Thanks to my readers and my ‘online friends’ I was referred to dozens of sources that helped me understand my situation with the City of Concord trying to shut down the site. I don’t know why they didn’t contact me directly but thats all water under the Benicia Bridge at this point. I didn’t think the City of Concord could legally shut down my site and between online watchdog groups and a few attorneys of my own, I was told there was nothing that could be done as long as I didn’t break any laws with the site. Owning the Mayor of Concord domain name is not illegal and in fact I was told I could really have a field day with this domain if I wanted to but that is not the intention nor was it ever.

Late yesterday I received an email from the City Attorney that tried to have my web site shut down illegally. Under normal circumstances I would think it would make sense to contact me directly with any grievances but there must be some method to the madness of going directly to my hosting provider. Mark Boehme had this to say in the email.

The City of Concord received calls that the City’s Mayor had set up a website. The Mayor told us he has no such website. We checked out the information to verify whether the complaint was valid.

Our office has no concern regarding your site insofar as it gives you an outlet to express your opinions about the City of Concord and civic affairs. Our concern was that  1) you were not misappropriating any property belonging to the City of Concord without the City’s permission, and 2) that you were not misleading the public that the website was an official City of Concord website or in someway sanctioned by the City of Concord.

It’s nice to know the city isn’t blindly going after people expressing their views on city affairs. Not that they are always as responsive as this from what I hear over at Mr. Writer’s blog.

The City Attorney did point out that I was using the Official Seal of Concord on some of the posts and that was a no no. I guess the Concord logo is protected and using it could place me in danger of a civil suit by the City of Concord. I don’t want that so I have removed any picture of the City of Concord logo.

I do appreciate all of the comments to the last post about this even though some were obviously a joke. Now it’s full steam ahead.

Local blogging works

As I have said a few times, having a local blog can be used for many reasons. Between normal city pride, news and calling attention to things otherwise unknown, a local blog can put a spotlight on the issues of your city. There are a handful of blogs on different topics of the City of Concord. In their own right they are sure to get some attention by people but mainstream news agencies have an agenda of their own and local issues are not always on the front burner. If everyone works together changes can be made. Sure the city can ignore a phone call and put out a form letter to the people but they can not ignore direct attention brought on them by the people in the community being broadcast on a large scale (This site is an unfortunate example).  I believe in the voice of the people even if that voice is frowned upon by some. If there are issues in your city and they are not getting the attention you think is warranted, blogs are the next best thing to actual news coverage. I have already seen where city issues have been fixed by someone writing about it but I know there are more and larger issues we are being faced with.

BTW. I have gotten several emails about the Einstein image I used on the last post with people wanting to create their own. You can find it and the news headline lady images here.

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