From the time he became a member of the Ceres City Council in 2021, James Casey has hammered the theme that the city of Ceres needs to improve the way it communicates with citizens.
Mentioning that February is Black History Month, last week Casey said: “Our method of communicating with people about public notices, about changes in our zoning, doesn’t differ much from the poll tax our country imposed on our citizens until Jan. 23, 1964.”
Casey specifically called out how the city only notified property owners and not renters about the proposed self-storage facility on Mitchell Road in early 2024. He noted that the 300 residents in a neighboring mobile home park were not notified since they were not owners.
“Not that they would oppose it but at least they would have had knowledge of it,” Casey said in opening a discussion about ways the city can better relay information to citizens.
He went on to say the city has “minimum standards of notification” and “sometimes we don’t pay attention to the whole population.”
Casey said he owns property in Atwater and receives a utility bill with a newsletter.
“Every citizen of Ceres should be aware of what’s going and that somehow or another we have to improvement communications,” Casey said.
Casey said a lot of folks don’t use Facebook which is a way to stay abreast of local issues.
Mayor Javier Lopez asked what Casey would like to see. City Attorney Nubia Goldstein stepped in to say that the city staff could be directed to explore additional methods of communication that aim higher than the minimum legal requirements for notices.
“So it could be ranging from notifications in the mail to improving our social media presence to even involving text messaging programs that could send our constituents information,” said Mayor Lopez. “So it could be just a variety of different things and suggestions.»
Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra also stated her opinion that, in the case of the self-storage project, residents of the nearby park should have been notified when the city was not legally required to do so because they would potentially be impacted by the project.
Lopez talked about possibly running more ads in the Courier.
Ceres resident John Warren cited three Facebook groups where he gets a lot of information.
Shirley Rogers said perhaps the city could mail out a newsletter three or four times a year to convey information.
Dave Pratt questioned if any methods would be successful, saying he doesn’t read newsletters.
“It’s hard to, you know, try to communicate with everybody but not everybody is on the same page,” Pratt added.
The council will take up the matter in the near future.
