Citizen Participation Plan – Draft 1.13

Implementation Actions 1.6.10

Above is the agenda for the final Advisory Group meeting on January 13th. Draft material will be posted here next week.

Draft Goals and Policies 12.1.09

Draft Implementation Actions 12.16.09

The Advisory Group Meeting for November 11, 2009 is posted below.

Advisory Group Meeting Agenda Nov 11

Staff has drawn up a draft few goals/objectives for discussion at the meeting. Following this meeting, staff will take the direction of the group to continue to refine the major principles, plan the December 9th public meeting and work on the background and text of the plan.

Below are the goals/objectives ideas ahead of the meeting.

Draft Goals and Policies 11.11.09

• City Website
• Email/List-serves
• Social Networking Sites
• Ch. 10
• City Reporter
• Other Newsletters/Mailings
• Phone Messages
• Citizen Surveys         
• Neighborhood Events
• Town Halls/Public Meetings
• Boards/Commissions
• Public Notice (mailed, posted, published)
• Citations (and information about)
• Task Forces/Steering Committees

• Citizens Academy

Ways to Improve Existing Efforts:

• Expand and streamline/simplify City Website

• Increase content in newsletter/Use utility billing as increased tool
• Use Survey Monkey to increase survey usage
• Pool city-wide email addresses/citizen contact info for task forces/steering committees/working groups/boards and commissions
• Make Ch. 10 content easily accessible for other Staff, have intro to Council meetings with news/info regarding City activities
• Take next step with Citizens Academy attendees to get further involved
• Make list of outreach tools available to all City staff when needed
• Establish Communication/Participation
• Use Social Networking Sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to blast info and create dialogue
• Use City Website tracking to direct people to other sectors of interest (Google)
• Work with Traditional Media to promote City goings-on
• Set up Email/Web Alerts/Social Networking Alerts for interested topics
• Streaming/broadcasting of meetings, announcements, news alerts, etc.

New or Potential Communication Efforts:

• HOA/NA/other neighborhood organization contacts
• AMI (Advanced Metering Information) and HAN (Home Area Networking)

CITIZEN PARTICIPATION – ideas cobbled from other communities

The goal of this Citizen Participation Plan is to provide a menu of choices for including citizens’ voices in decision making. Residents of the City of Ashland are typically educated about issues, outspoken in their opinions, and involved in shaping decisions. The City of Ashland encourages its public officials and employees to engage with its citizens. Therefore, citizens often enjoy good working relationships with staff and decision-makers. This Plan offers participation processes that will continue to build on the solid interaction between citizens and City management.

Democracy relies on engagement by citizens as a means of forming better solutions to civic matters. Citizen participation processes must be inclusive of those who identify themselves as interested and/or affected by decisions that will be made on issues of relevance to them. Citizen participation practices must result in decisions that reflect the community’s voices.

Citizen participation is not a substitute for decision-making by the City, but a very important influence on it. Shared decision-making is not a cure for conflict because it does not mean the final decision will make everyone happy. It lets everyone know the reasons for a decision in the hope that all or most participants will accept that decision, even if they do not agree with it.

Major Principles
Citizen participation should result in:

• Trust between government and citizens
• Informed judgments about City activities
• Face-to-face deliberation
• Decisions that reflect a thorough consideration of community issues and perspectives
• Transparent and track-able decisions with stated accountabilities
• Common understanding of issues and appreciation for complexity

  Public participation is a process which allows City government to engage with the public to jointly:

• Increase understanding of issues
• Determine possible options
• Generate new ideas
• Discover and explore possible compromises
• Gauge the greater public’s support for various solutions

  Successful citizen participation requires:

• Genuine intent and attitude by the City and its citizens to engage in a public process to help make better decisions
• A clearly defined process that identifies participant roles
• A variety of ways to participate and influence decisions
• That it occur early enough in the process to influence the outcome
• Effective communication throughout the process, including identification of assumptions about the issue, disclosing rationale for one’s opinions, and being willing to consider the merit in others’ opinions
• Identifying and inviting people who are affected or interested in the issue to be part of the process
• That dialog and deliberation be a part of the process
• That all participants work hard, listen to all sides, and attempt to understand opposing viewpoints
• Considering the “public good” perspective on all issues, especially when personal interests differ

