JOE ROSE

ORIGINAL JOE ROSE POST HERE!

View full sizeThe OregonianGot Twitter? TriMet will use the social media service to take questions about its budget woes this Thursday.

Ten months ago, TriMet officials, who in many ways are still trying to figure out how to use that radical 1989 technology known as the pager, treated this Twitter thing as if it were something that just might steal their souls in 140 characters or less.

To a lot of riders, the TriMet social media team's tipidness stirred up images of monkey men dancing around the singing black monolith from outer space in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” For millenials, here’s your YouTube reference.

My, how things have evolved. Facing a shortfall of up to $17 million (translation: more service cuts for riders are a-comin’), Oregon’s largest has announced an honest-to-hashtag budget tweeting, er, meeting featuring General Manager Neil McFarlane. Of course, you wouldn’t know it from the agency’s website, where’s there’s no mention of it on the home page (sigh).

Here’s the skinny: At 6 p.m. Thursday, McFarlane will be hosting “a live town-hall-style chat on Twitter, to help answer your questions about TriMet’s budget issues and how they might affect you.” The hashtag: #askneil.