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When a crisis struck the Palo Alto Children's Theatre last month, supporters of the beloved institution packed City Council chambers hoisting signs and speaking during the public-comment period.

It's a familiar scene when the council's agenda involves a controversial topic, such as the police investigation of the theater group or a development issue that could affect homeowners' property values and neighborhood character.

But most of the time, the chamber's padded red benches are nearly empty -- even when the council is discussing such important issues as the city's budget, most anything utilities-related or even plans to sell naming rights (or recognize major donors) for city facilities.

The uneven pattern of participation in the council's chambers is one sign Palo Alto has much to learn about civic engagement, some city leaders believe.

The concept of civic engagement -- in vogue since the publication of Harvard University scholar Robert Putnam's 2000 treatise "Bowling Alone" -- gained traction in Palo Alto after it was selected one of four 2008 city priorities by the council Jan. 12.

Now, city leaders are crafting a program to promote civic engagement in Palo Alto. The council plans to outline its plan for the year, and beyond, at its March 17 meeting.

Most everyone agrees that strengthening the link between local government and residents benefits both, but definitions and visions for civic engagement in Palo Alto vary widely.

"I see civic engagement as not just a nice thing to do for people, but a really helpful way to solve problems is by forging a partnership between government and the community," said Malka Kopell, the managing director for the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and an expert on civic engagement.

"It means actually being active and reaching out," Councilman Yiaway Yeh said.

"Civic engagement is about community members beginning to take responsibility and accountability for issues in the city," Ed Everett, a former Redwood City city manager recognized for his community-building expertise, said.

"It is about the staff honestly asking the community for input.

"It is not a time when citizens come together and complain and point fingers and tell the city what it should do. That's not civic engagement," he said.

Civic engagement connotes personal involvement, a neighborly attitude, a commitment to a place and its people, some say.

"We're talking about how we have healthy conflict in the community and work toward that kind of unity where whatever happens, we're a community -- we're Palo Altans," said Ray Bacchetti, a member of Palo Altans for Government Effectiveness (PAGE), the group that lobbied the council to adopt "civic engagement for the common good" as a priority. The council dropped "the common good," however.

Both Bacchetti and Everett consider engagement to be building "an association of associations" -- and then linking it to the local government.

Strong communities already exist within faith groups, sports leagues, environmental organizations and other interest groups. Increasing bonds between those segments can allow them to work together to solve citywide problems, reducing duplication and hopefully producing a superior solution, they say.

And for individuals, getting involved will also foster a sense of belonging, Everett said.

"The most important part of community is the feeling of not being alone and knowing that someone in the community will help you even if they don't know you," Everett said.

And it's OK that everyone seems to have a different interpretation of the concept, several civic-engagement experts said.

"It's not a 'one size fits all' circumstance or a monotonic method," Bacchetti said.

But not everyone agrees that civic engagement is worthy of intensive city emphasis.

Councilman Jack Morton has said the entire priority seems off the mark.

"People get involved when they think the issue is worth their getting involved," Morton said. "Why would you want someone to come down to City Hall to hear the council (conduct routine business)?"

Even some neighborhood leaders are confused by the council's newfound focus.

"None of us are real clear about what the city's goal is," said Sheri Furman, vice chair of the Midtown Residents Association.

PAGE started with the assumption, based primarily on in-depth observation and discussion with other organizations, that civic engagement in general could be improved in Palo Alto.

Many residents don't know how to participate; large swaths of the community are missing from civic events; volunteer talent goes unused; and citizens lack trust in their government, PAGE states in a proposal it presented to the council in January.

Greater civic engagement would make community conversations more respectful, decrease adversarial relationships and boost both collaboration and the number of people willing to take part and help.

Most council members, however, took a different approach to the concept during their Jan. 12 discussion.

Promoting civic engagement could help the city accomplish its goals, they said.

And this year it would be particularly timely, given the numerous large projects facing the city, the council majority agreed.

