March 27, 2008 Elihu Harris State Building, Oakland

For the second year, the Regional Best Practices Community Engagement conference sold out. This year's FOCUS on Community Engagement featuring a unique Town Hall exercise was a learning experience for both attendees and ABAG staff.

Former City Manager of Redwood City, Ed Everette highlighted the importance of community in our lives from both a historical and current perspective. The presentation emphasized that civic engagement is more effective and sustainable when done in conjunction with community building. Community building should be considered the foundation upon which to build the house - civic engagement.

According to Mr. Everette, a study performed by Robert Putman found that as social capital (community) increases educational performance, physical health and mental health all increase and crime (per 100,000 population) decreases.

Based on a national survey, 80% of us believe there should be more emphasis on community even it is put more demands on us.

Mr. Everette defines community based on four feelings:

1. belonging,
2. pride,
3. being part of something important and being included and perhaps the most important
4. not being alone...that others in your community will help you even if they don't know you.

Pete Peterson from Common Sense California provided a valuable overview of effective civic engagement techniques currently employed throughout the country. His presentation encouraged us to:

1. Be inclusive: all possible "voices" should be present in the "room" of a civic participation exercise. Outreach to those beyond the "usual suspects" must be an essential part of any exercise. This might entail framing an issue in a way that "touches" people that don't usually show up for these things. For example, instead of calling residents to a "Town Meeting about Affordable Housing", try "A Conversation About the Future of Our City."
2. Provide multi-partisan information: Not only should all possible audiences be present in the participant group, but the information presented to them about the issue at hand (housing, open space, K12, etc.) must offer all sides of the issue. In particular, civic engagement exercises naturally weight a conversation towards "change" of whatever type. The "status quo" option must be treated fairly, even if it would be a difficult course to pursue.
3. Have effective facilitation: Even after a representative audience is presented with information from a variety of viewpoints, the resulting conversations must be lead effectively by trained facilitators. There are two specific ingredients to a legitimately facilitated dialogue. First, all participants (usually around a table of 8-12 people) are made a part of the conversation, even if that means steering the dialogue away from a vociferous participant and calling on quieter ones. Second, the facilitator must be sufficiently aware of the content that she can draw the small group conversation back "to the facts" if participants make statements that are factually incorrect.

Later in the morning, conference participants got first hand experience with two distinctly different approaches to civic engagement. The first part of the exercise was a mock Town Hall exercise where conference staff played the roles of expert panelists and conference participants were also given specific roles to play either as an environmentalist, affordable housing advocate, developer, neighborhood activist, or city staff.

In the second half of the exercise, participants were re-located to a different room. With conference staff acting as table facilitators, attendees participated in a starkly different approach to public outreach designed to facilitate genuine civic engagement.

The conference empowered representatives from jurisdictions, community based organizations and others community organizers with effective tools to employ in the future as they embark upon community building and engaging communities in civic processes.