California Library Association

Leaving California and Traditional Library Work!

Posted on December 3, 2015December 2, 2015 by pcsweeney

I am making some big changes in the next month and I am really excited, scared and… well… mostly excited. I am leaving my administrative job here in Sunnyvale and moving to Brooklyn to be with my girlfriend Kate Tkacik and working for EveryLibrary full time. Personally, I’m very excited to take the next step with Kate and start that chapter in my life, but this is my professional blog so I’ll focus on those things. If you want to get personal, feel free to friend me on Facebook.

One of the things that makes me most excited about this transition is that I get the opportunity to do something that I think is important and give back to the profession that has been so supportive and good to me. Librarianship has truly given me a lot of opportunities and I can’t possibly repay all of the great love and support I have received from so many people and organizations. I have been able to see the country and meet a lot of amazing humans that I call friends all over the United States all while paying my bills. I have really been very lucky to find such magnificent people and a profession that does such important work. I feel as though I have real opportunity and obligation to give some of that back and work to make the future for libraries a little bit better by taking on the local funding challenges by working for EveryLibrary fulltime.

In case you aren’t familiar with EveryLibrary’s work, it is the Nation’s first Political Action Committee built to work specifically on local campaigns and ballot measures for libraries. In the last 3 years we have helped libraries win over 60 million dollars in funding through working to support local ballot committees, training campaign volunteers and library staff, and helping them win 26 campaigns all over the nation. We have also spoken at a number of conferences and given trainings and workshops to hundreds librarians in dozens of states.

I have been involved with EveryLibrary as a board member since its creation nearly 3 years ago and I have been more and more involved in the ground level work over the last few years. The political work, working with campaigns, and talking about libraries as important community causes has been some of the most fulfilling work I have ever had. This work is both challenging and educational and there is just too much to do for me to not take it on and work with John Chrastka and the team full time on it.

Of course, if you’re interested in the work that we do, need some campaign consulting, or having me or any of the EveryLibrary team members speak at your conference or workshop, feel free to get in touch with us. Of course, our work is pro-bono and only made possible by your generous support.

Since I’m leaving traditional library work, I’d love to close this out by giving a big shout out to the folks at Lincoln Public Library for starting me out with my first huge job, San Mateo County for just being amazing and supportive to work for, the wonderful librarians all over CA and CLA who have been really amazing to me and some of my best friends, and the librarians at Sunnyvale who are doing some of the most innovative work I’ve seen.

PS – I’m keeping the boat.

Worst Library Survey Ever

Posted on September 5, 2013September 5, 2013 by pcsweeney

I don’t know if you heard about the plight of Kentucky Libraries. In case you haven’t, basically the ‘any tax is a bad tax’ organizations started a lawsuit to roll back library funding across most of the state to funding levels from anywhere between 10-30 years ago. In almost all areas this will devastate the state’s libraries. As part of… well… As part of whatever it is that they’re doing in KY to open up a discussion about this, they made this survey to determine the need for libraries most horribly titled;

ARE PUBLIC LIBRARIES STILL VALID IN THE 21ST CENTURY?

There are some real gems of a question in this survey that show the agenda or ignorance of whoever made it. My favorite is number 9 that only allows you to give ONE answer-

9. What purpose do you see libraries holding in the future?

A place to borrow traditional books.

A place to borrow digital media.

A place for community members and families to come together and share new experiences.

A place that hosts computers and technology for those who don’t have access for educational or job-search purposes.

I don’t think libraries will be relevant in the future.

So even if you don’t want to take it, just looking at the questions will help you see what libraries are up against in KY and also across the country.

You can bet this survey spurred by the any tax is a bad tax organizations is being passed around those online forums across the country and being filled out by just about every one of them with an agenda. If you’d like to take it and restore balance to the force, here it is.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NKYForumLibraries

This war in Kentucky is going to gear up to be one of the biggest fights in librarianship in years. If the libraries lose the lawsuit, there are going to be dozens of ballot measures to regain funding across the state and we need to be armed to fund those fights. If you want to know what else you can do to help, here are a couple of suggestions.

EveryLibrary is watching the outcome of this debate in KY very closely and we are getting ready to take action as soon as an action becomes clear. So, you can sign-up to continue to get information about what EveryLibrary is doing here or, even better, you can support EveryLibrary with your contributions here.

The best thing you can do is actually attend the meeting in Campbell County Kentucky to show the relevance of libraries in the 21st century. Libraries and Librarians NEED to have a voice at this forum. We need you to attend!

