Courtesy of Barbara Bry for City Council District 1:
As the first high-tech entrepreneur on the San Diego City Council, Bry plans to use technology as a tool to serve her District.
City Council candidate Barbara Bry today released a Virtual Listening Tour—an online survey at https://bbryd1.typeform.com/to/Bp5P6N designed to gather information from District 1 residents about their ideas for improving the District.
“As the first high-tech entrepreneur on the City Council, I will bring a fresh perspective to City Hall to tackle the difficult challenges ahead. I want to use technology to better communicate with constituents and to improve City services,” said Barbara Bry.
Bry sent out a mail piece to District 1 residents that includes a QR code that can be scanned on a smartphone and routes directly to the online survey page. Bry plans to use targeted social media to promote the survey to District 1 residents. If a voter does not have access to the Internet, they can request a paper version of the survey from Bry’s campaign.
Bry plans to analyze the data she receives to address the concerns of District 1 residents, and take advantage of ideas residents have for improving neighborhoods. This survey will be one of many ways Bry gathers this kind of information from the community. In her campaign, Bry will have held over 60 neighborhood coffees in all areas of her District. When she is elected, she will host regular public office hours, community cleanups, neighborhood coffees, and she will continue to canvass door-to-door with her team to learn what is on the mind of District residents.
In addition to improving communication with District 1 residents, Bry has outlined other areas in which she’d like to leverage technology to improve services in San Diego.
Bry has proposed the creation of a Water Innovation Zone, which would support economic growth by promoting San Diego as a national hub for innovative water research and development. San Diego-based companies such as Qualcomm, Underground Solutions, DockOn, and Novatel Wireless are already creating technologies to conserve water. The Water Innovation Zone would build on these efforts and connect City Hall to our universities, research institutions, schools, and neighborhoods. Bry wants to explore what federal and state funds and foundation grants would be available to support the Water Innovation Zone.
There is little publicly available information on the many projects associated with the public and private portions of San Diego’s percent for art program—the City’s public art funding program. Bry has proposed publishing a comprehensive data set on the City’s Open Data portal so that the success of public art programs can be analyzed. Producing a report based on this data could highlight the City’s strengths in accomplishing public arts funding, and also target potential shortcomings of the program so that it can be improved.
Bry is also interested in using technology to streamline operations and communications between different City agencies, so streets are not being torn-up multiple times for different infrastructure projects.
About Barbara Bry: A resident of San Diego for 35 years, Barbara Bry has been an entrepreneur in both the technology and non-profit sectors. Bry was co-founder of Atcom/Info, which developed early versions of the software that provides Internet access in public places. She was also on the founding team of ProFlowers.com, a pioneering ecommerce company based in San Diego. Additionally, she served as the first associate director of CONNECT, and is the founder of Athena San Diego, a leading organization for women in the San Diego tech and life science community. Barbara Bry has an MBA from Harvard University.
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