As we close out the year of 2006 and prepare for 2007 it is fun to review what happen in 2006 compared to 2005.

In the city we are gearing up for our annual City Council Goals and Objectives workshop. At the workshop council secludes themselves to a secret cavern (for homeland security reasons) and commits to lengthy review and discussions on long term goals for the city and shorter term objectives to get us closer to those goals.

We really don’t meet in secret, and we have held this workshop in different locations. We have met at a couple of different conference centers before and the last few have been downtown at Something Special. That space has now been converted to a church so we will be off to a new location this year.

As staff works on the documentation for the Goals and Objectives Workshop, I thought it might be good to look at the blog. I have been getting some feedback from what some of you would like to see from my previous blog question. I will attempt to look at how to implement some of them.

As for the numbers? I couldn’t be happier with how the blog has spread in readership and number of people who visit Davison through this vehicle.

2005 was the first year of this experiment and was not operating for a full year, but it is still fun to look at the differences.

  • 2005 average daily page is viewed: 42
  • 2006 average daily page is viewed: 172
  • 2005 hits per year: 78,466
  • 2006 hits per year: 633,899 (with 4 days left, but close enough for government work)
  • November of both years post the highest numbers.

What the heck did I blog about? Well here is a glance of what you could have been exposed to:

January

  • Dr. Beck & new night vision for Police
  • Paul McCrea retired from DPW
  • Brian Flewelling new hire DPW
  • Council member Pat Conley passes away
  • Fire Authority Master Plan started
  • Paul Colinger hired into police Department

February

  • RFQ for architect started
  • More information on the city of Davison’s 37 year Inflow and Infiltration (I&I) Program

March

  • Fire Prevention
  • Emergency Management
  • Camel races
  • Cost of Davison Water
  • More I&I
  • Reverse Osmosis in Michigan
  • Code Enforcement

April

  • State Shared Revenue losses
  • City Budget
  • DCER
  • Dennis Miller leaves city after 10 years of service
  • New addition to Auger Family, version 4.0

May

  • More I&I
  • Public sessions on municipal project
  • composting in Davison
  • Reorganization of two city departments
  • Purpose of Blogs
  • Appretiation dinner
  • Memorial day events

June

  • Downtown loft living
  • Relay for Life
  • Paying for city projects
  • New look Police cars
  • More I&I
  • City’s Well Head Protection Award
  • Festival of flags
  • Municipal project update

July

  • DPW Director Scott Yaklin passes away
  • City of Mt. Pleasant comes calling
  • Farmer’s market
  • Sewer wash out
  • M-15 car cruise
  • Power outages
  • Downtown outdoor movies
  • voting
  • District courts
  • Water mains
  • Ballot issues
  • Nepotism
  • Abernathy Regional Park
  • Director of DPW search
  • Davison Night Court
  • Quality volunteers

September

  • GASB 45
  • Reverse Code Enforcement
  • School Crossing guards
  • Chamber breakfast
  • Davison’s finest nabs another
  • Clerk Cindy Payton losses her battle with cancer
  • Beyond discrimination
  • MDEQ changes the game rules
  • Wooley festival
  • more I&I
  • new look web page
  • Fire department plan
  • “Yaks” bench

October

  • Flint’s Downtown projects
  • City manager’s who blog
  • keep employees motivated
  • New Sr. millage
  • Search for new city clerk
  • Pumkinfest 2006
  • Do Da pageant
  • Election
  • Police; Educators of the year
  • New DPW Director
  • Municipal center update
  • Left turn arrow-not
  • Leaf pick-up
  • Family tradition

November

  • Safety program
  • MDNR inspects DART
  • Traffic Crashes
  • Election Results
  • DTV
  • Do not settle for good enough
  • Veterans day
  • Municipal center update
  • New Council Member
  • more I&I

December

  • Rayola Grand Opening
  • Web site updates
  • Downtown Christmas
  • Visit from Cars 108
  • New County taxes
  • Audit
  • Another Davison Championship
  • Walgreens is coming
  • Shopping with Heros
  • Employee appreciation Lunch

A lot of information was put out last year. We hope to top that in 2007.