  CITIZEN EXPECTATIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• A fair, respectful, and open process which allows all who are affected or interested to have an equal opportunity to participate
• Clear, complete and straightforward information from the City and other presenters
• To be involved early enough in the process to influence the outcome
• To work hard at learning about the issue, listening to all perspectives, attempting to understand opposing viewpoints, trying to reach compromise on difficult issues, and to consider the “public good” perspective on all issues
• Follow-up to their involvement by receiving information about the final decisions and why it was made
• To be able to be part of the solution and to define a role in implementation as is appropriate

  ELECTED OFFICIALS ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Recognize the benefits of citizen involvement and serve as an advocate for its use
• Provide resources and support City staff initiative in utilizing public participation processes
• Decide the citizen involvement process that will be used before the process is initiated
• Define the decision-making process and the roles that respective parties will play
• Identify elements of the issue that may not be conducive to open process
• Assist in issue scoping
• Provide clear delegations of responsibilities between elected officials and City staff, where appropriate
• Ensure that citizens are aware of the opportunities to participate throughout the prescribed process
• Assist citizens to work hard to understand the issues, respect opposing viewpoints, work for good solutions and help to define the “public good”
• Honor the spirit of the process as it is proceeding and respect the ambiguous nature of the process
• Be informed about the process and engage where appropriate to ensure the goals of the process
• Fulfill their role as decision-maker according to the selected type of citizen involvement process being used
• Evaluate the effectiveness of each public involvement process

  CITY STAFF ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Recognize the benefits of citizen involvement and serve as advocate for its use
• Inform themselves of the efficacy and appropriateness of public involvement processes that may be useful in specific applications of their department’s work program
• Ensure that resources are adequate for staff’s role in conducting the process
• Provide citizen involvement training to staff
• Utilize performance incentives that build and foster capacity for success in public involvement
• Engage with the public as partners in the design and execution of the public involvement strategy
• Help design and carry out the public involvement process in a way that most effectively ensures success
• Evaluate the effectiveness of each public involvement process
• Ensure that informational needs of the project are fulfilled
• To try and identify and involve as many affected or interested citizens as possible by designing a process that goes out to the people and is easy to become involved in

  Citizen Participation Process

Depending on the type of issue that is being considered there are many different ways to engage citizens. If this issue requires individual judgment or opinions, focus group interviews, random sample surveys, response forms, newspaper inserts, or direct mail can be used. If the issue requires community problem solving, workshops, charrettes, open houses and discussion forums can be used. Complicated and technical issues might best use advisory or ad hoc committees, a series of workshops or open houses, or working with existing organizations. The outcome of this is the public participation process plan.

• Awareness
• Education
• Input
• Decision-Making

Evaluation

In order to promote and refine our collective learning from these processes, it is essential that we evaluate the efficacy of both the public participation process utilized and the eventual outcome of the decision-making process. The experiences of those directly involved in the process need to be collected through a process or people who can be objective in the task. It is also important, depending on the scale of the process, to collect the opinions or experience of those who were not directly involved. The evaluations need to be documented, shared with decision-makers and maintained in a manner that makes them accessible for public review.

The questionnaire results seem to say that overwhelmingly people would like more interaction with the website, and then from the discussion, it narrowed down the focus to specifically people want more interaction with the boards and council content.

I will be meeting with the Jessica Hamilton, City Secretary, Patty Soto, Lotus Notes Administrator, Karen Frost, HARC board liaison, and Keith Hutchinson, Public Communications Director, tomorrow Oct 2 to discuss the possibility of rearranging the HARC agenda interface to make it so that we can export the key action items into XML so I can then send those bullet points out as both email and twitter feeds.

I will update you when I know more.

Thanks!

Questionnaire Results 9.30