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Generically endorsing a proposal pitched by a broad coalition of community groups, the Palo Alto City Council Saturday adopted “civic engagement” as one of four top city priorities for 2008.
The other three priorities at the council’s Saturday-morning retreat include (1) constructing a new library/community center and a public safety building, (2) protecting the environment and (3) enhancing the city’s economic health.
The four priorities, which will receive emphasized focus from city staff throughout the year, received the broadest support out of a list of eight issues suggested by council members.
The library and public safety projects and civic engagement each received eight votes, focusing on the city’s economic well-being garnered seven votes and six council members voted to make environmental protection a priority.
Emergency preparedness, a top priority for the last two years, was dropped from the list after receiving only four votes, but will remain important, council and staff members said.
“I just want to say over and over again, just because something isn’t a priority, that doesn’t mean we don’t care,” Mayor Larry Klein said.
And removal from the list does not mean the city will stop preparing for an earthquake or flood, City Manager Frank Benest said.
“If you don’t make it a priority, it’ll get done, but we’re just not going to be as strictly accountable” in terms of making regular reports, City Manager Frank Benest said.
About 20 members of the public attended the four-hour meeting in the Fireside Room at the Lucie Stern Community Center, packing the small room, which was also filled with city staff and managers and with members of city boards or commissions.
The entreaty to focus on public involvement came from Palo Altans for Government Effectiveness (PAGE), a community group that has hosted several discussions and distributed papers on the issue of creating “social capital,” or building community ties. Other organizations — Avenidas, Kiwanis Club of Palo Alto, the Chamber of Commerce, the Palo Alto Council of PTAs and the Stanford Division of Continuing Studies and Youth Community Service — also support PAGE’s effort.
PAGE laid out a set of goals, including reviving a citizen’s leadership academy and conducting a baseline study of the Palo Alto’s existing social capital.
By involving community members, the city will become stronger and more representative, and residents and business leaders will feel greater satisfaction and investment, a proposal distributed by PAGE states.
Ray Bacchetti, a PAGE board member, called it a “highly pragmatic project” that would help the city achieve its goals, including building support for rebuilding libraries and a public safety building.
Human Relations Commissioner Shauna Mora also asked the council to adopt civic engagement as a priority.
That will mean reaching out to people, she said: “One of the ways to encourage more diversity and active participants is to give them more information and encourage them to participate.”
People mainly attend city meetings when they are afraid or angry, she said.
“Wouldn’t it be great when they actually show up because they want to participate?”
The council did not adopt PAGE’s suggestions as its priority, but council members indicated they liked the direction.
“It’s not simply saying ‘Hey folks, we’re interested (in your participation),'” Councilman John Barton said.
“It’s very much a proactive outreach. It’s a different outreach than we’re doing. It’s a long process that’s going to involve new folks.”
It also involves humility, Barton said.
“It isn’t what we want. It’s finding out what the community wants and engaging them on that,” Barton said.
One way the city can increase public involvement is by revamping its Web site to encourage citizen contributions, several council members said, including use of new “Web 2.0” interactive features a number of other communities are already using.
Establishing civic engagement as a priority will encourage city leaders to reach out to the city’s older generation and growing ethnic groups, Councilman Yiaway Yeh said.
At least one council member, Jack Morton, said his views about civic engagement changed during the meeting.
“I’m wondering about the timing. If we as a council are to adopt community engagement, is that what we were elected to do?” Morton asked relatively early in the meeting.
But after hearing from his colleagues and the public, Morton said he had been persuaded that focusing on community involvement would help the council achieve its other goals rather than compete with them.
The council began the 8:30 a.m. to noon meeting discussing its operating protocols.
New member Sid Espinosa suggested the city find a way to improve its decision-making process, particularly by offering the community and council members an opportunity to ask questions about issues before a council meeting.
Assistant City Manager Emily Harrison said the city conducted a six-month experiment several years ago to try to provide meeting materials more than a week ahead of the meeting.
That became very confusing because information for two meetings was circulating at the same time, Harrison said. She said city staff members try to provide background material for major issues as early as possible and that holding non-voting “study sessions” to introduce an issue and answer questions had been successful.
On a 5-4 vote — with Vice Mayor Peter Drekmeier and council members Morton, Yeh and Greg Schmid voting no — the council agreed to ask its Policy and Services Committee to discuss releasing city staff reports earlier and improving the council’s decision-making process.
Benest said he would return to the council with the priorities “in an aggressive but doable form” in several weeks.
(Staff Writer Becky Trout can be e-mailed at btrout@paweekly.com.)
“Human Relations Commissioner Shauna Mora also asked the council to adopt civic engagement as a priority.
“That will mean reaching out to people, she said: “One of the ways to encourage more diversity and active participants is to give them more information and encourage them to participate.” “
I couldn’t agree more. our citizens are very, very busy people. Most have little time to engage the fine details of policy-making, or even gauge the impact that policy-making has on their lives.
I applaud the Web 2.0 initiative; it’s about time that more municipalities began to take advantage of “all-the-time, everywhere” access to information – within interactive modalities.
