☆ Beyond 2-min public comments: A crash course for SJ in smart, intentional community engagement
William Holland: Lloyd’s Coffee House, London, 1789. Image by Wikimedia Commons
For 25 years, Dr. Shawn Spano (of Public Dialogue Consortium) has facilitated community engagement meetings and consulted for local city gov'ts. In this exclusive interview for Opp Now, he walks us through planning an input meeting (via the community participation continuum), creatively outreaching to underrepresented communities, and facilitating honest feedback (a.k.a., CMs should sit this one out).
Opportunity Now: Let's say a city like San Jose comes to you and says, “I want to do a community engagement project. Where do I go from here?” What's the process?
Shawn Spano: One of the most important things for community engagement—at the city government level and with local community residents—is to establish expectations and outcomes at the very outset. Being clear on how the community will participate, and how the city will use their input. That's always Step #1: determine what kind of engagement you want.
There are nice diagrams like this one from the International Association for Public Participation showing the continuum of community participation—starting with just information (educating the community, one-way). At a deeper level, there's consulting: asking the community for feedback and opinions and taking them under advisement, but not guaranteeing they'll act on them. Then there's co-decision making: asking the community to make a decision with you, which gives them much more power. And the final stage is giving full decision-making authority to the community.
ON: We imagine there'd be some ruckus if that wasn't clarified. You hear there'll be a “town hall meeting” tomorrow; and you might think it'll involve small groups, your friend thinks it's a format like City Council's, and your neighbor expects to listen to an informational presentation. A range of interpretations.
SS: What usually goes wrong with a workshop, town hall, etc., is the community comes in thinking they'll be a co-decision maker, but the city just wants to give information. This creates a disconnect between expectations. So the community gets upset, saying that “you're not listening or taking us seriously.” They thought they'd be more involved, but the city never had that intention.
ON: So after deciding what kind of participation they want—and what they'll do with it—what's next for the city?
SS: From there, you want a well-designed engagement process. This starts with good recruitment. Who's invited to the meeting, and how can you reach out to them? Typically for these public meetings, all community members are invited to attend.
ON: But most don't.
SS: It's usually just the people involved in city politics who come. But those not plugged in to local government might not attend, or even know about it. We see this particularly with disenfranchised members of the community (e.g., second language English speakers, those of lower socioeconomic status). This is not ideal. When we're only hearing from the actively involved, we get a skewed view of the community.
So cities should do outreach in multiple languages. They can invite their personal connections individually (or through more customized messaging). And they can work with opinion leaders in different groups and organizations (e.g., executive director of a local Asian American organization), encouraging them to attend and bring their members. Many folks are more likely to be receptive to someone in their organization than a nameless, faceless city person.
Now, this is all a lot of work; but community engagement is only successful if you put in the extra work.
ON: Agreed. It's far too easy for cities to stick with two-minute public comments at council meetings.
Next, what should they consider when facilitating a community engagement meeting?
SS: Since Covid, hybrid meetings (with some attendees in person and others on virtual platforms like Zoom or Teams) are not just normal but basically mandatory. So it's important for an engagement project to maximize the technological component to reach everyone possible. Not to mention, there are so many helpful virtual tools out there for facilitating meetings: blackboards, polls, even the chat box in Zoom.
ON: One of the positive changes from Covid-era, we think. With hybrid options, you include folks who may not be able to attend in person for a variety of reasons.
SS: Additionally, cities should be prepared for different types of reception from the public. In my experience, the polarization dysfunction we see at the national level today is being reflected at the local level. Each city has their own dynamics, so this doesn't necessarily apply to all of them. But what I've seen lately is more belligerence and aggression, even in community engagement meetings (and, of course, in council meetings). Like people have a license now to be nasty. It's a real challenge in my work: helping them assertively communicate what's important to them, but also be respectful and listen to others—especially if they have a different view.
ON: So when you work with city councils on these input projects, what community engagement skills are usually missing? Or need to be worked on?
SS: I generally give two pieces of advice to councilmembers during these projects. First, don't come to the community meeting. Stay home. If you attend, you'll probably want to talk and might influence the public input you get; others might not speak as freely, or might complain more because you're a captive audience.
Second, if you do want to be a part of the process: just observe. Be in listening mode. Councilmembers often have a hard time with this skill because they like to talk and tell people what to do. But the purpose of community engagement is to really hear the community—not just for two minutes during a council meeting, but letting them go deep into the reasons why they oppose something or feel the way they do. To tap into their values and expectations, and have dialogue rather than one-way communication.
By the way, I'd never set up a meeting where one person says what they want on the microphone, then the next person, the next person, etc. There's nothing wrong with that. It gives people a platform to express their views. But it's disjointed; there's no interaction or co-creation of meaning. That's why I prefer small groups where you can facilitate dialogue. There's such a difference between this method—having people discuss and make meaning together—and the one-way speeches given at council meetings.
ON: But what if there just aren't the funds for these larger-scale input projects? Are there more consistent and small-scale ways for cities to replicate them?
SS: Unfortunately, there isn't much of an alternative for community engagement. The only substitute I think of is hosting a completely virtual meeting (e.g., on Zoom). That way, you don't spend money on a facility. But you'd still have to set it up with a good design, facilitator, breakout rooms, etc. Plus, in my view, dialogue's always better in person.
And it's just not feasible to integrate dialogic public input processes into council meetings. These meetings have a full agenda and laws about conducting them (including who gets to speak and when). Allowing public comments at the microphone is actually required by law, as well. All that to say, there's lots of structure there. Whereas, one of the beauties of community engagement is that it's less structured, more open, spontaneous. However, trying to fit that community engagement process into a council meeting doesn't work because it's like apples and oranges.
ON: To wrap up our conversation, let's imagine San Jose goes through with their public engagement project. They envision, plan, and enact it excellently—gaining feedback from many residents of different experiences and viewpoints.
What kind of results could they expect? What have you seen from past events?
SS: I facilitated a meeting with the City of San Carlos on January 8th of this year. Last November, a bicyclist was hit by a car and killed in an accident on Highway 101. There's a pretty strong bicycle community in San Carlos; so at the next council meeting, many bicyclists took their two minutes at the microphone. They were upset. They wanted the city to impose more safety measures to protect pedestrians and bicyclists, and had ideas. So staff suggested a community engagement meeting.
It was a great meeting with about 40 attendees (mostly from the bicyclist community). Everyone was prepared, engaged, and grateful the city wanted to hear their ideas. We gave them the floor to share and generate ideas (and some of them even had slideshow presentations they submitted in advance). While some of the suggestions were radical, others were very reasonable. So the bicyclist community felt empowered and listened to, and staff got great ideas for enhancing safety.
My advice to staff after the fact was: act on some of these ideas. Then circle back to the community and tell them what you're moving forward with. This keeps the momentum going, shows the city was really listening and acting upon their feedback.
ON: And that's what most residents want, we've observed. They're not being unreasonable or demanding their way. They just want to be part of the conversation.
SS: Right. Also, I'd be remiss not to mention the Cupertino Project. There were all sorts of positive outcomes: minimizing negative cultural conflict in the community, providing people with tools to communicate better interculturally, and facilitating a common understanding between people who are different. Community members may not have the same viewpoints or experiences. But we can all work together.
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