Quote, unquote

Back in journalism school, I DO remember putting together a notebook of city numbers/contacts, but I surely had no clue what each department did. It's been great to apply that to my daily living, because it's been insanely handy!

When I took a job reporting for a small newspaper, covering city government, I didn't know what I was getting into. At all. Honestly, I'm sure I didn't expect to be able to take/translate any of the experience(s) into my daily life. I didn't even know how my notebook of city numbers would relate to my job. Oh boy. Did.It.Ever!

Yet now, 3.5 years later, I'm still able to apply things I learned.

• Knowing who in the city to call when a tree falls across the road in the middle of a nasty storm. Seriously, before watching the city government at work, I would have had NO CLUE. Now I know to call the Public Works department. And call them sooner rather than later. They care b/c they look out for the streets, and if a tree with a diameter of 4 feet is blocking a rod, they want to know about it.

• Bidding it out. The city had hundreds of projects and they'd give the specs and take sealed bids. Now, I'm nowhere near that fancy, but the bidding process was a valuable one to watch. Back when we were taking a portion of our tree out of the backyard, I called 4-6 different places and asked them to come give me a quote. The prices were vastly different, and I'm not sure if I'd have called so many before my days of observing city government. Yet after learning about the bidding/quote process, I was unapologetic about asking people to come and look and bid. We're doing the same now with some duct work, and I expect the prices will range as vastly as our tree did. Yet having several offers on the table will be nice.

• Recycling services. We outgrew our first recycling bin pretty quickly, and since our city takes care of recycling, I knew to head to Public Works and ask them about it.

• Gripes about taxes. Unnamed people in my life will gripe about the city government being irresponsible with tax stuff ... then talk about the school district. Um, while they're both government-related things, if you go to the city and cry to them about building a new school, they won't care. I was able to tell this person they were barking up the wrong tree and direct them to the School Board. The number of taxing agencies in each city is crazy. From the School Board to the City to the County to the Library to the Airport Authority .... those are the few that come to mind off the top of my head. And they EACH can levy/impose taxes.

Alright. This concludes today's randomness.