Petycje w miastach na prawach powiatu oraz pozostałych gminach miejskich województwa śląskiego w latach 2015—2019 Petitions in city-districts and other Municipal Communes in Silesia Province between 2015 and 2019

September 2019 marked four years since the Act of July 11, 2014 on petitions entered into force. This is a good time to investi‐ gate how citizens’ constitutional right to petition is being implemented. The aim of the paper is to analyze how the authorities of 49 municipal communes of the Silesia Province (including 19 city-districts) deal with citizens’ petitions. For the four years since the Act entered into force, 864 peti‐ tions have been submitted to the authorities of these communes. Data analysis allows us to conclude that there is no uniform practice in dealing with these matters. The authorities of each municipality approach the issue of petitions differently — some execute their tasks in an excellent manner, being an example of a pro-civic attitude, Abstrakt We wrześniu 2019 roku minęły cztery lata od wejścia w życie Ustawy z dnia 11 lipca 2014 roku o petycjach. To dobry moment, aby sprawdzić w jaki sposób realizowane jest konstytucyjne prawo obywateli do skła‐ dania petycji. Celem artykułu jest przeana‐ lizowanie, w jaki sposób władze 49 gmin miejskich województwa śląskiego (w tym 19 miast na prawach powiatu) postępują z petycjami obywateli. Przez cztery lata od wejścia w życie wspominanej ustawy do władz tychże gmin złożono 864 petycje. Analiza danych pozwala dojść do wniosku, że nie ma jednolitej praktyki postępowania wobec tychże spraw. Władze każdej gminy miejskiej inaczej podchodzą do kwestii procedowania petycji — część wykonuje swoje zadania wzorowo, stanowiąc przy-


Abstract
September 2019 marked four years since the Act of July 11, 2014 on petitions entered into force. This is a good time to investigate how citizens' constitutional right to petition is being implemented. The aim of the paper is to analyze how the authorities of 49 municipal communes of the Silesia Province (including 19 city-districts) deal with citizens' petitions. For the four years since the Act entered into force, 864 petitions have been submitted to the authorities of these communes. Data analysis allows us to conclude that there is no uniform practice in dealing with these matters. The authorities of each municipality approach the issue of petitions differently -some execute their tasks in an excellent manner, being an example of a pro-civic attitude,

Introduction
The aim of the paper is to analyze how the authorities of 49 municipal communes of the Silesia Province (including 19 city-districts) deal with citizens' petitions submitted to the office. The research problem is to answer the question: Can the residents of the mentioned cities fully use the right guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of April 2, 1997 and the Act of July 11, 2014 on petitions? In order to solve this research problem, statistical methods were used (data on petitions submitted to municipal authorities were collected and processed), an institutional and legal analysis was performed (whether city halls comply with the legal norms under the Act, how they use the provisions of the Act to resolve issues raised in petitions) and a comparative analysis of all the cities discussed was carried out in terms of the quality of handling petitions.
This publication is a further investigation into petitions submitted by Polish citizens to local government authorities, initiated in the paper Petitions in cities with poviat rights in Silesian Voivodeship, which was published in 2019 in the 25th volume of Studia Politicae Universitatis Silesiensis (Wielgosz, 2019).
At the outset, it is worth stating that in this text the terms "municipal commune" and "city" are used interchangeably. However, being precise, it should be remembered that not every "city" is a municipal commune. There are cities that are independent municipal communes, but also cities can be part of an urbanrural commune as a subsidiary entity of this commune. There are 22 urban-rural communes in the Silesia Province; however, they are not in the research focus of this paper. City-districts are also referred to as "cities." Petitions submitted in the first four years of application of the new petition law will be examined in this paper. For this reason, the beginning of the research is the date of entry into force of the Act of July 11, 2014 on petitions -September 6, 2015, and the end of the analysis is September 6, 2019. Assuming the worst case scenario that the response to the petition submitted on the closing date can be waited for up to six months (basic three months and an additional three months if the petition is under investigation), the information about the consideration of such a petition would have to be provided no later than the beginning of March 2020. Thanks to this time limit, the research deals with a closed dataset.
