At the Canadian Community of Dialogue and Deliberation Conference - www.c2d2.ca

Quite an amazing day at the Canadian Community of Dialogue and Deliberation conference in Vancouver. What I am here for is to learn about ways to better engage citizens in the work at city hall and to look for techniques your city council could employ to better discuss complex (often "hot") issues and make better decisions. I am not being disappointed. Three interesting takeaways from today:

1. Replace hard positions with perspectives: Last week when council was discussing putting a fence on summit drive to try to prevent people from jaywalking in that high traffic area, what we should probably have been talking about was how to increase pedestrian and driver safety. We all, pretty quickly, took positions on a fence, when we might have looked at other persepectives - other methods of increasing safety perhaps.If we had come up with an alternative on which we could all have agreed, we wouldn't have had to refer it to the police committee and leave the problem dangling out there yet again.
2. The need to provide feedback on feedback: When the city held one of their last public meetings on the downtown plan, a lot of people asked questions and provided feedback. City staff wisely posted responses to the questions and the thoughts on the city web site soon after. The responses indicated whether the city planned to incorporate or not incorporate feedback given and,  if memory serves, explained why. I think this was brilliant - it gives people the certainty that, if their feedback did not make into the plan, that at least their ideas were considered. It motivates people to stay involved with future city consultations.
3. An elected person's feelings don't matter: Stolo Nation Grand Chief Doug Kelly shared some insights from his uncle who told him, upon his election, that his job was actually quite simple. That he was to listen, learn, and act  - and, in that process, his feelings don't matter . It's pretty easy for a city council member to take negative or positive feedback to heart. But, one must try not to let personal like or dislike interfere with working on community issues and proposals. One can't be objective, but one has to look at things from the perspective of what is felt is best for the community as a whole.

Comments

[Mickael Maddison]

Hi Arjun,

I'd have to only "mostly" agree with #3. My perspective on this is slightly different. While I agree that an elected person is representing the people, a key point is that the elected person must make a decision; which group of people will I represent on this issue? It's perhaps one of the key missing pieces of democratic processes such an elected council. It's entirely possible that an elected council may all take the same stance on an issue, which in effect could be considered having represented a specific group or segment of the electorate. The simple statement "...listen, learn, and act" may easily be mistaken to suggest that the elect is to represent the ideals of the electorate majority.

Just something I've been chewing on that seems to apply to the topic.

Keep up the great work.

[John Spady, Forum Foundation, Seattle]

Hey Arjun,
I just wanted to say that I too appreciated meeting and listening with you at the C2D2 conference in Vancouver. I hope you continue to track King County's enactment of large-scale public dialogue using distributed small group meetings. My greetings to your greater Kamloops community.