St. Joseph Mayor Ken Shearin has an eye-in-the-sky idea to improve the city's communications with its residents.

The mayor wants to use the city's Geographic Information System (GIS) to identify every household within each of St. Joseph's council districts so the City Council can send news to residents about current events at City Hall. Mr. Shearin said direct mailings would be an improvement over the city's current offering of e-mail newsletters, which he speculates go primarily to city employees.

"This is for the people who don't come to City Hall with their problems. They just sit at home and stew over it," Mr. Shearin said.

The GIS system is a set of aerial photographs that lets city employees easily put a name and address with each parcel of land on the computer screen.

Mr. Shearin said the letters will go out to a different district every two months and will come from the council member who represents that district, plus one of the at-large council members or the mayor on a rotating basis.

Ironically, a lack of communication is one of the main things holding the mayor's communication plan back. Mr. Shearin pitched his plan last fall to Steve Hofferber, director of technology and property maintenance. Mr. Hofferber replied with a memo that estimated the number of mailings that must be sent out - about 22,400.

After months of inaction, Mr. Shearin brought up the topic again during city budget meetings earlier this month. The mayor was surprised when Mr. Hofferber and City Manager Vince Capell spoke favorably of his idea. He assumed city staff opposed the plan, since they hadn't taken steps to implement his suggestions.

Mr. Capell said he has been waiting for additional information from the mayor or council before he moves forward with a potentially expensive program.

"I think the challenge is he hasn't really articulated what he wants to achieve," Mr. Capell said.

Mr. Capell suggested that the mayor call a meeting of the council's communications committee - Mr. Shearin is the chairman - so the council can tell city staff what it wants out of the program.

"This has never been done before," Mr. Shearin said. "I only have one year left, so let's get this done."

Clinton Thomas can be reached

at clintonthomas@npgco.com.