Article 8 of the Act of July 11, 2014 on petitions imposes an obligation to immediately post information on the website of the entity examining the petition or the office serving it. The information should contain a digital representation (scan) of the petition, the date of its submission (and, if consent is given -the first name and surname or name of the entity submitting the petition or name of the entity in whose interest the petition is being submitted). This information should be immediately updated with particulars on the course of the proceedings, in particular regarding the opinions consulted, the expected time limit and the manner of settling the petition In case of cities in the Silesia Province, information about petitions was most often (45 out of 49 cities) published in municipal Public Information Bulletins (BIP) -usually all information was placed in a collective tab or database, sometimes petitions were divided into those dealt with by the city president and those dealt with by the city council. It was different in the case of Bieruń (Bieruń: Urząd Miasta Bierunia. Petycje), Bytom (Bytom: Petycje) and Radlin (Radlin: Oficjalna strona and Buletyn Informacji Publicznej), where information on petitions can be found on the city website and Katowice where a separate register of petitions has been created (Katowice: Rejestr petycji).
All cities publish in their BIPs (or on websites/registers) scans of petitions submitted to the authorities (although there are small defects of these scans or the files provided in the attachments are damaged and it is not possible to read them, but these are single cases). Until recently, Świętochłowice and Mysłowice had the greatest problems in this respect (Wielgosz, 2019). In Świętochłowice, in 2015-2018, only very brief summary information on petitions was published. From 2019, however, the city keeps a public register of petitions (Świętochłowice: Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej. Urząd Miejski w Świętochłowicach). There was also an improvement in Mysłowice -the local City Hall in its BIP used to publish only summary information on the petitions under consideration in 2017 (what is more, the website does not contain any information about petitions from 2015 and 2016). This city has managed to enhance the information systema public register of petitions has been kept since 2018 (Mysłowice: Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej Miasta Mysłowice). Out of 864 petitions submitted to the authorities of all the cities of the Silesia Province in the discussed period, it is possible to read the content of 848 of them (and classify them into appropriate thematic categories).
Pursuant to the Act, information on petitions should be updated with data from the course of the proceedings and the final decision. The problem is that the legislator did not specify how the offices should do it (whether they are to be scans of each of these documents, as in the case of the petition itself, or if simple information is enough). This inaccuracy is a serious flaw of the Actsome city halls provide limited information about the course of the proceedings and the results of the petition. This is the case in Będzin ( For 82 petitions (out of 864 with accessible content), no information on the date of the reply could be found. These are the cases where city councils provided neither a scan of the response nor neutral information on the date of the petition. No information regarding this matter was found in the annual aggregated information on petitions. Such instances took place in 25 out of 49 cities. Most of them, however, were single "slip-ups." What worries the most is the attitude of Racibórz (no information on the date and form of responses to all six petitions), Rybnik (no information provided since 2019), Sławków (no information provided since 2018) and Świętochłowice (no information on the date and form of responses to all twenty three petitions).
In the vast majority of cases, individual petitions were addressed to the city authorities. However, there is a possibility, under Article 11 of the Act, of submitting multiple petitions, i.e., one that consists of two or more petitions concerning the same matter. Then the entity competent to consider the petition may order their joint consideration. This paper repeatedly considers petitions as one petition. There are also petitions addressed to both the city president and the city council, to which petitioners received separate responses. Such petitions were also regarded as one petition.
The date when the petition was lodged was assumed to be the moment when it was actually submitted to the office. This fact should be confirmed by stamp confirming the acceptance of the petition. Unfortunately, in the documentation of some cities, there are scans of petitions with no official stamps. There are also cases where the date of receipt of the petition posted in the BIP does not match the date of the first official stamp (it is suggested that the acceptance of the petition was later than indicated by the stamp). As stated in article 10, paragraph 1, "the petition shall be examined without undue delay, but not later than within 3 months from the date of its submission." A document becomes a petition when a citizen submits it to the office, and not when the appropriate person publishes the document in the BIP or deals with its content. Thus, in the table one can find the date of the first stamp, and if there was no such date -then the date given in the BIP.
There are three exceptions to this rule. First, if the petition does not identify the addressee of the petition, does not indicate the subject of the petition or, when submitting a petition in the interest of a third party, the details of the third party and their consent are not provided, then the petitioner is requested within 30 days from the date of submission of the petition to complete the missing information within 14 days. The time for considering a petition is therefore counted from the moment of filling the formal defects. Second, pursuant to Article 11 of the Act, when further petitions concerning the same matter are submitted to the office within one month from the receipt of the first petition, the entity competent to consider them may order their joint consideration. A waiting period for further petitions (up to 2 months) may then be ordered. The deadline for considering the petition is counted from the expiry of this period. Third, if a petition is addressed to an entity that is not competent to deal with it, the addressee is required to send the petition to the competent entity within 30 days. The time for considering the petition is therefore counted from the moment the petition is received by the competent entity. All these exceptions are addressed in the paper.