I’m keen to see how those Council members who claim the environment as a priority respond to the ABAG initiative. Six is a strong majority on the Council, so there’s some hope that we’ll have an honest-to-goodness “good faith” effort to create a housing element that takes much of the spirit of the ABAG initiative into consideration.
I don’t know what civic engagement means. It sounds like some sort of meaningless jargon that someone invented and expects the rest of us to understand.
Definition please.
Here’s a definition from the American Psychological Association posted on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_engagement#_note-0
Civic engagement has been defined as “Individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern.”
In this case, “civic engagement” means “we weren’t elected, but because we don’t have a life of our own, we want to show up at all the meetings, spout off on what we think should be done, and otherwise have an untoward influence on what you, the elected representatives, do.
It’s rule by pressure groups.
Which is exactly why the City Council should encourage civic engagement. Without community participation, the few claim to speak for the many. What we have now is “rule by pressure groups.” Bravo to the City Council for choosing to focus on engaging the public in a participatory democracy.
In the past, rooms that would see at least a hundred members of the public had been scheduled for the council retreat at both Lucie Stern and Cubberley Center it’s more than a little strange that a council retreat that is supposed to have a topic of outrage would pick a room or have a room scheduled that only seated 20 members of the public. This speaks volumes about just how much they intend to outreach to the public.
The charter doesn’t say anything about protecting the environment–so it’s not clear why climate protection should be an issue upon which the taxpayers resources to be frittered away. It would be encouraging, however, if the council members pledged to walk, or take public transportation, to any public events that they intended to participate for the remainder of their tenure. Failing that .. guess we all can see what a hypocrite looks like.
“The charter doesn’t say anything about protecting the environment–so it’s not clear why climate protection should be an issue upon which the taxpayers resources to be frittered away.”
We’re all in this together. the Council mandate is an appropriate reminder of that.
The council better think twice. We residents don’t want to fund junk science hysteria! We should be focusing on the all too real needs of our city.
as if cleaner air isn’t a need?
CO2 is NOT a pollutant. It is a natural and safe gas in our atmosphere. It is created mostly by plants, animals and natural events like volcanic activity etc.
Scientists have found that the entire solar system is warming slightly – just like earth. Changes in the sun’s activity is the cause. When the sun warms the earth more CO2 is emitted from natural sources. CO2 is an effect of warming – NOT the cause. Our planet has undergone many, many cycles of heating and cooling, long before the industrial revolution.
The proponents of man-made global warming have turned science on its head for political reasons. Frightened voters will gladly turn over their money and their freedoms to government control in order to be “saved” from inflated predictions of catastrophe.
> We’re all in this together. the Council mandate
> is an appropriate reminder of that.
When governments exceed their limits, they become the problem–not the solution.
Hey Bob. You got the global warming thing all wrong. It isn’t a conspiracy between the scientists and big government, it’s a scientifico-Wall Street cabal cooking up the next bubble to make well-placed people really really rich, just like with the internet bubble and the housing bubble. You can read all about it at this link, http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/0081908 .
It’s OK, pal. It’s private enterprise at its best: it’s big finance setting up to fleece you and the treasury again. So relax, hand over your money again, and enjoy the show.
A fool and his money are soon parted. That is his and your right, Paul. The rest of us don’t want fools voting to part us from ours.
“to make well-placed people really really rich”
You mean Al Gore with his carbon credit business.
Fools don’t need to vote, David, just to watch. The necessary votes have already been cast, by very smart people, during the Reagan, Gingrich, and DeLay/Bush regimes. Everything is now in place. Sit back and relax and enjoy the show.
It’s OK, R Wray. Al Gore is being a capitalist.
Wasn’t it fun when Ralph Nader called Al Gore a right wing extremist? Really though, Gore is just a greedy, elitist liberal. And fools do vote, Paul. All the time. They vote for people like Al Gore.
Gee, if fools voted for Gore, and Gore got the majority of votes, that makes fools the majority, doesn’t it? And if the majority are fools, and the majority voted for Bush in 2004, then the fools voted for Bush. No consistency at all.
Are you sure this is what you meant?
Please, Paul take a course in logic.- Your reasoning is foolish.
Some fools can learn from their mistakes. Then they are no longer fools and they stop voting foolishly – as in the 2004 election.
No, Laughter is good for the soul, fools are fools – they’ll do the same stupid thing twice – as in the 2004 election.