Otherwise, you can share this survey or this blog post with your library supporters to ensure that the voice of librarianship gets heard over the grumblings of the anti-tax crowd.

Speaking at Your Library Event

Posted on July 30, 2013 by pcsweeney

As a library subject-specialist, I can speak on a variety of topics for your library school, association and library system. Throughout my career I have been a featured speaker and keynoter for staff development days, in-services, conference programs, and pre-conference workshops. As a library manager I have the ability to relate to the workplace challenges and professional development goals of library staff, trustees, and friends. If you are looking for fresh and engaging presentation topics and styles, I have been providing these skills to libraries for the last 6 years.

I have been a frequent speaker, presenter, and workshop leader at library conferences around the country as well as a participant in the Great Library Roadshow. My conference presentations are focused on supporting your conference theme with stories and data that are inspirational, motivating, and actionable for your attendees. I address individual outcomes as well as organizational engagement with relevant content to address your unique library community.

My areas of Expertise and Experience;
• Innovative technology
• Program development
• Library partnerships and collaborations
• Collection development
• Creative fundraising
• Library management
• Teen librarianship
• School librarianship
• Professional development and networking

I also speak on behalf of EveryLibrary on the following;
• Library elections and campaigns
• Politics and libraries
• Best practices in library advocacy
• GOTV and info only campaigns
• Campaign bootcamps, trainings, and workshops

Please contact me directly for information about honorarium and travel expenses as well as my availability. Please note that if you choose me as your library conference keynote speaker or workshop leader, an additional conference program presentation or panel elsewhere during the session day is included, if desired.

Previous Speaking Engagements
Future of Libraries Conference 2010– Building Social Media Capital
Internet Librarian 2010 – The Library eBranch: More Than Just a Website
Internet Librarian 2012, California Library Association 2012 – Speed Technology Dating
Internet Librarian 2012, Computers in Libraries 2013 – Teen Library Users: Engaging the Next Generation
Library 2.0 – Making it Happen: Take Action
Computers in Libraries 2013 – Ask IT (Honest Answers from your IT Department)
ALA MW 2013 – Leading your Career: Stand Out and Be Outstanding
ALA Annual 2012 – Professional Networking
New Jersey Library Association – Me, We (a workshop on collaboration and innovation in libraries)
Public Library Association 2012 – Engaging Customers in an Online Environment
Public Library Association – What makes A Collection? Redefining Libraries through their collections.

Introducing Library #MAYkerMondays.

Posted on February 11, 2013February 10, 2013 by pcsweeney

Recently a lot of libraries have been developing ideas and spaces around the maker movement and the maker culture. We have seen a giant leap in libraries as spaces for makers to make and for the Do It Yourself (DIY) community to come together and learn. Of course, libraries have always provided the knowledge for these kinds of things through our print and digital collections, but now we are seeing an emergence of libraries giving dedicated space, programming, and occasionally the tools to help our communities make it happen.

One of the big complaints that I’ve heard from librarians is that they don’t know anything about maker spaces or communities or programming. I have to say that this is almost entirely untrue. I am not at all involved in the maker movement or the community and I only just recently realized how many maker programs my library does. For example, how many of us do programs with our kids and teens making duct tape wallets? What about jewelry? How about almost any kind of craft project? These are all maker projects although we don’t think of them that way.

While maker programs like these are not about computers and technology, there are a lot of programs that you can do that are. Some examples of those things are Jason Griffey’s Library Box, renting or buying a 3D Printer, utilizing Arduino, and something as simple as taking electronic devices apart. There are tons of cheap and easy things that libraries can do to take part in the electronic/tech part of the maker movement.

In order to help us come up with some great resources for library maker programs, I created this google doc called the Maker Cookbook that you can contribute too if you have some maker ideas of your own or need something to help you come up with new ideas.

Another problem is that we need to come together around the Maker Movement and give it a good try. In order to move that conversation along and get people motivated and into the maker movement, we presented an idea at the ALA Midwinter Conference. This idea stemmed from the Library Lab (library Boing Boing) group and became #MAYkerMonday. We’d love to have more people participate! Read the details below and click this link to the FB page to let people know that your library will participate.