The date of the reply to the petition is the moment when the first comprehensive, substantive reply is generated. If a city president and a city council took a separate position on the petition, the date of the first response is shown in this section. It also happened that after making a public decision on a petition in the form of a resolution of the City Council, the chairman of the Council sent an additional reply to the petitioners, in which the Chair informed about the adoption of a given act of local law. Our study considers the date of adoption of the relevant resolution as the date of response, and such a gesture of the chairmen of City Councils should be appreciated (not every applicant has to follow the proceedings of the City Council or be interested in local politics, and such notification about the consideration of the petition may prove useful).
The "forms of reply" section provides information on who replied to the petition. If several entities responded separately, the column provided information about the one that was provided the earliest (corresponding to the date of the response). It is almost certain that not only the person signed in the reply but, for example, city officials, experts and advisers are involved in the process of writing a response to a petition. From the research point of view; however, it is important who takes political responsibility for this reply -this person is the person signed under the document concluding the petition.
Individual petitions are classified in terms of their substantive content and divided into the following categories: -ecology -these were most often issues related to smog, car exhaust fumes and residents' objections to investments that would cause environmental degradation (including tree felling or protests against the activities of individual enterprises that pollute air, water or soil); -road investments -issues related to the construction of roads, pavements and parking lots; they were often combined with the need to build accompanying infrastructure, e.g., sewage systems, noise barriers, traffic lights, bus stops, lighting; -transport -all other investment petitions not related to road transport, such as construction of tram and rail lines, construction of airports; this category also includes all issues related to the reorganization of road traffic (e.g., change of road signs) and the functioning of public transport (closure or creation of bus or tram lines, discounts and reduced fares on public transport); -education -petitions most often related to the merger, division or liquidation of classrooms or schools, and investments related to school buildings; if the petition concerned a playfield or playground within the school, it fell under this category; -recreation -all proposals for the construction of sports fields and playgrounds outside schools, as well as the issues of arranging green areas, organizing trips for children, the functioning of a city bike network or appeals to support local sport; this category also included a petition concerning the possibility of creating zones in public places where alcohol could be legally consumed; -health care -proposals concerning municipal health programs and the functioning of municipal hospitals; -administration -petitions concerned the functioning of offices, salaries of officials, and local taxes; -street names -proposals to change the names of streets and squares; -culture -the least popular category -it was assumed that it would include proposals for the organization of events, but the inhabitants of the province, if they became interested in this subject, they referred to the functioning of municipal cultural institutions; -other -all other petitions that do not fit into the categories presented.
Zbigniew  notes that the legislator does not limit the number of issues covered by the petition, therefore it may concern one or more issues. In the latter case, the petition addressee is responsible for examining all the matters that constitute its subject. Among all the petitions submitted to the authorities of individual cities of the Silesia Province, there were those that concerned many different issues that could be classified into several categories. For the purpose of this paper, it was decided to classify such multi-thematic petitions into only one dominant category (the one about which the most was written/to which the greatest number of requests was related).

Petitions in cities of Silesia Province in 2015-2019
From September 6, 2015 to September 6, 2019, 864 petitions were submitted to the authorities of the cities of the Silesia Province. Table 1 presents the number of petitions submitted to the authorities of individual cities of the Silesia Province in the discussed period. Most petitions were addressed to the authorities of Katowice (68), Sosnowiec (59), Częstochowa (56), Rybnik (49) and Bielsko-Biała (42). The City Halls in Kalety, Poręba and Rydułtowy had the least work with petitions (one petition each). Table 1 and Figure 1 also present the types of petitions submitted in individual cities. Administrative issues turned out to be the most popular subject (15.1% of petitions submitted to the authorities of all cities in the Silesia Province). This is a surprising result, taking into account the previous study on petitions in city-districts in the Silesia Province in 2015-2018, issues related to administration constituted only five percent of all documents (Wielgosz, 2019). However, it should be noted that from November 2018 to September 2019, as many as 80 out of 128 petitions on administration-related topics were submitted. Petitions concerning administration were most often addressed to the authorities of Będzin (9), Wodzisław Śląski (7), Piekary Śląskie and Pyskowice (6). Road investments (14.6%) turned out to be another important issue -petitions regarding this matter were most often addressed to the authorities of Katowice (18), Sosnowiec (14), Częstochowa (12), and Gliwice (11). The third most popular issue was ecology and environmental protection (9.2%). Petitions on this subject were most often addressed to the authorities of Rybnik (9), Sosnowiec (8), Częstochowa and Piekary Śląskie (5 each). Issues related to education were no less important (8.5%) -petitions concerning education were most often addressed to the City Hall in Dąbrowa Górnicza (7), Bielsko-Biała (6) and Sosnowiec (5).
