Where's the Government

I'm just wondering: why isn't there a Rosemead website?

I have to wonder, too: why don't cities use email to send out City Council agendas?

There's something like a million online listservs for everything from bamboo collectors to tattoo art. I've seen websites for street gangs and dead people. Nice ones too! (Websites, I mean. Not the gangs or deceased.)

You can find all the shady massage parlors, tire shops, and liquor stores near you, just by typing your address into a website. You can find out how much the houses in your area sold for. Yet, local voting precincts are nowhere to be found. Do you know how many pages I had to click through to find out my representative in Congress?

I don't remember. It was at least five.

The map they presented put me right on the border, so the thick black line indicated that I might be overrepresented, with two reps, or underrepresented, with none. Next stop... the Twilight Zone.

You can go online and vote for celebrities, random polls about the war, and whether you prefer Coke or Pepsi... but they never ask you about the really important things, like, "are we going to really find homes for the homeless?"

Not that I'd know that answer.

'cause the old city council majority doesn't care?

I'm confident that once the current council majority is removed, we'll finally have an independent city web site.

The current council majority just doesn't care about communicating with its citizens. They've been in office for far too long, and are, quite simply, out of touch with the 21st Century.

In terms of finding your representative in the U.S. House, it's easy if you know your full zip code. Just go to www.house.gov and enter your full zip code.

If you don't know your full zip, you need to first go to the www.usps.gov website and enter your address to get the full Zip+4 number. From the USPS homepage, click on the "Find a ZIP Code" link, then enter your street address. It'll give you the full nine-digit zip code. You'd then take that number and enter it on to the web page for the U.S. House of Representatives.

For your California state legislator, I have no such shortcut. The only site I know of uses a five digit zip code to "find your legislators." So it will often tell you that several represent parts of a given zip code. It won't tell you which one actually does.
Todd