#MAYkerMonday will be held nationwide in libraries throughout May on every Monday. The idea is to encourage librarians to host a program for the maker community on every Monday in May. This is will be a way for libraries to show that they are participating in the maker movement and for librarians to try out some maker activities that they may not have tried before. It’s also a great way to introduce your staff to the make movement if they seem skeptical. By doing these programs, hosting a maker meetup, or maybe staff training around maker spaces for your staff each Monday in May and by using the hashtag #MAYkerMonday libraries can promote the idea that they are community spaces for creativity and learning. Sign up and join in the fun!

As part of this, we would also love for our blogging, Tumblr, Twitter, and other posting communities to use the #MAYkerMonday hashtag to promote the maker movement in libraries on every Monday in May.

This should be easy because for most libraries there are only three open Mondays in May. The fourth and the last #MAYkerMonday will be a great opportunity for librarians to use their day off to do their own maker project and join in the fun!

What to do at the California Library Association Conference!

Posted on October 31, 2012November 1, 2012 by pcsweeney

The California Library Association conference is coming up in just a few days and this year it looks like there’s going to be some great stuff happening there. If you’re not from California or you don’t know about the conference, it’s going to happen on November 3-4 in San Jose at the convention center. I’ve been planning my time at the conference and I wanted to share with you some of the awesome things that I found that were happening there. I would almost always say that you should be following the twitter hashtag for more conference details, but it looks like they don’t have one and the CLA Twitter Account isn’t using one either. Rick Thomchick did have one tweet about CLA and used the Hashtag #cla2012 but I just found out that the actual conference hashtag is #calibconf please feel free to join in the conference back chatter there with us!

Friday Night Preconference Social
A lot of people are coming into town the night before the conference and probably trying to figure out what to do with their Friday night. Why not come out and socialize and network with some local library folks? So, I’m putting together this meetup for Friday night at the Tanq bar which is conveniently located in the official conference Marriot Hotel. All local library staff who aren’t attending the conference can come have a drink and network with those of you who are coming out! It’ll be a great time and a good opportunity to make connections and plan your conference experience with some good people. To see who’s coming or for more details you can check out the FB Event Page.

Battledecks
Battledecks is a fun competition between presenters at a conference. The first time I saw it was at Internet Librarian where it went to ALA and then I brought it to CLA about two years ago. I’m excited to see the tradition carried on and I’m also excited because I don’t have to organize it! Basically, what happens is that presenters go on stage to make a presentation out of a deck of powerpoint slides that they’ve never seen before. The slides are often fun or funny and it usually makes for an entertaining presentation regardless of the skill of the presenter. You can check out the Facebook Event Page for more info or you can just know that the battle begins Saturday at 8 in the Marriot Salons 1 and 2.

Biblio Follies: Books Booze and Burlesque
Paul Sims put together a great night of librarians just for fun and networking at the Blank Club on Saturday Night at 9pm. There is also a Facebook Event Page for for information. So, if you’re in town for CLA or just want to party it up with some awesome librarians and catch performances by Bunny Pistol & Barbary Coast Cabaret with DJ Tanoa “Samoa Boy”, then you should come out and have some fun with all of us. It’s a great way to get together and celebrate our profession.

BTW… This is also a fundraiser for EveryLibrary the brand new Library PAC so come out and support libraries at the ballot box while having a good time!

SLISconnect/ALASC Happy Hour
While the one big school in California is San Jose SLIS, there are many librarians who went to other schools or librarians who are currently enrolled in other programs. So, really… If you’re a student, were a student, or one time met a library student you can come and meet up with students and alumni at the SLISConnect/ALASC happy hour and make some new friends! Once again, you can check the Facebook page for more info otherwise the event will be at the Tanq Bar at San Jose Marriott 301 S. Market St. from 4:30-6pm.

My Presentations
Of course, I’m always one to self promote! So I have two things going on at CLA this year. The first is a poster session for the Story Sailboat that you should come check out. If you’re not familiar with our project, Joey and I are running a Library and Literacy advocacy project in the Bay Area by sailboat that was funded by crowdsourcing on IndieGoGo. You can come check out all the details in the Exhibit Hall. The second thing I’m doing is a presentation with Andrew Carlos and Brooke Carey Ahrens called Expand Your Mind that will show off 30 different emerging technologies that you can implement in your library cheaply and easily! It’s a kind of Speed Dating for Technology so come and find a tech to fall in love with.

Bay Area Librarians are Partying Like Whoa!

Posted on September 19, 2012September 19, 2012 by pcsweeney

One of the things I’ve been really excited to see is the growth of so many socializing opportunities in the Bay Area for librarians. Most of these gathering are organized on Facebook or some other social media but occasionally they’re posted on Calix (California library listserv). These kinds of events help bring together our community of professionals and paraprofessionals and I hope will allow us to come together when we need support from our peers. I wrote about how important this was a couple of posts ago and it’s great to see it continue with so many other groups.