On the other hand, the residents were interested in issues related to culture -out of 848 classified petitions, only 3 were related to this topic (0.4%). The issue of health care also enjoyed little interest (2.6%). It is important to note that 9 out of 22 petitions on this subject concerned the creation of a roundthe-clock gynecological surgery in a given city, in which all services would be guaranteed.
32.6% of petitions did not fit into any particular category. The residents raised issues such as the content of websites, the issue of accepting refugees from the Middle East, the organization of the civic budget, doubts about the activities of circuses and the organization of municipal New Year's Eve events. All the requests or protests that related to municipal spatial development plans were also included in the "other" category. Figure 2 presents the forms of responses to petitions submitted to city authorities in the Silesia Province. This type of petitions was most often considered by city presidents and mayors (22.9%), and their deputies (19%). Interestingly, presidents/mayors of smaller cities responded to petitions more often, while in the largest cities of the province, presidents responded occasionally or not at all, and the subsequent responses were usually dealt with by their deputies. Almost every eighth petition (12.9%) received a response in the form of a resolution of the city council or a decision was worked out by councilors (e.g., the results of discussions at the relevant committee). In 32.8% of cases, no detailed information on the course of the petition was published, no scans of the responses were attached, alternatively those petitions were left without any consideration.
reply of city president/mayor reply of city deputy president/mayor reply of head of department or division (or their deputies) reply of city secretary reply worked out by City Council reply of president's representative reply of other persons / other reply many entities no information on the reply form   Table 2 presents the average time of considering petitions in individual cities of the Silesia Province in the discussed period (in days). The mean for these cities is 51.86 days. The issues contained in petitions were most quickly dealt with in Jaworzno, where the average time for resolving petitions is just over three weeks (21.07 days). The leaders of the ranking are Lędziny (25.11) and Ustroń (26.50) -these cities managed to achieve a mean of less than one month. Ruda Śląska (32.05), Tychy (32.76), Pszów (34.00) and Miasteczko Śląskie (34.20) also boast a very good mean, where the process of considering a petition takes just over a month.

City Halls' efficiency in cities of Silesia Province
A response to petitions took the longest time period in Chorzów (79.47). Looking at the petition process in this city, one can have considerable concerns about too sluggish way of dealing with them by the local City Hall. In the previous study, Chorzów was also at the bottom of the ranking. Moreover, the longest-examined petition addressed to the authorities of the cities of the Silesia Province is a letter addressed to the authorities of Chorzów (over 9 months). Focusing on specific "petition-indicators," the results of Chorzów are also badresponses to petitions regarding the "local councillors' library," to a petition related to the initiation of inspection of the validity of carrying out technical tests of selected vehicle makes or to an invitation to the competition "Podwórko Nivea" were very slow (Wielgosz, 2019). Analyzing the next two "petition-indicators" petition was the city council, it was therefore decided to refer the case to that body. In some cities, however, it was decided that the response would be given by the city president, their deputy or the city secretary. The time for considering these petitions is presented in Table 3. The quickest response to the letter was provided in Piekary Śląskie, where the City Council adopted a relevant resolution on this matter within six days after the petition was handed over. The issue was dealt with immediately in Bielsko-Biała, where the city secretary replied to the petition within 6 days after receiving it. Good results were recorded in Siemianowice Śląskie (18 days), Mysłowice (23 days) and Katowice (28 days). The longest period of considering the petition was in Chorzów (93 days), Gliwice (94 days) and Jastrzębie-Zdrój (98 days, earlier information was provided about the extension of the deadline for considering the petition). The second "petition-indicator" is a letter with a request to publish selected city hall phone numbers in the BIPs of individual cities, "the use of which could improve communication with the City Hall." According to the petitioners, this would contribute to reducing the cost of calls on the part of the customers. This type of petition was sent to 25 of the 49 cities discussed. Detailed data are presented in Table 4. The case was resolved the fastest in Pyskowice, where the response was given by the city mayor after three days. The authorities of Bielsko-Biała (8 days) and Siemianowice Śląskie (11 days) responded to the request very quickly. The petition in question was considered the longest in Cieszyn (91 days), Dąbrowa Górnicza (91 days), Bieruń (92 days) and Wisła (92 days).

