The previous entry on Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods as a great example of "civic engagement infrastructure" reminds me that I've been meaning to write about DC Mayoral candidate and At Large Councilmember Robert White's "initiative" to improve DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions ("It’s Time to Modernize the Office of the Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, press release).
It is time, and it was when I started writing about this issue 15+ years ago.
-- "System transformation or people vs. systems and structures," 2007
-- "Contempt of the citizenry," 2007
-- "Stultified vs. flat organizations, democracy vs. autocracy," 2007
-- "ANCs and civic engagement," 2007
-- ""Incentivizing" ANC Commissioners," 2006
-- "An aha! moment about why DC Government is "problematic"," 2006
-- "YIMBYs from Brooklyn to DC -- Thinking about Community Participation in Shaping Development," 2005
-- "ANCs build up political muscle, and yet....," 2005
-- "The uncreative city #2: neighborhood capacity building and leveraging the power of proximity and networking," 2010
The thing that always amazes me about DC Government "initiatives" to improve something is that they don't appear to do a serious "deep dive" review of best practice, peer cities, etc., before they come up with conclusions.
Second, some ANC commissioners are quoted in tarticles about how they could help with insights, but I'm not impressed ("Council member Robert White aims to modernize DC’s advisory neighborhood commissions office," WTOP radio).
It mostly proves my line that "practitioners are s****y at generating meta-theory" or the overarching understandings of the system and structure of what they did, and how to duplicate or replicate it.
Without reading my previous entries, there are a bunch of key points:
(1) The city government should provide adequate budget to ANCs for "administration" separate from the money that some use for community grants, funding basic functions like office space and bank accounting services;
(2) Like the Seattle, Calgary ("Community association planning committees a hidden gem?," Calgary Herald), and Minneapolis examples in particular, as well as how the Main Street commercial district revitalization program has a national conference, national and state trainings, the city should develop a training and capacity building infrastructure for ANCs.
Other examples include the Urban Information Center at the Dallas Public Library, which collects books, periodicals and other relevant materials, and the Massachusetts Citizen Planner Training Collaborative.
The idea would be to move the workshop around the city, serving specific neighborhoods, but participation would be open to ANC commissioners, citizens, and community organizations in other neighborhoods too, as a training opportunity.
(3) ANCs should be treated as a network at both the Ward and City-wide scales. Collectively they should meet a few times a year ward-wide and at least once/year city-wide, as opportunities to generate and develop best practice, work on issues of mutual concern that cross ANC boundaries, etc.
The Atlanta Park Pride "friends of the parks" organization has an annual training conference open to parks stakeholders and friends groups across the city.
(4) Like the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods annual awards program, DC should do something similar, for ANCs, residents, and community organizations.
(5) I would also consider a small stipend for Commissioners. It should be paid out based on meeting attendance, holding 2-4 Single Member District meetings. (I think one should be a "service" project, like neighborhood cleanups, etc.).
(6) The law creating ANCs provides for the creation of standing committees, as well as opens the membership of committees, including chairing committees, to community members. But most ANCs do not do this, stinting on their ability to address issues as well as reducing the ability to develop a knowledgeable citizenry capable of high quality civic engagement. This should be addressed.
(7) In terms of dealing with proffers and community benefits, communities need consensus neighborhood plans to set priorities and guide funding.
Outside of the "Small Area Planning Process," which is mostly focused on identifying build out opportunities and how to manage them, the city needs to create a process for community strategic plans, to help Councilmembers, ANCs and residents deal better with the potential for change.
-- "Systematic neighborhood engagement," 2007
-- "Neighborhood Planning website
-- the PPS HTTAPA workshop could be a "quick and dirty" way to create thumbnail community action plans along these lines.
I am also a big fan of the structure of the Nashville Community Character Manual as a way to shape such a process.
-- "DC and the zoning rewrite and the approach not taken," 2012
(8) Use Participatory Budgeting methods to allocate grants.
Etc.
All of these recommendations are about building the capacity of ANCs and citizens to participate at a higher level in civic affairs, at the neighborhood, ward, and city-wide scales.
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This is tough though. For example, the American Planning Association has a special cheaper affiliate membership for locally elected officials and ANC Commissioners should qualify.
When I was on the ANC6C Planning and Zoning Committee, I tried to get the Commission to pay for subscriptions to planning publications and the Main Street News newslettter. They had almost zero interest, and zero interest in attending local Main Street trainings, which included an excellent session on historic architecture and design.
The willingness to invest in our capacity for quality civic participation seems to minimal. In doing various community workshops, especially in DC, where citizens tend to be highly educated, there is a sense that a lot of people feel like they already know everything, that there is nothing they need to learn.
The Layman approach to best practice development and diffusion: Indicate; Duplicate; Replicate; Communicate; Accelerate.
From "Revitalization planning vs. positive thinking* as planning," (2018) and "Helping Government Learn," (2009).
My own take on innovation theory and the development, replication, and the diffusion of innovation is along these lines. First develop a new practice and figure out if it works. Duplicate it to see if it is more than a one-off thing. Continue to scale it up and figure out all the elements. Once you've one that, communicate out so it can be and is successfully diffused across communities.
1. Indicate -- identity the particulars of processes and structures of success and failure.
2. Duplicate -- figure out how to duplicate (repeat) success.
3. Replicate -- develop the systems, structures, frameworks to apply programs to different situations and communicate them throughout innovation networks.
4. Communicate -- push out the final product to communities of practice for more widespread adoption, recognizing that other places will bring new elements to the model.
5. Accelerate -- figure out how to speed up successful innovation and programs.
I'm taking the liberty of reprinting a thread from the pro-urb list, starting with the discussion of neighborhood associations in Albuquerque.
