Tuesday is another election day. It’s especially important to
many local elected officials since so many local elections occur
this year. As this election season comes to a close, there is
that frustrating feeling among public leaders that many voters
just don’t understand what the government does. Sure, the
obvious public services – for example, public safety and
education – are known. But the full extent of government
services is unknown to great numbers of those who benefit from
those services. What can be done about this? Some governments
have taken ideas from non-fiction cable television channels,
including two mainstays of the Discovery Channel – Dirty Jobs
and Mythbusters. With the low cost of video equipment, this is
easy to do. There are even products now, like the Flip HD video
cameras that are smaller than a cell phone, easy to use and
quick to upload to the web. Miami-Dade County has created a
series of videos that show some of the “dirty jobs” that County
workers do for the public on its “Inside