Do Elected Officials have a Duty to Respond to your Emails and Calls?

For years I have been contacting my Legislative bodies, City officials and any entity that I have an issue with, an idea, or just to thank them for over the top service.

I found that the majority of people do NOT respond.

I found that the majority of people to NOT contact them.

I found the average public contact is not that high, so one would argue then....why don't they respond??

Several years ago I added a tag to my email signature page (Importance of using email etiquette:  http://www.businessemailetiquette.com/232/e-mail-response-time), because many do not have email etiquette (which really relates to contact iof any kind). 

January I wrote to my newly elected City Council President.   Each month thereafter, I resent the email but never received any response.  The Sunday night before the City Council meeting I emailed the Mayor, noting my frustration.  I asked that he see to it that our 2nd term President understand that he needs read and respond to my email. The next night I brought my two young children because I still had no response.  I had to wait until the Public NonAgenda items and brought up that he has a duty to respond to the constituents.  He made ramblings of a flood he had two weeks before.  Obviously this didn't explain the several months of not having an excuse.  Instead of apologizing and saying I will immediately respond, he chose the wrong response.

Here we are at the end of March and still no response, and this Monday is the next Council meeting.  I chose to email the President and cc'd all of the council and  included the Mayor as to my distain for his inaction.  As luck would have it, he finally responded within an hour and was snarky way of addressing me and saying he was responding to my Demands.  I responding saying how simple that was and thank you.

Do you think public officials have a duty to respond to the public?  And what do you feel is a reasonable amount of time?