This has to be the ‘silliest’ priority to date. The Council was elected to study, make decisions, act – and DO. Collectively in the past it has done far too much talking and nitpicking and seemed afraid to take a stand on obvious problems. The Council should know by now what the residents want: FIX THE CREEK, fix the website, fix the streets, control the employee salaries, benefits, and high-brass ‘perks”. It it wants to be ‘green’, then be fiscally ‘green’ – the color of money. Clean up downtown Palo Alto of the dirt and aggressive panhandling and drunkenness and obnoxious behavior. All this civic engagement just means that the Council will talk to the Chamber of Commerce and special interest groups, and there will be ‘showy’ consensus meetings but probably rarely with the neighborhoods where the Council might get an ‘earful’ and might learn the truth . Then they will talk with this board and that commission and in a year nothing will have changed. And they will send out another very selective survey to people who haven’t a clue as to what is going on because they are too busy making money and stock options from early morning to late at night. Maybe the only thing that civicly gets many people riled up is what happens to their little darlings in the PAUSD. This civic engagement is a smoke screen for just ‘talk, talk, talk’. Nothing is going to change.
Posted by Kate, a resident of the Duveneck/St. Francis neighborhood, 3 minutes ago
I agree that there are a lot more pressing priorities than “civic engagement.”
However, improving communication with residents is a good thing. I just hope council members realize that electronic communication is essential — and that it’s a two way street. Past councils only paid attention to people who showed up at (endlessly long) council meetings. Thus, the tyranny of the minority. But have you ever tried to get a response to an email to council members? Even if you ask specific questions, few can be bothered to respond.
kate is right, it is a smoke screen but if you look at the sponsors, it looks like a smoke screen for the Stanford development.
Chamber of Commerce=developers,
PTA=Dan Dykwel, realtor, (PTA is good window dressing, they front for the developers)
Stanford Continuing Studies=huh??
Avenidas has Stanford’s major developer on its board.
Kiwanis ??
PAGE=business and Stanford executives
> Kiwanis ??
Very pro-government business owners and similarly oriented individuals.
looks like it may be business as usual with the new city council.
A new “prioirty’ to focus on while inoring the major issues and having to make tough decisions.
I guess this may be an issue with the holdover of some “veteran” council members, with their own agendas, which do not involve the best interests of PA. time for a photo-op.
NSF
You are right on, but you forgot to add about the fact that there are also hanger on candidates from the last election still trying to do their bit of trying to influence the council they were unsuccessful to be elected to. Not that they shouldn’t do it, but that if this was what they would have done if they had succeeded, we should remember this next time they run.
The biggest problem is the way council members and Benest define “priority.” Certainly different from the definition I’m familiar with: Priority: highest or higher in importance, rank, privilege, etc.: a priority task.
From http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/story.php?story_id=7431
– “My take is that a priority is something you wouldn’t ordinarily focus on,” and which needs immediate attention, Klein said. (If you wouldn’t ordinarily focus on something, why would it be a priority?)
– Hiring a city manager or providing police and fire protection aren’t priorities but are necessary to keep the city operating, [Klein] said.” (How can something be required to keep the city running but NOT be a priority?)
– Topics that almost made the list include recruitment of a new city manager, a 10-year update of the city’s Comprehensive Plan, and replacing key staff members who are retiring. Those will be happening anyway. (At what level will they be “happening”? AFTER the priority list items are attended to?)
From http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=6833
– Emergency preparedness, a top priority for the last two years, was dropped from the list after receiving only four votes, but will remain important, council and staff members said. (What’s the difference between “important” and “priority”?)
– “If you don’t make it a priority, it’ll get done, but we’re just not going to be as strictly accountable” in terms of making regular reports, City Manager Frank Benest said. (There’s the key: accountability! Our government should be “strictly accountable” on everything it does, not just four priority items.)
The only way a priority list is meaningful is if the topics are listed in order of importance – and that includes the mundane tactical items as well as the long-term strategic. There can only be one list – not “priorities” and “these will be done anyway.”
Then you manage to the priorities, you budget to the priorities and you’re held accountable for everything.
Can you imagine leading a priority session and going back to a corporate exec staff and board with the list our city council came up with?
Maybe the problem here is semantics, not to mention a lack of understanding of the role and function of local government that is managed via the Strong City Manager-Weak City Council partition of power.
Clearly the priorities of the City (Manager) are public safety, availability of high quality public services, management of the municipal assets and the budget. The role of the City Council (or so we are told) is to make “policy” (such as voting on decisions that exceed the authority of the City Manager), not actually be involved with “running the city”.
While the priorities of public safety, etc., are obvious, they are not codified in the City Charter. The Council does have some leverage in determining the level of these services via the funding cycle (and hence the value/priority of each of these services to the residents and property owners).
There is nothing in the Charter about a yearly retreat where the Council is given an opportunity to provide the City Manager “new priorities”. This little ritual has evolved over the years, and while “nice”–may not be needed. At a minimum, what is needed is a better name for these “directives” to the City Manager — such as “Council Priorities”, or “Council-specified Additional Priorities”. Certainly organizations tend to latch on to shorter names when possible, so it seems they have adopted “Priorities”, which is certainly confusing to those in possession of a dictionary.
What is in a name. A door, is just a door, whatever you call it. So is a chair, a window, etc. etc.
Why all this discussion when we have a list of problems to deal with. Let the council stop the talk and just do it.
NoLaughingMatter,
Yes, SOME fools did do the same thing twice. After voting for Gore in 2000, they voted for Kerry in 2004!
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