Meeting with Chief Talbot - Too Short Notice

Tomorrow night, January 22nd, from 6:30 to 8 pm, the Norristown Police Department will host a town meeting to give the public an opportunity to meet Norristown’s new police chief, Mark Talbot, Sr. and members of the department’s command staff. The meeting will be held at Theatre Horizon, located at 401 Dekalb Street.

Of course, if we get the amount of snow predicted, and the streets are cleared at the same rate as the last smaller storm, no one will be able to get to the meeting.

But let's imagine that a major blizzard isn't in the forecast. The Norristown Patch article that announced this meeting was dated Friday afternoon. If you're on Facebook, you know the chances of missing a post are good. If your friends see it and share or tag your name, you have a much better chance. However, most people who are active in Norristown were in some way participating in the MLK events this weekend, and not on Facebook every minute sharing things. I didn't see it until this morning and only because Derrick Perry posted it last night.

If you're not on Facebook, and not in the habit of checking the Patch website, or even if you are, if you don't know where to look, chances are you haven't seen this announcement at all.

Why wasn't this posted in other places? Especially, why not on the town calendar? Was it in the Times Herald? Besides these sources, I get a lot of my info through Linda Christian, Shae Ashe and The Norristown Project Community Calendar, Viviann Schorle of the Norristown Violence Prevention Initiative, and the Norristown Facebook pages, like the Business/Events page. It wasn't even on the Theatre Horizon page. The Norristown Nudge page did post something on Saturday, but like I said, Facebook is iffy--people have to share the post, and no one did, probably because Norristown was busy volunteering this weekend.

But the bigger question is, why was this announced at the last minute? This is the kind of thing that ought to be planned at least a month in advance, to give word time to spread. Instead, the first announcement came out, as far as I could tell, with the Patch announcement on Friday. 5 days. And no regard to the fact that it conflicts with the Strengthening Families Program at Eisenhower the same night.

So, given the fact that the snow will likely cancel the meeting with Chief Talbot, or at least, make it poorly attended, I suggest another meeting be scheduled immediately, for at least a month from now, and this time, put it on the town calendar, and send it to the other reliable outlets mentioned above. Let ME know and I'll give it plenty of public notice here on the Diary. But please Council, or whoever set this meeting up, quit keeping these events a secret until the last minute.