In November, the city intends to ask the public to pass an $81 million bond measure for library improvements and a new Mitchell Park Library and Community Center, requiring approval of two-thirds of voters.

With an outreach campaign already underway, the library project provides a prime opportunity to involve the public, the council reasoned.

"We need you to consider how this project could be a benefit to you in your life," Yeh said.

Palo Alto is also in the process of selecting a new city manager. The civic-engagement priority will send an important signal to candidates, several council members said.

"I'm really looking forward to the next city manager having a vision on how a community that has very exceptionally engaged residents can turn that into an asset for the community," Councilman Pat Burt said.

The city's widely criticized Web site could benefit from the civic-engagement initiative, according to Burt, Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto and other council members.

By incorporating more technological tools, the Web site could be interactive, offering residents a chance to comment on current issues or to post their volunteer skills, Burt said.

The city's climate-protection efforts and its initiative to prepare for an earthquake, flood, pandemic or other disaster also need public participation to thrive, Councilman Peter Drekmeier said.

But the city needs to narrow down the priority into manageable projects, he added.

"(If) everything is a priority, then nothing is," Drekmeier said.

All told, more than a dozen uses for and interpretations of the civic-engagement priority have emerged, which amuses Mayor Larry Klein.

"I've been intrigued how people are using the phrase," Klein said. "Everybody has been using it (for) their pet issue."

So how do city leaders get people off the couch and into a meeting room, a Web site or anywhere else community issues are being discussed?

Tapping into residents' self-interest and a issuing a call to action can help.

Local neighborhood associations have already launched a large-scale effort to prepare the community for an emergency, which requires household-level participation.

Annette Glanckopf Ashton, a founder of Palo Alto Neighborhoods (PAN), a consortium of neighborhood groups, said she considers emergency preparedness the "true model" of civic engagement.

Currently, PAN is working to enroll a block-preparedness coordinator for all of the city's 2,500 blocks or apartment halls, Ashton said.

The coordinators will be responsible for meeting their neighbors and keeping tabs on those with special needs, she said.

"It builds social networks, deters crime, helps us prepare for an emergency," Ashton said. "We feel it's such a model for community building, for making our neighborhood(s) safe to live in."

Smita Joshi, like many civic leaders before her, got involved because of several housing developments planned for her south Palo Alto neighborhood. With others, she revived the Palo Verde Residents Association, even though it wasn't the best time for her personally, Joshi said.

"You can make an impact," Joshi said of neighborhood-association involvement.

The group has promoted bonds within the neighborhood and allows residents to work with the city on issues, she said.

"I'm sure I would not have been courageous enough to go before the City Council (to speak), except I had other people helping me," Joshi said. "It gets easier to do things as a group."

Shauna Mora, a member of the Human Relations Commission who builds community professionally with the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center, agrees that residents need a rallying point to motivate them to get involved.

"It would be nice to have people come out just because they liked it, but the way to get people to have an interest in participating is to have some sort of an issue," she said.

How people are treated once they get involved is as important as encouraging them to show up in the first place, leaders say. Once at a community meeting, for example, participants must feel like they have been heard and respected and that their comments may make a difference, even if their suggestions aren't ultimately adopted.

"Ideally, you'll like the process," Councilman Yeh said. "Ideally, the project managers are managing it in a way that is community building so you say, 'OK, I'm going to come back, and I'm going to help out with this other project.'"

If participants' opinions and contributions aren't respected, apathy results, Stanford's Kopell said.

"People get tired of participating in something that doesn't work," she said.

Sure, adding participants can make meetings, or decisions, a bit messier and longer, but if designed properly, it should all work out, engagement supporters say.

The goal is to make processes "effective and efficient and workable," PAGE Chairwoman Barbara Spreng said.

And don't try to force it, Everett said.

"Community gets built by the community, not by the city building it," he said.

Everyone also has to be patient and flexible, he said.

"The community has to say, 'We're learning'; the council has to say, 'We're learning'; the staff has to say, 'We're learning,'" Everett said. "Nobody's an expert at this."

