Jonathan Smith is a web designer, graphic designer, and photographer in Harrisburg, PA.

A rainstorm pushed through the city yesterday which had some high winds for about 10 minutes. I stepped outside to enjoy the scene when I heard a cracking noise. Looking down the street towards the noise I watched as a large tree limb fell into the street. My first instinct was to call the city police. The number I had in my phone for Harrisburg City Police was 717-255-3131. I called that number and heard a message that the mailbox was full. A few minutes later I called back and after several phone menus was prompted to type in the name of the officer I was trying to reach. This didn’t help as I was simply trying to reach ANYONE.

Taking a look at the Harrisburg City website you’ll notice first that the URL goes to http://pl1462.pairlitesite.com/, not http://www.harrisburgpa.gov as it once did. But that is the least of our worries. We’re looking for a phone number for the police department. If you have an annoying popup that asks you to come enjoy Kapona festival, just close it.

There is a link to the right of the site for the City of Harrisburg Police Bureau. I would expect to at least find a phone number there so that I can call the police to let them know a tree is down blocking a street. But no, there is no phone number listed.

Being the geek I am, I resort to Twitter and ask the Harrisburg Twitterati for help. The response was to call 911. Seems odd to me as this was not an emergency. But I resorted to dialing 911 and explained that this was not an emergency and that I was simply trying to reach the Harrisburg Police Department. The person on the other line told me to dial 717-558-6900 which is the Dauphin County Dispatch phone number. Sure enough that did the trick and a few minutes later a police officer arrived on the scene.

That’s not to say the police officer did anything while he was there. He sat there for a few minutes, then drove away. The neighbors cleaned most of the tree limbs off the street themselves.

All I ask is that the city of Harrisburg make their website more accessible and list phone numbers for ALL public departments. You’re leaving the citizens in the dark here!

On Wednesday, August 11th, Eric Papenfuse held an open forum at the Midtown Scholar book store in midtown Harrisburg. The panel for the forum consisted of Bill Cluck (attorney), Neil Grover (attorney), Heather Long (Patriot-News deputy opinions editor), Juliet Moringiello (Widener School of Law), and Jay Wenger (Susquehanna Group representing Dauphin County).

Bill Cluck lead the discussions.

Juliet Moringiello offered advice and answers on the law as far as a municipality declaring chapter 9 bankruptcy.

Heather Long discussing things that were uncovered by the Patriot News. There didn’t seem to be anyone else from the Patriot-News at the event to take note and report on the evening.

Eric Papenfuse opening up the discussions from the public that was in attendance.

Nevin Mindlin who ran against Linda Thompson for mayor of Harrisburg had written an entire speech which seemed to lay the smack down on the current administration of the city of Harrisburg and the current mayor, Linda Thompson.

The one thing that really stood out for me was the fact that the city of Harrisburg, the Harrisburg Authority, and Dauphin County have been suing each other for power of everything. And every time this happens, we the tax payers of Harrisburg and Dauphin county are paying the bill. Each time a financial advisor is brought in to put blame on another entity, we the tax payer are paying the bill. And still, not one person is being proactive, standing on their own feet and making an attempt to solve the financial crisis that the capital of Pennsylvania is in.

Over the weekend I attended a fun outing with some old friends. I haven’t seen them in a while and there were a lot of other people who I have seen in the past but who I didn’t know personally. I don’t like to stereotype, but they looked like the white-supremest  type. After a while the topic of conversation merged to Obama having his own “private army”.

Now I never heard of this at the time and didn’t want to voice my opinion having not known these people very long.  They touted that Obama would soon have his own private army and that they were prepared to defend themselves. I’m thinking to myself – what do we have to defend ourselves against? Well, today I found some information on Obama’s so-called “private army” and laugh at how these people felt threatened by something that they obviously didn’t bother to fact check.

On a lighter note, I later was able to spark up some conversation regarding Indian food and sushi so even though some of these people looked like they would not try any sort of ethnic foods, a few of them did and absolutely loved it. Lessen learned, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. But also, fact check before going off the deep end.