to add your voice to these discussions. If you have a point a view, we would all like to hear it.

The Rogers Park Review thinks that community input and participation is vital to develop an understanding of what we all want and would wish to see happen in Rogers Park. We think a comprehensive plan for our neighborhood is required in order to accommodate those concerns, and to this end your thoughts and opinions are important.

We encourage differing points of view and respectful debate. We are committed to an open comments policy but will have a low tolerance for rumours and potty mouth.

Cyberspace Town Hall Meeting

As an experiment, we will from time to time invite guest contributors to participate in an open forum, interactive, real time dialogue with you as a sort of cyberspace town hall meeting.

We will eventually expand this concept to include the aldermanic candidates in our upcoming election. All persons who have officially declared their candidacy for Alderman of the 49^th ward by Friday, February 17 will simultaneously be invited via e-mail, to participate in this forum. The language of the invitations will be identical to all candidates.

The candidate question and answer forums will be scheduled on a first-come, first-served basis as they post their acceptance on line in the comments section of the invitation. Candidates who declare after the 2/17 deadline will be invited after we receive response to the first round of invitations.

Your Suggestions We ask you to begin suggesting topics and or questions for discussion during these candidate meetings in the comments section of this post, so that there will be a public archive of them. Rebecca and Gary will review the questions and topics proposed and organize these submissions to facilitate a manageable, focused discussion. We will post the agenda of questions and topics a week in advance of each meeting according to the popularity of your questions. The candidates will simultaneously recieve an identical e-mail notification of the questions and topics for discussion.

As we noted above, the actual candidate response to questions, and your follow up comments to those responses, will take place in real time during the town meeting . We will post the dates for these meetings in advance.

As moderators, Rebecca and Gary will not participate in these discussions. Our participation will be limited to that of meeting coordinators and hosts. The archived comments from the town meetings will be used as a resource, to try and understand what your concerns are for Rogers Park, as we work towards a structured framework for an overall, comprehensive plan for our neighborhood.

Tell Your Neighbors Your opinions, ideas and concerns are important and we ask that you tell your neighbors to participate in this new medium. The Rogers Park Review looks forward to learning more about what you want so that we all might have a more proactive voice in the future of Rogers Park.

Rebecca Rouilly and Gary Fuschi