After having read the posts of James Jacobsen, Dan Nordley and Paul Lohman about how we might characterize neighborhood organizations both before and in the wake of NRP (fiefdoms, or the last bastion of participatory democracy?) I would like to respond with some observations of my own, based, I will admit, on my somewhat limited experience with three neighborhood organizations here in the southwest corner of Minneapolis.
I suspect that my concerns will be moderately to wildly unpopular among most of the readers on this list, but I trust you all to critique my ideas and not moi. (lest Mr. Brauer swoop in and scold, crow-like). And please, if those of you who live in the same, or other parts of the city have different experiences than mine, I would really like to hear about them. Although Mr. Jacobsen purports to avoid neighborhood organizations altogether, it does seem as though his extremely jaundiced view of the actions and motivations of neighborhood groups in total were engendered by the group that he encountered on the West Bank of the University 27 years ago. I am somewhat in sympathy with that because my ever-so-slightly jaundiced view of the NRP/neighborhood organizations is very much colored by an unfortunate run -in with a wrong-headed neighborhood group who could not have been more parochial in their outlook, or more exclusionary in their attitude and actions ( I should hasten to say that this is NOT the group which runs the Lynnhurst organization, in my home neighborhood, today. It was a different neighborhood, about 8 or 9 years ago. Other than that, all identities shall remain anonymous in order to protect the innocent.) So I struggle sometimes not to judge the neighborhood groups of today by my experiences in the early days of NRP. I do realize that giant strides have been made in terms or regularizing operating processes, funding, and providing competent staff support. As well as strides in attracting diligent, bright and community-spirited folks to serve on the various boards and committees. And allowing folks who have a beef with the process their day in court. But here are my concerns: 1. The neighborhood groups are touted as grassroots democracy at its best. But at best, how much of the neighborhood actually participate in any part of the process? In my experience, Board openings are typically filled by gentle arm-twisting amongst the small group of people who have been volunteering along the way. I have never participated in an election where there were more candidates than there were open slots. Unless there is a burning issue that brings out folks against and in favor, (as Lynnhurst experienced during the recent brouhaha on the Boulevard mixed-use housing project) the board meetings are usually populated by the Board, and just a few hardy souls who love the process. Or perhaps those hardy souls are actually the guest speakers for the evening. Attendance of one hundred folks or more at this sort of event would be an absolute coup, and only achieved by packaging it with fun and games for the kids, free food and high-interest speakers. So is, at most, one or two hundred folks coming out to vote for a board enough? And what about input from the neighborhood for the myriad of decisions that take place along the way? Is there enough to call it truly participatory democracy? I realize for those who are faithful to the process and do participate, that it seems frustrating and insulting to critique their efforts. Flyers are sent out, posters posted, and e-mail reminders fly. Anyone who wants to participate has ample opportunity to do so. But still, it doesn't quite set right to me that so few do. The neighborhood group with whom I did battle lo those many years ago used a poorly written survey to the neighborhood with a response rate of less than 2% to justify many of their questionable decisions and actions. Today, there are straw polls and "dot-mocracies" and other methods for gathering input from the community, but it still, in my mind, is just a fancy way of taking input only from those few who have the time and energy to show up to a meeting. Which then could allow the process to be dominated by a single issue, or simply by the small group who shows up, perhaps with a specific agenda . (it could be a great agenda that you agree with.. and then its easy to swallow.. but wait until its not.. ) I remember thinking that if the original NRP guidelines had included, as a requirement, that the neighborhood groups use professional research techniques (qualitative methods for determining the areas of interest to the 'hood and quantitative techniques for capturing the feedback of a STATISTICALLY PROJECTABLE sample of the neighborhood,) then we'd be in much better shape to say that the actions/direction of the Board and Committees really were reflecting the wishes of the greater community. So we'd be capturing the concerns of the elderly lady who is afraid to go out to a meeting, at night, and the working couple with young children who are too bushed to do likewise, and the young singles who don't yet have enough interest, or perhaps too active a social life to attend neighborhood meetings.. In short, we'd capture the concerns of the community as a whole. Many neighborhood board and NRP committee members take great pains to solicit and accept feedback from their community - they feel it is extremely important to do so. But lets face it, they are not elected officials with the same compensation and same obligations, as say, city council members. In my experience, they do not door-knock or have regular "coffee times" with constituents. They typically do not attend block parties (other than their own) or other community and church meetings to hear what the neighborhood concerns are. They make themselves available as best they can in the course of their daily lives, but they all have other lives: jobs, families - things that keep them busy and keep the input from the community mostly "inbound", and somewhat limited. 2. The money, honey. In the current state of a horrendous budget shortfall - I've heard a minimum of $15 million to the city, maybe more. .. I have to ask the hard question. How much money do we want parceled out to the individual neighborhood groups to work with, when aggregated as a whole, that money might make a considerable difference in shoring up the deficit in key areas, or making a significant contribution to, say, affordable housing or other areas in which I have to believe that individual neighborhoods will struggle to implement effective programs? If we take housing, or affordable housing as an example ( and perhaps some of the NRP specialists on the list can enlighten me.. do phase 2 NRP guidelines call for a certain percentage of the dollars to go into affordable housing, or into housing? ... I've heard it explained both ways). How would the neighborhood groups actually deal with it? Setting up loan programs for exterior renovation ( an example of a "housing" project,) I would imagine, is a piece of cake compared to attempting to stimulate affordable housing projects within their community. Does one give the pot of money to the first developer that comes calling? Or save it to parcel out to developments that may not materialize? Do the neighborhood groups have the expertise to evaluate proposals and assign monetary support on their merits? Do they have the knowledge and contacts to evaluate possible sites within the 'hood and approach developers proactively? [ these questions are not merely rhetorical. I truly am interested to hear if neighborhood groups out there have successfully developed this capacity. I do not rule out the possibility that, with people of goodwill, the expertise to handle these sorts of projects can be purchased, or acquired and rather quickly, if needed. It just seems like a long shot to me] If it were merely a question of intelligence, dedication and insufficient exposure to the political process to be corrupted, then I would say, by all means, give the money to the neighborhoods. My early experience aside, I have been uniformly impressed by the quality of virtually all of the Board members or neighborhood participants that I know- in that case, I agree completely with Dan Nordley's assessment of their virtues. And in any case, you stack them up against the past slate of distant, power-hungry, corrupt or jail-bound City Council members, and it ain't hard to shine. But the issues are complicated, and in many cases the best solutions should stretch beyond neighborhood boundaries. Understanding and moving forward requires an understanding of city processes that are captured by only a few of the most policy-wonkish of neighborhood activists. And the time involved could easily overtax the limits of essentially a volunteer corps. The development of a strong, coherent sense of neighborhood identity, and the influx of bright, dedicated community activists is one of the very best things that has come out of the NRP process. And I suppose that we captured folks of that caliber because there was real money, that could make a real difference to the neighborhoods, at their disposal. And the improvement in process and support has been profound, over the years of NRP phase 1. I'm just not sure its enough to justify the diversion of significant funds to high caliber volunteer groups during a time of excruciating budget shortfall to the city. OK, now I'm gonna duck... Susan Herridge Lynnhurst love my neighborhood, and its local governance, but.. _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