Because there are so many groups of librarians (what do you call a group of librarians?), this time I’m going to give you some links to the organizers of these events. Here they are in no particular order.

Information Amateurs Social Club
The information Amateurs Social Club is not to be confused with the Information Professionals Social Club although I do generally confuse them. From what I understand, they were both created at almost the exact same time without any coordination and it just happens to be a coincidence. This social club though, focuses on gatherings in the San Francisco area while some of the others focus on other areas of the bay.

Information Professionals Social Club
This group was started by an SJSU SLIS alumna and student because they wanted to promote interaction among Bay Area Information Professionals. They are really striving to encourage some more networking between information professionals, new graduates, and students. They organize a lot of informal meet-ups that are designed to stimulate conversation, share employment experiences and educational advice, and above all make new friends.

Bay Area Librarians
I’m excited that I started the BAL Page on Facebook and I got to watch it grow to over 400 professionals, para professionals, and students. We have more admins now and quite a few different people starting meetups. Although, Facebook changed some of the settings for Pages and in retrospect I wish I would have made this a group instead of a page. Because I live in the Peninsula area, this group’s meetups are usually near me along the Peninsula. Specifically, we have meetups every Thursday in Redwood City at the Peninsula Yacht Club for anyone who is interested in relaxing and having a cheap drink. if anyone wants to take a swing at making another meetup elsewhere from this page, let me know and I’ll make you an Admin.

SLIS Students and Alumni
This page just brings people together who went to San Jose SLIS and want to connect. Occasionally I have seen some organization of some meetups and networking events. Typically, from what I’ve seen, these events focus on getting students connected with professionals to help them build a bigger network and gain some opportunities for mentorship etc…

Silicon Valley Librarian Network
This group is all about bringing together people in the Silicon Valley who are in the librarian profession. It’s a new and pretty loose group right now but I’ve seen them share some good stuff. Basically, they just want to create some opportunities for more folks to have some drinks together. I strongly support this of course.

Librarians Getting Down with Their Bad Selves
I love the title of this group. This meetup group focuses on South Bay Librarians who want to… Well… Get down with their Bad Selves. I don’t think I need to explain too much more honestly. This one is also fairly new so I’m excited to see what comes out of it.

Bay Area SLIS People
The problem people had with the San Jose SLIS Students and Alumni page is that San Jose SLIS students are spread out all over the world. This means that when you try to organize something, it goes out to librarians who couldn’t possibly make it from the east coast for an hour or two meetup. In fact, I got marked as spam for inviting those folks to some of my meetups (Oops, sorry team). Anyway, if you want a group that focuses on us locally, check out this page.

While I love that we have so many folks dedicated to having people come together to network and socialize, I am a little worried at the same time. There are so many niche groups networking here that we might be working counter to what I get excited about when I think of meetups. That is, I like that we are all meeting from across groups and organizations and across our niches and specialties. I strongly believe that it is really important that we all come together as one profession and work meet each other and create a stronger alliance of professionals. I would love to see all of our groups coming together more often and a lot more crossover from all the groups to create something awesome in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Afterwork Library Meetup at the Yacht Club

Posted on August 22, 2012 by pcsweeney

These meetups are weekly events so feel free to come out every Thursday! I promise to only invite folks every other week from now on since I got marked as spam for these invites. If you don’t want to be included in these community building and networking opportunities, please let me know and I won’t send you an invite anymore.

Once again we’ll start by having our drinks at the Peninsula Yacht Club and see what happens. Last two weeks we wound up at the Living Room doing some Karaoke and the week before we moved over to
Palo Alto’s Rose and Crown to meet with some other librarians where we joined forces and had a great time. There’s plenty of places within walking distance if we get hungry or want to party in a different scene and we can always order something at the club.

These events help us build some library community in the Bay Area so we can do awesome things in the future.

For those of you who don’t know about PYC, its pretty much a dive bar. The best dive bar in the bay area though! While it is usually
a private club, you don’t have to be a member to come because you’ll be my guest for the meetup. Just show up, let me know your there, write your name on the guest list, and have a drink!

You can just come as you are and drinks at PYC are $2-4 and there’s no tipping because I’m bartending. It’s gonna be fun and cheap – everything a librarian loves.

