Public and community engagement, involvement and participation is what we are doing as consultants. It is also what we help others do most effectively. We work with teams, companies and agencies on reaching consensus through public participation and collaboration. We usually find ourselves bridging divides by creating spaces where people are willing to participate to build solutions. Community engagement builds consensus. And below you have some of the best of the news and tips that we have found about how to engage communities. Or what happens when you do not. The latest news handpicked by our public sector consultants, all wrapped up with a sometimes snarky – yet always informed – perspective. Enjoy!
I’m not talking about your next set of wheels (although electric vehicles (EVs) are clearly in your present or future) – we’re talking about public engagement. Reach and effectiveness are two arguably valid measurements for authentic public engagement. In this age of ever increasing demands on people’s time and attention, ...
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Rude behavior at public meetings used to be an anomaly – the exception to the norm. But that ship sailed a long time ago. Media deregulation, the loss of the fairness doctrine, and the general suspension of the equal time rule gave rise to Rush Limbaugh and hate radio, ...
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In 2022, the U.S. Federal Government received 930,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. And that’s just the feds. If you’ve worked in the public sector at any level, I expect you’ve dealt with public information requests and the challenges that they create. There’s a baked in tension between the ...
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Usually when I first walk into a room full of agitated people, I hear Jimmy Buffett singing in my head – “You got fins to the left, fins to the right.” Dealing with disparate groups and the thorny problems that they struggle with poses challenges for facilitators from lots of ...
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“I’m not opposed to (FILL IN THE BLANK) – just don’t put it here!” Boy, if I had a dollar for every time I hear that said at a public meeting, I could hire Stephen King to write this newsletter. NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) has been around as ...
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Direct democracy or citizen lawmaking might be the clearest example of true, authentic public participation that we can think of. Yet citizens taking direct control of their own governance through ballot initiatives are under wholesale attack. Constituents demonstrating power in politics simply doesn’t sit well with a significant number of ...
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A real success story. It sometimes feels like these examples are few and far between, but when we bother to look, we find good people doing good work in some of the most historically challenging situations. Let’s let this serve as inspiration for the rest of us. ...
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At the risk of sounding like a broken record (“A broken what!?” the young person asked.), this business of working with the public is tough and getting tougher. As public meetings get uglier, officials are starting to realize that the solution doesn’t lie in reducing citizen comments from three minutes ...
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I honestly don’t remember who told me, but I guess somehow I was smart enough to take it to heart and I’ve done this ever since. Back when I was just a mere public engagement tadpole, someone wiser and more experienced than I gave me one of the golden tickets ...
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Participatory budgeting may be one of the most obvious and straightforward ways of engaging the public in the affairs of government. It provides people with the opportunity of making very specific decisions about how their collective public money, or at least meaningful portions of it, will be spent. The origins ...
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