Employment Commission Hearing

The public meeting I attended was the Boston Employment Commission Hearing on

Wednesday October 16 in City Hall.  The employment commission was made up of five people: Travis Watson who was main speaker, leader of the meeting, and in the center of the above picture, Deborah Wright, Jorge Martinez, Stephanie Everett, and Charles Cofield.  Their jobs as the commission was to review projects proposed to them and collect updates on projects that were underway.  The first half of the meeting was dedicated to businesses presenting construction projects to the commission in hopes of getting approved to begin.  Those projects were Longwood Towers II, Call Carolina, and Raffles Boston.  All of these projects were aimed to be residential buildings for current Boston citizens and people looking to move to the city.  The second half of the meeting was about progress reports on projects that were in progress.  Those businesses would present data on employee diversity, hours worked, payroll reports, training of new employees, new jobs for recent graduates, and predicted time of completion.  Those projects were Orient Heights Phase II, Horizon Watermark, 135 Morrissey Boulevard, and Boston Arts Academy.  The audience was mostly comprised of the businesses waiting for their time to present.  Additionally, a vocal woman named Ms. Jones made constant contribution on the podium, where the public could voice concerns or questions.  She sits on a housing committee and is friends with Travis, and was kind enough to contribute to the interview part of the project, but preferred not to be recorded.

I chose to attend this meeting because honestly, it fit into my schedule.  I’ve never

attended public meetings before they never really interested me.  This meeting was somewhat interesting because I learned how the city tackles construction projects, but it was mostly dry.  There was a lot of the same statistics and issues repeated, like concern over lack of resources and diversity of employees.  This was the first meeting I found that fit into my busy schedule and I took it before it was too late.  If I could find a meeting with a topic that interested me more, I would be more enthusiastic about what was presented.  When it came to what media to use for the project, I struggled a little at first to come up with something.  I settled on a downloadable PDF on a webpage because I imaged it could be used on a website or social media newsfeed to illustrate how a meeting functions.  The audience is mind could be people my age, who are usually too busy or too uninterested in public meetings.  This illustration could be distributed online, since everyone is using the Internet though their phones or laptops.  In terms of trying to spark interest in public meetings and civic engagement, having the meetings be archived somehow through a transcript, video, or this illustration is more convenient to consume and might hopefully catch the attention of people scrolling though their feed.