Increase in popularity of petitions
The inhabitants of the cities of the Silesia Province are very eager to use the rights guaranteed in the Act of July 11, 2014 on petitions. Petitions have become a popular tool for articulating the interests and control of the authorities. In their letters, the petitioners raised many different issues and matters related to local, regional and even national problems.
The paper Petitions in cities with the poviat rights of the Silesian Voivodeship put forward a hypothesis that due to the entry into force of the regulation on the protection of personal data and on the free flow of such data (so-called GDPR) and due to the information campaign accompanying this event, citizens' distrust towards people who organize signature collections under various campaigns would increase. Thus, the "civic collection of signatures under the petition" would be made much more difficult, as the reluctance to share data in any way would increase (Wielgosz, 2019). However, as it turned out, such a hypothesis should be verified negatively.  In the second and third years, the number of petitions did not exceed 200 per year (182 petitions were submitted from September 6, 2016 to September 5, 2017, and 165 petitions were submitted from September 6, 2017 to September 5, 2018). In the fourth year of the law being in force (from September 6, 2018 to September 5, 2019, i.e., after the entry into force of the GDPR), the number of petitions submitted per year doubled. During the discussed period, as many as 364 petitions were submitted, which is more than the two preceding years combined. This means that the introduction of the GDPR and the related information campaign did not have a significant negative impact on the number of petitions submitted.

Petitions and proposals -the case of Poręba
A very interesting case causing concern is the register of "petitions" kept by Poręba. In the Public Information Bulletin of that city, in the Petitions tab, there were as many as 122 attachments. 1 Unfortunately, 121 of them are extracts from the register of incoming correspondence to the city hall. These are files whose content resembles a printout of e-mail correspondence with the city hall. These texts do not contain a clearly identified entity submitting the letter, the correspondence address appears in only a few files (which is a cause of concern, the sender's personal data are not concealed in any way), and the addressees of these texts are a number of different entities (government and local government authorities of various levels). However, most importantly, the subject of these letters is not a demand of changes to the law, call for taking any decision or any other action. Most of them are "civic insights" (such a term is used at the beginning of many of these texts). These texts look like ordinary e-mails with residents' comments and concern a wide variety of issues (including incorrect road marking, creating programs to combat alcoholism, SMS system for medical staff, the problem of equipping police cars, fire trucks and ambulances, maintaining order and cleanliness in commune, regulations on candles lit at the accident site) (Poręba: Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej Gminy Poręba. Petycje). In addition, there is no information about the manner in which these "petitions" are processed in the Public Information Bulletin of the city of Poręba, including no information on how those "civic insights" were dealt with Therefore, it should be stated that none of these files meets the statutory requirements.
When the Petitions Act entered into force, Michał  warned that the content of this legal act "raises a number of interpretation doubts, which are likely to arise in administrative practice." The author primarily pointed to the lack of a precise criterion distinguishing the petition from the proposal. Perhaps the files in question in the Petitions tab in the BIP of the city of Poręba could be called proposals, as they concern, inter alia, strengthening the local rule of law, improving the work of offices, preventing abuses, or meeting the public needs in a better manner. In practice, however, it is the addressee of the letter who ultimately should assess the legal nature of the submitted letter -so it may turn out that a given letter may be considered a proposal or a petition depending on non-substantive circumstances (apart from the fact that delineating clear "demarcation lines" between the proposal and the petition is not an easy task, and the petition and the proposal may be competitive against each other) . Therefore, it may happen that a letter that does not meet the statutory requirements will be considered a petition (then it can be verified, as a scan of the document is made available). It is worse when the situation is the oppositeit is not known how many letters were incorrectly qualified as petitions. Nevertheless, after four years of the Act being in force, it should be assessed that the cities of the Silesia Province coped well with this task. The letters that are made available in the Public Information Bulletins of the cities in question, which 89 Petitions in City-districts and other Municipal Communes… have been classified as petitions, do indeed meet the statutory requirements. The case of Poręba seems to be isolated.