"Civic engagement isn't fancy," Kopell said. "What makes or breaks real civic engagement is someone really listening and someone really talking. If you don't have that, all the fancy tools and processes and focus groups aren't going to work."

Leaders have to prioritize which efforts to focus their outreach on as well, Everett said.

It's important to start small and aim for achievable progress. Don't worry if crowds don't appear right away, he said.

"Don't over-talk it; don't over analyze it. Go out and do what you normally do, but do it in a different way so the community is civically involved," he said.

For PAGE leaders, the goal is to increase the diversity of people involved as well as the quality of their involvement. Asians, retirees, youth, families with children and other groups have been named as groups that could be more involved in Palo Alto affairs.

"It's engaging a new group of folks in the community who are not necessarily white and in their 40s and 50s," Mayor Klein said.

Those currently involved are "a bunch of white folks for the most part," Midtown neighborhood leader Furman agreed. "None of us do that deliberately; we're always trying to get everybody involved. Maybe there are cultural barriers we have to look at."

The best way to reach people is to influence their peers and connect with their individual networks, Kopell said.

Yeh already has plans to do just that -- he intends to reach the local Chinese community by tapping into Palo Alto Chinese School's broad network.

"Civic engagement requires a proactive outreach rather than, 'We're having a meeting, you all come,'" PAGE's Bacchetti said.

Kopell said she believes most people genuinely want to help.

"The question is what can they do and how will it fit into the political processes," she said.

One way to tackle civic engagement is to measure the amount and quality of engagement already existing in Palo Alto, leaders say.

Fortunately, the city has several existing resources to turn to, according to Spreng, including the 2001 paper, "Building Community: Social Connections and Civic Involvement in Silicon Valley," by the predecessors of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. (Available at www.siliconvalleycf.org, under "News & Resources" as Archived Research.)

For more local data, there is the Service Efforts & Accomplishments report produced annually by the city auditor, Spreng said.

The 2007 Citizen Survey -- completed by 437 residents last fall -- shows that 20 percent of respondents reported an "excellent" sense of community, with 50 percent calling Palo Alto's sense of community "good."

Only 26 percent of respondents said they had attended a local public meeting in the last year; an equal percentage reported watching a meeting on TV.

But 52 percent of those surveyed said they had volunteered in Palo Alto in the last year.

To supplement the responses, PAGE worked with City Auditor Sharon Erickson to request even more detailed breakdowns of the data to show the correlation between age groups, gender and ethnicity and civic engagement.

That information should be available soon, Erickson said.

Palo Alto Neighborhoods (PAN) has launched a parallel information-gathering effort.

This month the group released a 13-question survey that collects basic demographic data and asks where respondents get their local information, which issues they are interested in, how involved they are and if they would like to be more involved.

The survey is available at the Midtown Residents Association site at www.mimi.com .

Furman said she and other PAN leaders plan to present the results at the March 17 City Council meeting when a discussion of the city's priorities is planned.

Another way to track changes is by charting the number of applicants the city has had for board and commission vacancies, Spreng said.

Eventually, the city could create a formal civic-involvement benchmark study, following the guidelines of the Harvard University-based Saguaro Seminar, PAGE has suggested.

Building civic engagement is a never-ending process, its supporters agree.

"I don't think there's any such thing as 'How we will know when we get there?'" Spreng said. "It would be nice to know what's helped and what hasn't helped, though."

The council generally agrees civic engagement will be a priority for several years, until it is subsumed into the community's culture.

Assistant City Manager Emily Harrison said via e-mail the city has no estimate yet for the cost of implementing the priority, although it "will undoubtedly have resource requirements."

But the potential benefits will far outweigh the cost, leaders said.

"In an ideal world, this would be a community where everybody, no matter what your ethnic background, gender, age, level of physical fitness ... felt they have a stake in the community. They have a voice, a sense of pride and ownership," Spreng said.

Related material:

• Profile: Palo Altans for Government Effectiveness

• Ways to engage in Palo Alto

• How other cities are doing it

• Nine council members, nine different takes