By: pietro on 6/3/09
[The following is cross-posted, and slightly re-edited, from the earlier e-version of this Northfield News article]

A reflection...

If the council had only one acceptable outcome why the hemming and hawing for over five months? If the council is pressed with so many imperative demands on time and money why politic and spin a 'process' non-authentically for nearly six months? Why waste everybody's time and money playing a disingenuous game of political chicken with a board if the outcome -to vote down Ames- was as good as pre-determined? If the council wanted options other than the Park & Rec Advisory Board's primary reaffirmed recommendation, why didn't they ask for a recommendation of ranked options?

No elected official campaigned on the premise, 'the proper role of boards and commissions is to intuit the answer we're seeking even as we ask the question.' In fact, the mayor and every recently elected councilor on the dais campaigned on accountability, transparency, and better use of our civic capital: including the boards and commissions. I bet the Park & Rec Advisory Board feels used, alright.

This isn't just about a skatepark. It's about public engagement and process; and it's about lip-service versus best practice in our municipal self-governance. Since they were seated the new council's shared expectations have included evaluating and assessing public engagement. That task resulted in recommendations to improve citizen communication, and recommendations for clarity of council goals and objectives communicated to staff and boards and commissions.

Clarity of council goals and objectives communicated to … boards and commissions. Hmmm.

A short while back on LocallyGrownNorthfield.org Griff Wigley distilled the issue, asking, "How can boards & commissions communications be improved?" Tweaking Griff, just a little, I'm sure it's a trick question and the only answer is (say it with me, Northfield) "Twitter!"

The real answer is obvious: create a record. Create a record of the process identifying who-what-when-where-and-why: discussion was articulated; positions were situated; policy was formulated; and outcomes were explicated. Creation and transmittal of the record -the product of communication- burgeons through participation and journalism. I say 'the' record aspirationally, instead of 'a' record, because it is crucially important for there to be universal opportunity for access to the shared record.

Let's consider communication created through "participation"; it's nature, expectations, pratfalls and outcomes.

By 'communication' we mean the deliberation and process of any given board being faithfully and uniformly represented: (i) to a public; (ii) to the subset of a public's elected representatives on a council; and (iii) to the subset of a staff employed in service to a public. The record should include the reciprocal communication between these various stakeholders and how it informs mission; is informed by public input; and how it weighs aesthetic and technical factors.

Think of this as "assembling" rather than peeling back the layers of an onion. It is clear that most publics, onion lovers or not, have more of a stomach for the former than the latter.

Equally clear is that there is a reasonable community expectation that each stakeholder will communicate with the others authentically. Non-authentic communication serves neither the communicator or the public; corrupting the process, violating the social contract, and leading to the isolation of the malaproptor.

Even assuming authentic communication the dynamics in play are complex. Differences may become exaggerated over similarities due to the intimate nature of community; and a possible predilection of human nature to define meaning and identity through competition rather than cooperation, through exclusion and conflict rather than inclusion and conciliation.

What expectations do we have of boards and commissions, and all the other stakeholders in our process of municipal self-governance. And what level of hardship do we place on them, willfully or inadvertently, when they volunteer their participation, employment, or elected service.

Some members of boards and commissions may enjoy a higher level of expertise in a board's area of mission than do, say, some members of a council. They are participating in the interests of civic duty and making an intellectually honest contribution to their community on a volunteer basis. They are bringing their professional, academic or avocational expertise to bear on behalf of the community. We are richened by their participation.

Yet we must realize that by enjoying their participation we may on occasion put them and ourselves in a somewhat murky position. Most won't come even remotely close to, but some may realize an advantage through their participation. In a community the size of Northfield that stated reality about the constituents of boards and commissions can sometimes create circumstances where real or perceived questions of conflict will arise regardless of intent.

How are we to confront this ethical challenge. It seems likely, in a hypothetic example, that a professional landscape architect, with few or no local contracts, volunteering on a park board may have less opportunity for even inadvertent self-aggrandizement than say a banker conducting business with developers while sitting on an economic development body. This seems obvious without inferring or implying any malice or piety to either.

