Yes, I am old enough to have been active in neighborhood organizations before each was even thought of let alone enacted. Each of those programs were designed to be implemented by the neighborhoods and to be a tool for the neighborhoods to better serve their residents. I well remember a meeting when the inception of CCP Safe was being announced, and Lucy Gerold was being announced to lead it, when Tony Scallon told Lucy Gerold that she already had a model of how to make CCP Safe effective, and that this model was the neighborhood organizations. As I remember Tony said that CCP Safe should look to the Neighborhood Organizations for direction and not be centralized downtown. Tony was assured that the downtown centralized location was only in the beginning to get trained and then the CCP Safe workers would be office'd out in the neighborhoods. (This of course did not happen for the next ten years and only then to the precincts when forced to do so.)
Programs such as NRP and CCP Safe are also only truly effective when applied through and directed by neighborhood organization. Dan seems to have wisely surmised that the only viable means of having community engagement is through the legitimate Neighborhood Organizations. I am pleased that he sees that the City needs to formally recognize this fact and is financing the efforts to "set the stage for a broad conversation and build a consensus of support for a comprehensive, assessable and accountable community engagement system in Minneapolis" to bring legitimate Neighborhood Organizations" into a true partnership with the Council. Engaging neighborhood organizations in real decision making rather than just being "advisory" is a marvelous idea.
NRP has given the City of Minneapolis a level of critical planning that is not dreamed of in most urban cities in North America. It has also trained and empowered a level of expertise across the City that is unheard of in other urban cities of the United States. It is truly time that Minneapolis recognized and celebrated that accomplishment, and takes the next step to formally giving "Official Neighborhoods" that partnership role. Some skeptics have said that they believe this is nothing more than one more attempt by power hungry Council Members to kill empowered neighborhoods and the NRP program, but I disagree. It is creating the opportunity for neighborhoods to take the formal role which they have only been advising on in the past. Sure there might be a couple of council members who are sitting like a black widow spider beside a web hoping they get to eat the neighborhood honey bee, salivating at the idea of an opportunity to finally kill NRP, but they are the out of touch power brokers that will soon be out of power (the bee still owns the voting sting). So lets celebrate the wise council members who support neighborhoods, and who see neighborhood organizations as their natural partners and help mates rather than their minions. Minneapolis does not need any "Queen bees" or spiders, it needs more worker bees who gladly share the load of making the Minneapolis "hive" a sweeter place to live.
Good to see that Dan and some others are so eager to empower neighborhood residents through NRP. The wise way to study and implement "community engagement" is to allow the neighborhoods themselves to do it. After all the true "Experts" on neighborhood and community engagement are the neighborhoods themselves. "Experts" can of course assist in helping neighborhoods to formalize that process, but no one should be foolish enough to expect "experts" to even know what questions to ask, let alone what the answers are about community engagement. It is a bit like having an expert tell you what kind of syrup YOU prefer on the pancakes you have just sweated over the hot stove to make; foolish at best! The right role and place for an expert is to study the institutional roadblocks to fully engaging that neighborhood empowerment. Neighborhoods "KNOW" community engagement, what they need advice and expertise on is how to breech the "firewall" and insulation wrapping City Hall so that the information they contain might be "networked" with the hard drive downtown.
To begin looking at what the Minneapolis residents feel about community engagement look at the answers to the questionnaires filled in by neighborhood representatives at the Forum for that purpose hosted by NRP. That was well over a hundred "official representatives of neighborhoods giving up several hours of their time to give input on "Community Engagement" and how to improve the City they live in. Some of the answers may not be pleasant to hear, even though given because of frustration they are still informative. Dan Nizolek was the only Council Member I remember seeing there.
If there is a Council Member who is not in favor of neighborhood organizations and true "community engagement" I am sure they will try to undercut NRP and Neighborhood resident empowerment. Perhaps readers could speculate on who those Council Members are on list. In that way perhaps we can flush out the Council on their real intentions. We know that Barb, Natalie, and Don on the Northside are going to support neighborhoods, we know Paul, and several Southside Council Members are going to support neighborhoods, so who exactly are the Council Members who are smiling at us while salivating as they prepare to knife neighborhoods and NRP in the back? The voters need to know who is patting neighborhoods on the back and who is raising the knife. Perhaps Council Members themselves could declare themselves "ON LIST". No equivocating, just the truth, tell us your positions on NRP and Neighborhood empowerment. We can only assume those who do not answer are possibly the ones sitting quietly in the dark, wringing their hands in hot anticipation by their web.
Jim Graham,
Ventura Village, Phillips Community Planning District, Sixth Ward of Minneapolis
“We can only be what we give ourselves the power to be” – A Cherokee Feast of Days
"The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
- Thomas Jefferson
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