Clearly these issues take some words to explain, but Chuck and Eric are good at distilling. Let me distill.
I agree - everyone is right.
Just to clarify, my initial claim that the CIB process was "fair and open" referred to the way the process worked on paper. There's a process there, with rankings, it isn't just decided by politics. Because without a process, the more powerful forces tend to win. In Chicago and other cities, without any process, the less powerful poor, minority neighborhoods lose funding year after year. And then the conversation isn't at all based in merit, just brute pork-barrel politics, so its hard to make any lasting change to help the less powerful neighborhoods or people get a fair shot.
Likewise, my original point was therefore that it is important to hold public officials accountable to the results of a community process, unless they can come up with a pretty good reason not to abide by the result. Because when public officials ignore the outcome of community processes, I've found a real danger is that they do so to benefit a powerful ally whose interests don't ring true with the broader community.
That said, it follows that a good community process needs to be thoughtful about how to get representative participation from the traditionally less powerful or underrepresented voices. Like Caty said, processes can't be "fair and open" without it. We need to recruit more heavily among underrepresented constituencies. We need to institutionalize that commitment systematically - which the district councils just did last year. And that probably means making financial commitments to areas where it is harder to get representative participation.
Bob Spaulding Downtown
On Mar 7, 2005, at 9:53 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
OK, first off everyone is right. Eric has explained the permanent members of the CIB and Gloria has spoken of how easy it is to be appointed to the Task forces that review and rank all CIB proposals each year.
And, Caty has rightfully spoken about the "whiteness" of the District Councils. But, I think Caty is even more correct that the District Councils tend to be dominated by home owners. Where District Councils have been more "colorful" have been the areas of the City that have had long standing middle class communities of color. District 3, 7, and 8 West Side, Summit U and Frogtown have (not always, but often) been more reflective of the diversity of the population.
There are two simple reasons why (though, I know simple answers don't answer everything) first, District Councils are not the most visible thing in a neighborhood, and someone usually needs to be there a while to get what they do (small office - limitted staff). And, second, homeowners tend to stick around longer and ultimately see some personal benefit in being involved in an organization who's goal is to improve the neighborhood. If you are moving every year or two, you probably aren't very concerned about how loud the speakers will be at the proposed drive through (which could be a three hour discussion at a district council land use committee meeting and then two more hours at the board, then a hearing at the Planning Commissions Zoning Committee and a rally at the City Council meeting). But, if your house value will go down you'll go for meeting after meeting, after meeting.
This is not to say that district councils don't try to do out reach to communities of color, immigrants or renters, most do. In District 2, (where the minority population increased from 11% to 32% from 1990 to 2000) we have created a Hmong outreach program attempting to make the area more inviting to our largest minority population. But, one would think it will be some time before the community has enough roots in the area before individuals will see spending 2-5 nights a month being on a district council as worth their personal investment. So, eventhough we have a dozen Hmong students in our ESL class and 75 Hmong kids in our soccer program and 52 Hmong gardeners, we only have one Hmong board member so it looks pretty white when you count District 2.
We are also hopeful that after thirty years of being shorted in the funding process that the district councils on the East Side and North End may be able to also do a better out reach effort now that they will be funded closer to the levels of the other district councils.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke live in w 7th work in District 2 "Greater East Side" ------------------------------------------------- JOIN the St. Paul Issues Forum TODAY: http://www.e-democracy.org/stpaul/ ------------------------------------------------- POST MESSAGES HERE: [email protected]
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