If we wind up moving on to somewhere, we’ll post something to the Facebook page so people can find out where we went.

Peninsula Yacht Club
1536 Maple Street
Redwood City, CA 94063

Facebook Event Page

Partying = Library Community

Posted on August 14, 2012August 13, 2012 by pcsweeney

Since I’ve been banned from Facebook because someone marked me as spam for sending out too many invitations to library parties. I’m going to defend myself a little bit here.

I’ve been thinking more and more about partying as a professional activity so the next few posts that I do are going to be about how partying Makes It Happen. This post is going to be about communities of Librarians.

We desperately need a more closely knit library community. One of the best things I’ve learned from JP, Allen, and the ALA Think Tank is that if you want to build a community, you have to party. Partying builds social connections, strengthens our relationships, allows us to get to know each other without a Robert’s Rules Agenda, and because partying is a positive activity, it allows us to come together in a way that meetings about budget cuts or trainings just can’t.

So, here are all the reasons we need to party to build our local communities of librarians.

The world works on Social Connections
As I get older and watch the world around me I’ve come to the realization that the only reason that some people get ahead and others don’t is because of their social connections. If you look at people who are considered great and take a step back from the person, you’ll quickly see all the people around them that help them to make it happen. Nearly everyone, from politicians, to business owners, to movie stars got their start because of the people around them. If we want to get our start and get ahead as a profession, we need connections. No man is an island, Entire of itself.

Mentorship
I’ve been involved in a bunch of mentorship organizations for libraries and usually it’s extremely difficult to be a mentor when we live hundreds or thousands of miles apart and never met. If you want to be a mentor or if you want a mentor, getting involved in a community is a great way to do that. In fact, all of my mentors have been people that I’ve partied with at conferences, gotten to know, and been a part of my community of professionals.

Advocacy
Did you know that other, more successful, professional groups who are vying for tax money have very organized local communities? The police, for example, when general fund money is being discussed, have a large group of people that they can call on locally to go to city council meetings, run from a script, and help advocate for the money. We are much more powerful in large numbers and we desperately need those numbers.

Celebrate your Profession
While this is more about the party than the community, I want to point out that having a large group of local professionals that you are friends with, that you can text or email or call when you’re feeling down about what’s going on in our profession, is so extremely helpful! I have a quite a few librarians that I can get a hold of at anytime if I want someone to help me celebrate all the amazing things we do for our citizens.

Inspiration
Have you ever run out of ideas? Don’t feel bad, that happens. But how do you get new ideas? Well, if you have a community of professionals around you, it’s easy to find out what they’re doing and get some inspiration. We are all surrounded by so many great librarians and we hardly ever get the opportunity to see what the people working in the library down the street are doing. Having a community of professionals around you that are part of other organizations really helps!

Organizational Blues
Sometimes we get stuck in a rut and we look at our own organizations through the lens of the employee who has been there for so long that we forget about the excitement. Getting out with a community of people who work in other organizations might get you to find ways to energize your own library, or it might make you realize that yours isn’t so bad after all. Either way, that’s a win!

Collaboration
One of my biggest frustrations in our profession is that we don’t collaborate enough across our organizations. For example, Cheryl Lee is a fantastic librarian who does some amazing work at a library about 2 miles away and I really want to work with her to do something awesome (I don’t know what yet). The only reason that I know that she does awesome stuff is because she is part of our small but growing local library community. If we had a better and closer community, we could potentially do more together, share costs, and just generally be more awesome.

Hating Haters who Hate and the Haters who Hate Them.

Posted on June 26, 2012June 26, 2012 by pcsweeney

You know, I’m pretty much down for just about anything, but recently I’ve been watching some things develop which just kinda bug me. So I’m gonna hate on some folks for a second. I’m gonna hate on the haters.

We are Awesome
We work in the best damn profession in the world so get happy or get out! If its too much for you to be happy about being a librarian and enjoying all of the diverse thinking, the lovely people, the great services and programs we provide, the fine folks around us, then maybe this profession isn’t for you. I mean, I know about the budget cuts, I know about the hardships finding a job, I know about the whole eBook thing, and everything else but really… It’s still a fantastic profession so get with the program and celebrate it with me.

People will Find Out
If you’re somewhere and you’re talking shit about someone, guess what!? They will probably find out. Our profession isn’t as big as it feels sometimes. We are more connected to our fellow co-workers and all of the people around us by so many different lines of communication now that just about anyone will find out what you said about them that one time at the Elsevier Reception at ALA in 1983. If you don’t like someone or something that someone is doing then you should do what your momma taught you and not say anything at all. If you have to say something, maybe you could compliment their shoes or choice of hairstyles.

