Understanding why City of SJ's citizen outreach efforts don't deliver real input

According to City research, most San Jose residents think that local government doesn't respond to citizens' priorities. Perhaps a contributing reason lies in the outreach programs favored by City staff, which tend to result in lots of meetings with pre-picked advocates, and little discussion with real stakeholders. Jonathan Fleming, CEO and Executive Director of the Silicon Valley Public Accountability Foundation provides a primer on how the process is supposed to work, and where it's gone wrong. An exclusive Opportunity Now interview:

Opportunity Now: Explain to us why the city's public outreach process is organized in its current form.

Jonathan Fleming: Everybody agrees that the public has a right to know what their city government is up to, and the city has a very serious obligation to actively communicate their plans and intentions. There are two types of public outreach the city tries to do. First, there is *informing* citizens of a certain development project or plan the city is considering. For example, telling people near a proposed site that the city might put an apartment building, a park, a homeless center there. Second, there is a process for getting feedback on a particular policy or idea. This often includes special meetings with special groups, which for the city usually means their favored nonprofits.  There are other types as well, but we can speak about those another time. The city does a much better job of the first--informing about developments--than the second, which is getting feedback about policies or plans. 

ON: Are there policies or laws that drive how the city does its outreach?

JF: Generally, when the city is trying to notify residents of an upcoming development, they will follow City Council Noticing Policy 6-30. 6-30 sets the minimum requirements of an outreach program. It was last updated in 2004. When I was on the Neighborhoods Commission, I was part of the group that dove into 6-30 and recommended updates and changes to meet modern day standards and expectations, but the City Manager and Council ignored the recommendations. 6-30 focuses on communications to people within a certain distance of a project: there are specific requirements based on radii from the proposed site, how big a project it is, and type of project. It requires the city to send mail to every single person within that radius letting them know that a project is underway, and that there are hearings where they will have an opportunity to have input. Other than the Brown Act, there are no specific policies for how the city must perform outreach regarding non-development plans and policies, that is left to each department and council office. There's almost always some sort of outreach, but it's not clearly defined at the city or policy level. But if it's a big, fundamental change to the change to the municipal code, or charter, or a position on a state law, it should be required that you get input from the whole community--people who agree, who disagree, who are undecided. All those people have to be included in the conversation because that's what representative government is all about. 

ON: So the city is required to reach out--which means giving the public the *opportunity* to speak up. But is it required to get the input, or just provide a venue? What if nobody shows up to their meetings, have they still done their job?

JF: Well, if nobody gave input that would of course raise eyebrows. Many special interest and advocacy groups have paid employees whose job it is to show up at these meetings, so there's always somebody there. But neighborhood groups and business groups often either don't know or can't make it to the meetings.  But you also need to be realistic and realize that if people don't show interest, it may be because they're just not interested. But to our way of thinking, the more effective outreach system would require input from those most impacted or have the best insights into the issues -- not just the opportunity for the public at large to speak. And city staff would be required to get that feedback from those groups. This is just as a market research group in a business would be required to get feedback from key customers and partners. 

ON: For those of us who have had the great pleasure of sitting through a lot of these public outreach sessions, they can be pretty deflating. I've been to a number of housing dept outreach sessions, and they're all tilted from the get-go. The speakers are partisan. The attendees are almost all non profits who stand to gain from the proposals. And  the meeting is framed around a certain set of assumptions that don't even include free market perspectives. It's like walking into a movie on its final reel. 

JF: Look, city staff reports to the council ultimately, so the councilmembers should not over delegate public outreach to staff. Communication to the populace should not be just the job of the staff members. The council offices need to be more active and interactive with their residents. They need to inform, they need to challenge, they need to rally their residents around the important work the city votes on. This idea that staff comes up with a plan, has a few meetings with nonprofits, and the council rubberstamps it--this is not how representative government is supposed to work. And the ultimate responsibility is the elected city councilmembers. They can't blame staff because staff works for them. 

A number of nonprofits and special interest groups pay their staff to show up and speak at council meetings. Sometimes they are residents of the city, sometimes not. These advocacy groups have the ability to organize and mobilize large numbers of people to show up at meetings, giving the false impression of authentic citizen input or opinion.  Their presence at these meetings also games the system--real residents who are volunteering their time to show up and talk have to wait for 60 paid people to speak before them. And then they wake up the next day and read in the paper about the "overwhelming" support or opposition to a proposal. This is not a system that incents authentic citizen involvement.  

A lot of residents I have spoken with feel like I do: they take time out of family and work, they go to these meetings, and it's mainly a dog and pony show. The questions are filtered and screened, and real questions about the fundamental direction of the activity isn't in play. It feels like the city has an a priori way of going about the process, staff has already decided they are in favor of it, and they're just checking the "outreach" box like it's a bureaucratic nicety, not something fundamental. 

I feel there must be a way for SJ residents, who are not paid to speak or affiliated with a special interest lobbying/advocacy group, to be able to speak first, or at least be separate from organized groups, so their opinions get the attention they deserve. The city already has a requirement for lobbyists to register and identify themselves, we should be able to extend that idea to people who are getting paid to speak. Blending everybody together privileges those people who are trying to game the system. 

ON: After the outreach is concluded, is there any way to see how the city parses it all? Is there a document analyzing the input, who said it, and what conclusions the city draws from it?

JF: Not really. Sometimes there may be a document that says more people opposed than favored. There will be minutes of some sort, but that's just date/time/attendees/presentation stuff. If you ask for transcripts, you probably won't get anything and if you do, it is usually ignored or refuted by staff. The system is geared toward the act of outreach, not the task of understanding input and acting upon it. 

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Image by Eknath Gomphotherium on Flickr