"Who are these citizens"? Let me speak from my experience. I am on the Board of Directors for the Audubon Neighborhood Association. While I will not say that every neighborhood association is set up like ours, I would imagine there are similarities. The BOD makes a concerted effort to communicate with our neighborhood. We publish a newsletter at least quarterly which always talks about our activities and how to be involved. We have elected to have our newsletter sent either through the Northeaster newspaper, which is mailed to every address in Northeast Minneapolis (our newsletter goes to addresses within our boundaries) or bulk rate mail the newsletter to all addresses within our boundaries. Furthermore, our meetings are always announced in the Northeaster newspaper and are usually held once a month. According to our by-laws, any person residing within the boundaries of the neighborhood, owns a business within the neighborhood, or is a landlord within the neighborhood and indicates some interest in being a member (i.e. signing in at a meeting or sending a postcard to our office) is qualified as a member of the Association. All members have the opportunity to vote and run for the Board each year at our annual meeting! ! . Furthermore, any member of the Board or the entire Board can be recalled with or without reason at any time. With all of this in mind, I'm not sure how much more opportunity can be given to people to become active in their neighborhood association and the public money connected with it. If people choose not to attend or otherwise be involved, I would argue there's only so much that can be done. At ANA, we are even planning a monthly meeting that is to be held in the afternoon versus our usual evening meeting to try to make meetings more accessible to shift workers. What all of this comes down to is that I personally take some exception to the allegation that neighborhood boards are somehow elitist entities with little or no accountability. The whole accountability issue is one that goes both ways. Members of Boards need to be accountable to their neighborhoods. Also, neighborhoods need to be accountable to themselves to put in some effort to be involved. --- Sincerely, Gary Bowman, Jr. 2600 Taylor Street Northeast Minneapolis, MN 55418 612-789-9404 On Tue, 28 Nov 2000 21:41:06 Russell Wayne Peterson wrote: >Barb Lickness said: > >>I believe that NRP has empowered a group of >>citizens that have and will continue to change the >>face of City Hall as we know it. > >I understand and embrace the value of getting people involved in our >government and I appreciate the efforts NRP has made to do that. But Barb's >statement is quite illuminating relative to my original points. She says >NRP has empowered a "group of citizens." So that begs the question: Who >are these citizens? They have not been empowered by the residents of >Minneapolis. This "group of citizens" is not accountable to residents and >there is no clear accountability in the system. And this "group of >citizens" is not a representative group. It is the people who show up and >can show up because of the system that has been created and how it operates. >(And I don't mean any disrespect to those who do show up.) So even though >we've increased citizen involvement, we have mistakenly shut out numerous >voices in the process. And in some instances we've created processes that >are burdensome to regular citizens. We have yet another layer of government >bureaucracy to go through to get our voices heard. > >NRP may have it's advantages, but it has a few really big disadvantages. Two >of them are that the system does not have clear accountability to the people >and it does not represent the voices of the people. This lack of >representation and accountability, I believe, ultimately was the failure of >Phillips and Central. And is probably the biggest hole in the system that >will encourage failure in other neighborhoods. Because we have a system of >citizen involvement we take it to mean the voice of the people. That is an >erroneous assumption. And the overlay of the big bureaucracy compounds the >first two. > >And for those of you working hard in the NRP system, please do not be >offended by my challenges. I appreciate your hard work and intentions. >However, I think it is time to address these issues in a thoughtful and >hopeful way; not just defend NRP because it is the utopia on the hill of >neighborhood involvement and that we have a whole lot of systems in place to >defend that utopia. > > >Russ Peterson >Ward 9 >Standish > >R U S S E L L P E T E R S O N D E S I G N >"You can only fly if you stretch your wings." > >Russell W. Peterson, RA, CID >Founder > >3857 23rd Avenue South >Minneapolis, MN 55407 > >612-724-2331 >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Get FREE Email/Voicemail with 15MB at Lycos Communications at http://comm.lycos.com
