Community dialogue effort uses Facebook for virtual meeting

Web site aims to engage community

by Deborah Mcdermott

October 14, 2009 | Seacoast Online | York, Maine

Residents in York, Maine, look to Portsmouth Listens study circles as a model for building a virtual meeting place for townspeople.

Looking for someplace to meet fellow townspeople, share thoughts and learn about what the town has to offer? The answer could be just a mouse click away.

A group of residents have met the past several months with the goal of engaging a range of people in broad discussion about York and its future. And what better way in the 21st century of finding these people than through the Web?

The result is York Community Dialogue, a Facebook wall that organizer Ron McAllister sees as a "virtual meeting place" for townspeople. Although just launched, there are dozens of members and links to both the York Adult Education and York Rotary Club Web sites.

And the group, which calls itself the York Community Forum, hopes the wall will be just one of several grassroots community efforts.

McAllister is one of eight forum steering committee members. Also on the committee are Penelope Kennedy, economist Chuck Lawton, York Hospital President Jud Knox, conservationists Carol Donnelly and Helen Winebaum, and former selectman Ted Little.

York Community Development Director Steve Burns, also a York resident, is an ex-officio member, but this is not a town committee.

The group formed after McAllister and several others attended a talk by Jon Abercrombie, author of the book "Everyday Democracy," about involving citizens in "grassroots civic engagement," McAllister said.

The book and Web site, everyday-democracy.org, suggests using study circles as a tool, such as those used successfully by the group Portsmouth Listens in Portsmouth, N.H. McAllister said the York group is looking to Portsmouth Listens as a model.

Discussions about how to engage the community prompted the idea of a Facebook wall.

"We want to provide a connection point for the community," McAllister said.

The group will periodically put up a question about York, in hopes of starting a dialogue, to which residents can respond. McAllister said the site will be monitored to make sure "people are respectful." Also, groups and organizations can post links to their own Web sites.

"The idea is that this becomes an information place. I'd love to see a couple of hundred people belong to it, add to it and look at it regularly," McAllister said. He said he hopes people who participate are "not just the leaders of the town, but everyday people."

The steering committee also has plans for a face-to-face meeting of community members, probably next summer, McAllister said. Out of that, study circles would be formed around topics of interest to like-minded residents. In Portsmouth, for instance, the middle school construction project was the subject of a study circle and a sustainability group was also formed.

He's hoping high schoolers will become involved. Shooting brief videos of town residents can be posted on YouTube and then compiled into a longer piece.

"Who knows where this whole thing will go?" he said.

http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20091014-NEWS-910140366