Cookies have sometimes been the bane of my professional life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of warm, chewy, nutty, chocolate chip, oatmeal cookies, and I love almost all Christmas cookies. There are emergency Girl Scout Thin Mint sleeves and Tagalongs in my freezer, and I sometimes have inappropriate dreams about the peanut butter cookies my sister used to make. I don’t think I’ve ever said no to a cookie. Cookies and water have been staples of public meetings since Aristotle helped people fill out their sign-in sheets at the door.

We often debate the kinds of cookies to buy for meetings. As consultants, we absorbed the expense when government agencies quit reimbursing for refreshments. People have called to make sure we’d have decent cookies before they’d commit to coming to a meeting. I had to get tough with an old lady one night when I caught her sneaking a whole trayful into her purse. You can see that I have a lot of experience with public involvement cookies. Which is why I like this story.