Thus, to draw too hard a line between qualified participation in, and potential unethical influence on, a body's process would seem to self-defeat the natural mix, the checks and balances, of qualified and lay participation in such boards and commissions. It is through the boards and commissions that our community and it's process realize a heightened level of representative municipal self-governance.

Is then the answer to the conflict conundrum that we should be tolerant but vigilant, to trust but verify. We should apply these same tests when assessing any stakeholders assertions. Whether coming from the electorate, the elected, or staff, there is nothing wrong with identifying intellectually and politically dissonant assertions that ignore or violate a general public acceptance of a process and it's attendant record.

A council that ignores the bona fide work product of a board, insults the board, the process and the community. Such a council takes the risk of alienating the advisory process; and creates a disincentive discouraging qualified participation. This is only an 'acceptable' outcome if this is a council's intent, and then, from only the most machiavellian of perspectives. And it may have an either intended or unintended consequence of leaving the boards and commissions populated by only those with
conflicted self-interest and those willing to offer a patina of verisimilitude to flawed process.

If real or perceived exigencies compel a leadership to say, 'this decision, taken or not by previous authority, this council will not undertake to execute at this time,' then probity demands that leadership take full ownership of that position and have the political fortitude to state so clearly at the outset. It is wrong to feign ignorance of a process and it's content, i.e., the record, to provide barely plausible cover at other stakeholders' expense for unilateral reversal of the product of a thoroughly democratic process already undertaken.

This would seem so in particular after campaigning on accountability, transparency and healing.
One (or any body of "ones") should expect to be confronted with skepticism when conducting the community's business in an obscurant fashion. Expecting from leadership intellectual honesty and political fortitude is not an act of civic turpitude.

A leadership that fails in this regard is, well, you know...not one.

By: AnneBretts on 6/3/09
The bottom line in government is that you need to be able to count the votes. The last election and the comments by councilors over the past several months made it clear that park board had no support for its transparent attempt to twist public policy to please a few unhappy neighbors. The delay clearly was an attempt to give the park board a face-saving way to take a remedial math course or work with some flash cards and come up with a new solution reflecting the best interests of all the community. Instead, the board insisted on 'calling the question,' forcing the council to inflict a humiliating rebuke.
I's interesting that the public seems just fine with this decision. Of course, the black helicopter folks are crying conspiracy, but I think a conspiracy of the public and elected officials is a darned good thing.

By: fairandbalanced on 6/3/09
Nobody likes it when they don't get their way. However, some people still live under the delusion that if they don't get their way, they didn't get to have input, or that if they don't get their way, the whole process was corrupt and a waste of time. How twisted and sad.

When our city government says they're concerned about citizen input, that doesn't mean they're turning their power over to our boards and commissions. I think they got a lot of input from citizens on this one, and they listened. It just didn't turn out the way the PRAB and some other people wanted it to.

By: Uberstadt on 6/4/09
Its refreshing to see the council take the initiative to assert their opinion and authority on this one. Ames Park would have been a terrible mistake.

Why is there so little discussion about what failed with the last skate park in Riverside Park? The kids didn't want to wear helmets, the city could not afford to keep it staffed, etc. Will these issues be the same with the next location?

By: NNSuzy on 6/4/09
Uberstadt,

While your questions weren't addressed in this story, we have addressed them in prior stories.

To be brief, the problems with the prior skatepark were not location related. The park, made mostly of wood, was expensive to maintain and the city charged an admission fee because it needed to be manned due to liability concerns.

Kids often weren't willing to pay the fee and its hours of operation quickly dwindled because the city couldn't afford to support the staffer without money from the fees.

This park won't need to be manned. All amenities are low enough so additional insurance isn't needed. It will resemble an urban plaza with benches, stairs and railings: all the things kids have used to skateboard on downtown, but here it's expected to be made specifically to withstand the beating it will take.

Suzy

By: Uberstadt on 6/5/09
Thank you for the clarification Suzy. Hopefully the kids will be satisfied with the equipment. Some of the kids expect large tubes and steep banks to ride.