Inaugural Pitcher's Mound Blog Post!
- Matt Pitcher
- Aug 24
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 26
"The government is us; we are the government, you and I."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"Oh posterity! You will never know how much it [cost us] to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. "
- John Adams
This is a platform for us all. By us all. No political party or big money influences.
No algorithmically elevated or AI generated content. Just ideas, crowd sourced from each other for each other.
Use it as you will. This is yours. What ideas do you have? Throw out your pitches and take your swings! Let's do this together. For each other. After all, no one else is coming to save us. It's up to us.
Therefore, welcome to the inaugural blog of Pitcher's Mound! Here we will talk about such policy topics impacting Williamson County as:
• Increase Access to Healthcare (things like mobile health clinics, expansion of more affordable and timely services and offerings such as NP consultations, virtual visits, public information exchanges, etc …)
• Improve Resiliency of Energy Grid (things like better understanding risk mitigating factors such as disaster recovery/failover policies/infrastructure/sustainable technologies, community micro grids, PUDs, renewables, environmental impacts, balancing local self-reliance with sharing risks/costs/resources with state …)
• Affordability (things like balancing real estate density with prices, property and local taxes, cost and delivery of services, zoning and planning impacts …)
• Employment, Business and the Economy (things like attracting the right companies that pay well, have sustainable business models based on solid economics, take good care of their employees, and willing to contribute to the vibrancy of our community as stakeholders; tax incentives for small businesses such as BPP exemption increases etc, workforce skill development, job / career support, trades support, expanding vocational programs, Opportunity Zones, Community Development Banks … )
• Managing Public Resources (things like proactive water management and planning regarding reuse, recycling, treatment, storage, monitoring tools, watersheds, rainwater harvesting, gray infrastructure, flood plains, and fire management and planning regarding building codes, ordinances, technologies, training, wildfire prevention and best practices, public safety and law enforcement support and training, community policing, de-escalation best practices, mental health support, education …)
• Civic Engagement and Government Transparency (holding public officials accountable via more consistent and easier to access direct participation through things like regular community surveys, regular online and in person public forums, petitioning programs and platforms, collaborative two way digital communications …)
• More Effective and Efficient Government (better alignment, planning, and collaboration between city, county, and state govt and NGO entities …)
• Infrastructure Planning (things like roads, bridges, traffic congestion / bottleneck alleviation, proactively managing population density, master land and use planning, biogenic carbon capture, green infrastructure …)
• Community Development (things like third places, connected communities, events, agrihoods, edible landscapes, community gardens, forums, public broadband, creating and expanding Community Points of Distribution (CPODs) and Communications …)
• R&D Support and Policy towards Emergent Technologies such as AGI, AR, IoT, quantum computing, blockchain, clean tech, nanotechnology, biotechnology and genomic medicine, etc
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Future Features: polls, discussion board, SME highlights, videos/reels, podcast?, etc
Potential Future Sandbox topics:
• Conscious capitalism and corporate governance (ie B corp, PBCs …).
• Early childhood development (universal pre-K, expanded child tax credits …)
• Secondary education design, learning, and funding models, Vocational programs and support, education savings grants.
• Public / private partnerships.
• Connected Communities
• Social Technology: Age-gating, section 230 and algorithmically-elevated content
• UBI vs. GMI vs ?
• International Trade
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