Story posted Thursday, June 18, 2009
Website Offers Residents A New Forum
A website developed to support a loose coalition of candidates running against Arlington Hts. incumbents in April's municipal election has been retooled to serve as a grassroots forum to encourage civic involvement.
Keith Moens is one of those candidates involved in the site at www.votearlingtonheights.com who lost his bid to win a seat on the village board last April.
"We are trying to put the 'we' back in 'We the people,'" said Moens. "We want to start a bottom up culture of participation."
He characterized the current political culture in Arlington Hts. as "top down."
Moens said the website is not meant to be adversarial to Mayor Arlene Mulder or sitting trustees. He said several volunteers working on the website supported Mulder in the last election.
Moens said the site would contain links to newspaper articles with attached discussion forums, letters from readers and blog entries from organizers discussing local issues.
"Vote Arlington Hts. has been developed to provide a forum that will encourage local involvement for the residents of our village," reads the home page of the website.
"We want to be a countervailing weight to large mass media outlets that take away from local issues," said Moens.
He clarified, "We're not trying to be a news outlet."
---Tom Robb
Speak Out!
Comments are edited first by Journal staff before running in print and appearing online.