Homewood Nation

Regular readers may recall that on Nov. 3, the Save Race Street Committee held our fourth-anniversary celebration at the Diverse Banquet Hall on Kelly Street.

Councilman Bill Peduto joined us, to share some information about his family's connnection to Race Street.

Councilman Ricky V. Burgess also came, and I offered him the floor, just because he's our councilman. I expected to get 2-3 mins of video which I could then post online.

Ok, that was naive.

I wound up with a 33-minute chunk of video. My basic inclination was simply to post it, but I got bogged down in asking myself questions like, "Do the nice things that he says about me in the video harm my credibility as a jouralist?"

Today, finally, I reviewed the video, and concluded that in the end, it is just documentation of what happened. And that it is worth sharing, because:

1. Councilman Burgess explains the land bank legislation that he had submitted just days before. He spends the most time talking about this.

2. He makes a strong public declaration of support for Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's re-election next year, speaking in strategic terms.

3. He talks about how to work with his office to get things done.

This is not a hidden-camera video, like the one that bedeviled the Romney camp during the last six weeks of the presidential campaign. The councilman knew that I was "filming," as is said at one point. But the tone is still informal, and he speaks perhaps more openly than he would have in a more formal setting.

There's a lot to think about here - so what do you think about it?