Out of all 122 attachments available in the Public Information Bulletin of the city of Poręba, 2 only one is a scan of a "genuine" petition, as evidenced by both the content of the letter and its form. However, this is a petition that was submitted on September 23, 2019, i.e., after the agreed end date of the study.
Finding a petition in the Poręba Public Information Bulletin is very difficult. It would seem that no petition was submitted to the local city hall from September 6, 2015 to September 6, 2019. However, when searching the archive information available on the website of the city hall, one can find information that on July 1, 2019, one petition was addressed to the city authorities -asking the councillors of Poręba not to limit the operation of buses between the Krzemienda district and Zawiercie. There is also a scan of the reply in this document (Petition on buses of 28/06/2019). Why is this petition not in the Public Information Bulletin, but on the website of the office in the archives? The Public Information Bulletin of the discussed commune gives the impression of a cluttered website, run in a careless, even disorderly manner. There is no doubt that the issues related to the consideration of petitions in Poręba require thorough rearrangement.

Conclusions
Andrzej Zybała (2012) takes the position that "public policies are not possible -in a mature form -in an intellectual vacuum, i.e., in a situation where rational knowledge is underestimated, ignored or simply when it is generated in inappropriate proportions to the scale and the complexity of the problems we want to solve. Policies require intense deliberation and conditions for their implementation, as well as conditions for drawing conclusions from them and creating knowledge from them for the needs of public decisions made. The need for deliberation arises from the complexity of contemporary problems. A person cannot analyze them from one desk, no matter how brilliant the person sitting behind it might be." There are many ways to enter into dialogue with residents and obtain information from them about the actions taken by the authorities. Petitions are one of such methods -petitioners submit various kinds of requests for specific actions in the future or express their position or objection to current decisions and current events. By means of an open and transparent way of dealing with petitions and letters of reply, a dialogue can be conducted between residents and city authorities.
When describing the official approach of the cities of the Silesia Province towards petitions, one can use the metaphor of a group of forty-nine students who are asked to complete a project to earn the credit for the course. Some deal with it better, others do not. In the group there are both the first-rate students who quickly solve their tasks in an exemplary manner, but there are also the "black sheep" who postpone even the simplest tasks until the last moment. Some people present works that are legible, transparent, based on good sources, in which one can see commitment to the implementation of the project. The latter students do their job sloppy manner, carrying out tasks the easy way out, and sometimes even with reproachable mistakes. Between the straight-A students and those who have to retake the course, there is of course a very large group of those "B students" who simply did a solid job and "C students" who managed to complete the tasks correctly and met the basic conditions for earning the credit for the course. What is the "group" of cities in the Silesia Province like? It can be assessed as a typical group of students described above. Cities such as Chorzów, Poręba or Racibórz should follow the example of cities such as Ruda Śląska, Tychy or Siemianowice Śląskie, where the letters are processed efficiently and without major reservations, and the Public Information Bulletins in the part devoted to petitions are kept with due diligence.
"The issue of fundamental importance for effective communication of local government administration units (especially in the external dimension) is the correct identification of social problems and needs. Based on the results, it is possible to formulate a diagnosis of the situation, which allows for the design of local development programs. The practice of researching local needs and preferences is valuable not only as a tool for obtaining information. It also has a psychosocial dimension. Residents, asked to express their opinions, feel that they co-manage the affairs of their community and are more willing to engage in public projects undertaken for local development" . City authorities that do not understand this are a detriment to themselves. Petitions reveal problems important for the local community, sometimes even those that have never been articulated (or have not been properly heard). From petitions sent to the city hall, one can obtain a lot of information about the needs of residents and find out what problems are really important to people. Referring to Zybała quoted -the world from behind an office desk may look completely different than from the perspectives of specific residents. The letters received should not be underestimated, or treated as a threat or obstruction of the office's work. Petitions may become an opportunity for the authorities to obtain valuable information, and even to defuse local tensions and disputes. It is possible that skilful "disarming the local bomb" within the possibilities offered by the Petitions Act may bring more good to the city authorities in the future than if undisclosed problems and conflicts were to erupt in full force over the ballot in local elections.