MADAR status update

After nearly three years in an “alpha” stage of development, MADAR has recently graduated to a public “beta” stage. Here’s a summary of where we are now and where we might be going on the near future.

• MADAR consists of a web site and an associated email list. The email list is customizable — subscribers specify a subset of the articles on the MADAR web site that they would like to receive.
• What we are doing now:
  • Meeting reports for both Councils (Grand County and Moab City) and both Planning Commissions.
  • Meeting previews for both Councils and (sometimes) both PCs.
  • Notices (written by our robot) for BLM NEPA actions (Environmental Assessments, Categorical Exclusions, etc.).
  • Notices of new or modified items on the Grand County and Moab City agenda/public notice web sites (again written by our robot).
  • A daily almanac, with high and low temperatures for the past several years, and sun/moon rise/set times. This is also written by our talented robot.
• What we hope to be doing in the not-too-distant future:
  • Feature articles and updates on various public lands and environmental topics.
  • Reports on a wider variety of City and County boards, committees, etc. (e.g. the Hot Spot Funding Committee)
  • Robotic real estate reports (e.g. how median prices have evolved over time, number of listings in various price brackets and how those numbers have evolved over time, new listings, etc.). Our diligent robot has been scanning local real estate listings daily for the past couple of years. The next step is to assemble this raw information into various summaries.
• We are open to other ideas! If you have an idea, please pitch it to kw_madar@canyon23.net.
• We also need more people to help cover our current topics. If you would like to be a back-up summarizer of council or PC meetings, please let us know. Ideally we would have a team of 2-3 people for each council, planning commission or board, so that the note-taking burden does not fall too heavily on any one person.
• Everybody is welcome to subscribe to the MADAR email list, so tell all your friends. The subscription page is https://madar.canyon23.net/madar-email-updates/ . You can send your friends there, or give “gift subscriptions” by visiting that page yourself and entering your friends’ email addresses. (Be sure to send them a warning email first.)