Former assistant city attorney Mike Sarahan makes a case in Style Weekly for Richmond's Department of Community Development to do a better job at creating an inclusive planning process. It's a much clearer case than the one he was making during the public sessions for Richmond's new Downtown Plan:
Get close to any local public participation process, and you will hear all the right buzz words:
“We need everybody around the table. … An invitation has gone to all segments of the community that may be affected. … We want to ensure the broadest, most diverse participation of the community possible. … We did everything we could to get people here.”
This sort of talk bothers me because it is generally so far from the truth.
Take, as just the most recent example, the city of Richmond’s ongoing effort to review and update its Downtown Master Plan. The city has already gone through a great deal of effort and expense to stage the kickoff of a public participation process, to which (for some reason) it gave a very high-tone name, a “charrette.”
In terms of kitchen-table justice, one odd thing about the charrette was that general word about the gathering came very late in the going, even though the event itself had been planned for months.
At the outset, the city was asking for a significant commitment of time over a midsummer weekend from anyone who wanted to participate. Meanwhile, the city went to almost no trouble to give people a chance to get there on time, or get there at all.
Instead the city turned over its responsibility to give public notice about the event primarily to the private downtown promotional organization, Venture Richmond. You practically had to be a friend of Venture Richmond, or at least be on its list for “e-mail blasts,” to get invited to the table.
Fortunately, word of the event spread more broadly in the last few days before the event started. But what do you make of an invitation to dinner, so to speak, when it arrives at the last minute? And what do you make of an invitation to dinner when it doesn’t even come from the host?
Given the circumstances, I think many people felt they just weren’t really invited or welcome to participate.
Thank God for the Internet, and score another one for Richmond's weblog activists -- without their engagement there would have been 40 people at the table instead of 400.