What are they saying about you?
If you’re hanging out around people who are hating on folks, please just walk away. It may offend them! But don’t worry because that’s not comparable to as much as you will be offended when you find out what they’ve been saying about you. The deal with haters is that they hate. They don’t care what they’re hating or why. While your talking to them they might be hating on that guy over there, but when they’re talking to him, can you guess who they’re hating on? Probably you. The other problem is that hating is like herpes and its contagious so don’t be around a hater without protection. Get it? Hating = Herpes and that’s bad.

Negativity begets negativity
Even if you haven’t started as a librarian yet or in the library field or your struggling to find a job, you shouldn’t let it get you down. Having interviewed way more people than I ever want to have interviewed in my life, the one thing that’s easy to spot is a hater. They’re typically someone with some negativity hanging about them. People who hate professionally are hopefully going to do badly in the profession. It’s very easy to get down on things that are going on in the profession and bring that with you wherever you go. People will be able to see this and they’ll treat you accordingly and then you’ll get to be even more of a hater because of the way people treat you and then this cycle will continue until you spiral out of control with no friends and you’ll wind up alone with thirty cats alone in your apartment at Christmas wearing the sweater you knitted for yourself while scowling at me at my presentation. Just be cool.

I’ve done it, and I’m sorry
Ok, so here is my part. I’ve been a hater about some stuff before. Especially early in my career and I regret everything I ever said that was not nice. If you know I said something, I’m sorry and you can slap me in my face next time you see me. But then I’ll buy you a beer and we’ll be friends and do awesome stuff together like picking blackberries on warm summer days under a double rainbow while riding a unicorn. (or something similar)

Luckily I figured out how to get out of that vicious cycle and I’m going to share that with you in my next blog post. But you’ll have to wait until then.

The City Clerk of San Jose Killed Libraries (Get Him!)

Posted on June 14, 2012June 14, 2012 by pcsweeney

If you want to read something that will really make you mad, read this article from the San Jose Mercury News about the City Clerk Dennis Hawkins’ major EFFup that will jeopardize the Library Ballot Measure. This means that many of the City Libraries will remain closed. If don’t want to read it, I’ll give you the major points.

The people of San Jose wanted to put a ballot measure on the November vote and went to the City Clerk named Dennis Hawkins. Dennis told them how many signatures they needed to have in order to put it on the ballot. The people then went out and collected the signatures but when they came back, they were told that OOPS! Dennis ROYALLY screwed up doing what amounts to a monkee’s job of telling them the correct number of signatures they needed.

See, they were told they needed 19,161 and they collected 40,000 but it turns out that the real number of signatures they needed was 57,483 registered city voters. That’s nearly three times the amount of votes they were originally told! How is that a possible “oops” mistake? I would understand if they were told some number even remotely close to 57,483, but no. This is an egregious mistake and smacks of some kind of corrupt back door deal.

This especially smacks of some kind of corruption since Mayor Chuck Reed and City Manager Debra Figone (Hawkin’s Boss) are both vehemently against the proposed ballot measure.

Now, let’s just say, for the sake of argument that this was an honest mistake. Even if this is the case, I would like to point out that even some of the simplest folks on the planet could take a second out of their otherwise useless life and look at what the actual numbers are for signatures. His complete ineptitude is just plain laziness and Dennis should be fired, suspended, or at the very least tickled until he pukes. Since they won’t do any of those things until we tell them too, here is his number. Feel free to call.

City Clerk
Dennis Hawkins – City Clerk, Office of the City Clerk (408) 535-1260, cityclerk@sanjoseca.gov,

Or his BOSSES who all hide behind the email – webmaster.manager@sanjoseca.gov so you should call them at these phone numbers

City Manager Debra Figone (408) 535-8100
Assistant City Manager Ed Shikada (408) 535-8190,
Deputy City Manager Norberto Dueñas (408) 535-8180

A More Positive Solution
Ok, so since I’ve calmed down a bit more, the amazing Derek Wolfgram dropped this link in the comments below. Its the great social solution that I was hoping for! Basically, all you have to do is sign this petition to convince the folks in charge in San Jose to put it on the ballot! Help them reach as many people as you can – http://bit.ly/40000voters

*my opinions are my own, my employers probably don’t think anyone should be tickled until they puke*