Citizen Involvement:Critical, But No Panacea

An article by Jim Redden in today’s Portland Tribune reports that between them, the mayor’s office and the Portland Development Commission will soon hire five different persons whose charge is promoting citizen involvement.

The Tribune article focused largely on what these positions will cost the city in terms of salary. The implicit question is whether spending the hundreds of thousands to pay these people is worth the investment. It's the right climate for the hires, though, because these positions also have a symbolic value in light of Tom Potter’s campaign promises to make local government more transparent and accountable, and also in light of PDC’s recent difficulties.

But I’d like to play devil’s advocate for a moment when it comes to citizen involvement.

Of course we want people’s voices to be heard regarding policy decisions. Portland has a long track record of neighborhood organizations and other grassroots efforts. That’s something we should be proud of.

At the same time, however, I think it doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves that to truly be successful, a city needs to not only listen to its citizenry, but also have leaders willing to make difficult decisions that may or may not be popular at the time. And we must be careful that Portland doesn’t become too mired in endless meetings and forums when certain projects ought to move forward.

It’s not to say these citizen involvement hires aren’t necessarily a good thing. But citizen involvement also is not a panacea for the city.

Comments

[Keith]

Exactly right. There are too many examples of this kind of politics getting in the way of good design in architecture and land use planning.

Why Oregonians have a hard time utilizing the talent we have in this city, and relying on politicians for leadership, I cannot fathom.

Portland's saddest example I think, is our parks system which was initially planned by Olmstead Brothers, NY (NYC's Central Park). Seattle relied on these experts and got an amazing ring of parks you can walk and bike between which are stunning examples of landscape architecture.

Portland took the initial plans, put it in the hands of the politicians, and the whole thing faltered and died.

We have good parks, but nothing like we would have had if we had relied on people educated and knowledgeable.

[Justin]

I thought that Portland did hire landscape architects, planners and architects to work on some of their... plans.

Just out of curiousity, what was the rest of the Olmstead park plans for Portland? I have been aware of the Park Blocks - which yes, is 'missing' the middle section, but was there anything else proposed?

I personally favor the current plan to leave the buildings between Park & Park alone and not demolish them.

I'm also pretty excited about the Burnside plan, which I think will change people's perception of P-town more than almost anything in the last 20 years. If it's done right, that is.

[The One True b!X]

This balance will only work if public involvement is taken seriously and public official decision-making is transparent.

The problem is, we've had a develoment agency which makes decisions on its own all the time, and people haven't even felt listened to -- something which can help assuage concerns about decisions themselves -- and then also would make decisions (have we all forgotten the Bridgehead already?) which were never actually adequately explained and appeared to contrdict the criteria set forth for that decision.

So, devil's advocacy is fine and always useful. But it's pointless if we don't also point out the context we live in.

[Brian]

Well said.

[Keith]

This might sound harsh, but I think 'felt listened to' is sometimes an expression of whether or not the decision being made was the desired outcome of the person or group advocating. It's a mistake to think that if a room is filled with a group of people who are advocating one decision, that it represents the desires of the entire community.

- As I recall from the lecture on Olmstead and the Seattle & Portland park plans, Seattle's leaders put the park department in charge of developing the plan with adequate funding and Portland put the plan up to a vote. The plan was rejected by Portland's citizens, though thankfully most of the land in the Olmstead plan was acquired.