Windows = transparency
They’re building a shiny new Princeton (Texas) City Hall complex just north of U.S. 380. It’ll be done, they say, in time to welcome the Christmas holiday.
I was struck by something that Mayor Brianna Chacon and City Manager Derek Borg told me about the design of the complex. It has a lot of windows. I mean a lot of ’em. Borg told me that is part of a city initiative to promote transparency. He wants city government to be a see-through operation. He wants to expose municipal employees to the public they serve. Borg said the abundance of glass ware at the complex is meant to symbolize that aim.
Chacon said the same thing. You can’t have “too much” transparency, she said.
And so the city is marching ahead with its new government complex. There is a “For Sale or Lease” sign posted in front of the current City Hall, a non-descript structure the city rents from a private owner on U.S. 380 just west of Second Avenue. The new complex will be roughly seven to eight times the size of the shoebox building where city employees serve the public.
The abundance of glass, though, is what strikes me tonight as I pound out these few words.
Government at times needs a symbol with which it can identify. If the glasswork symbolizes a transparent approach to governing in this rapidly growing city where my wife and now live, then may the symbolism carry through to a demonstration that the city is practicing what it preaches.