ReplyDeleteFrom John H:
Cautionary tales of the disfunction of neighborhood associations. Not touching HOAs.
Albuquerque has had a vigorous neighborhood association program since the 1980s initiated by then-Mayor David Rusk, giving them a large voice in redevelopment and reinvestment proposals that include zoning changes. The city council is working to increase transparency and accountability for their actions. My experience is that associations are led by older folks who have time and interest in how their neighborhood looks and the problems they see and remember from the past. Unfortunately, it seems the majority of residents and houseowners aren’t engaged or involved. Nearby business owners and landlords tend to be ignored – until they ask for a change. Proposed public housing, affordable housing, halfway house, group home projects have failed due to such opposition. The outcome has been ongoing NIMBYism and unreasonable demands on would be developers. Many representatives argue for the devil they know and against the change they fear, a la Kunstler’s complaint in The Geography of Nowhere.
In the 1990s, the city updated its comprehensive plan to create district coalitions of associations to respond to larger issues and sector plans loosely based on the history of land development across the city. Unfortunately, the coalition districts did not align with established city council or county commission districts which led to explicit lack of support from the city councilors.
What are your communities doing to regulate and cultivate successful NAs?
John
Associations receive new standards
Council overhauls neighborhood ordinance law on narrow vote
Copyright © 2022 Albuquerque Journal
BY JESSICA DYER
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
Neighborhood associations seeking special treatment from the city of Albuquerque in land-use matters must have a democratic process for making decisions and cannot limit voting rights to only those who pay dues, according to newly approved legislation.
The City Council on Monday narrowly passed the updated Neighborhood Association Recognition Ordinance — the law’s first major overhaul since its 1987 inception.
== continued ===
From John H., first message, continued.
ReplyDelete=====
The ordinance outlines the specific standards an association must meet in order to get the privileges that come from official city recognition, such as special notice and standing in land-use appeals.
The association would have to hold at least one annual meeting after giving proper notice to all within its boundaries. Any decision described as representing the association would have to be made via an “orderly and democratic process,” such as a majority of votes cast by the association’s officers or members.
Under the ordinance, an association could not hold votes of the general membership unless it is advertised at least seven days beforehand, and would be barred from requiring members to pay dues in order to have voting rights.
The ordinance also prohibits new neighborhood associations with boundaries overlapping existing associations.
The legislation now heads to Mayor Tim Keller, who will have 10 days to act on it.
Council President Isaac Benton, who sponsored the overhaul, said it primarily seeks “some basic outreach on the part of the neighborhood associations and ask(s) for a very basic democratic process within those associations.”
It also cements the status and requirements for recognized “neighborhood coalitions,” which represent two or more neighborhood associations and/or homeowners’ associations “together with any community or business groups and any individual members within a specified geographic boundary within the city.”
Nearly identical legislation failed on a 4-5 council vote last September, but several of the councilors who voted “no” have since been replaced with new representatives. Benton revived the legislation last month. This time it squeaked through on a 5-4 vote, with Councilors Pat Davis, Tammy Fiebelkorn, Trudy Jones and Dan Lewis joining Benton in support.
Some members of the public complained that the city rushed this process.
Councilor Brook Bassan tried unsuccessfully to delay a council vote on it Monday, describing the process as “quite rapid” and noting that technical difficulties had prevented the council from accepting virtual public comment Monday. (It did take in-person and emailed comments.)
Councilor Louie Sanchez, like other councilors who voted against it, said neighborhood leaders said they did not like it.
“The only measuring stick I have is that 100% of my neighborhood organizations do not want anything to do with it,” said Sanchez, who joined Bassan, Renee Grout and Klarissa Peña in voting against the bill. Benton defended both the ordinance overhaul process — saying it started in 2017 and involved contacting all of the city’s 222 existing neighborhood associations multiple times — and the outcome. He said he’s seen problems arise under the existing ordinance — including new groups trying to encroach on existing neighborhood association territory — and the rewrite addresses that and other concerns, such as a pay-to-join structure.
“If you don’t like the fact (it’s) saying you should not have to pay dues to be a member of an association, I respectfully object,” Benton said. “We don’t do that in voting in this country; we don’t make people pay to vote or to have their voice heard in a democratically run organization.”
From Dean G., about Spokane:
ReplyDeleteWith an admittedly quick search, it appears that the Associations in Albuquerque operate very similar to HOA's - though with voluntary dues payments. Some have architectural review committees that work to enforce deed CC&Rs, and dues are based on a property owner's frontage length (or some other element derived from a parcel metric).
It doesn't appear that NA's are especially friendly to renters, as most communication runs through property owners (not tenants - either residential or commercial).
How can an NA claim to represent a neighborhood when it doesn't give equal footing to everyone that lives in the neighborhood?
Spokane does have 30 recognized Neighborhood Councils, and they work collaboratively under the umbrella of a city-wide Community Assembly. The NCs and their CA are not municipal departments, though the CA and its committees have some city staff support provided by the Office of Neighborhood Services (and its staff of Community Program Coordinators). The NCs do not charge fees nor are they permitted to restrict membership or leadership to just property owners, but they are included in the notification process for Land Use permits and other State Environmental Policy Act mandated notifications. The NCs are grouped by the city's three electoral districts, and each district's NCs provide input during the annual grant prioritization process for the city's Community Development Block Grant program.
From me:
ReplyDeleteIn the years I've written about this, a couple communities stick out, Minneapolis, when it had its Neighborhood Revitalization Program, funded by TIF, Calgary, and Seattle. All three have/had deep capacity building support structures.
NRP realized that they were providing communities with a funding stream but they didn't have a lot of capacity, so they built a training and technical assistance infrastructure to fill the gap. Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods is focused on supporting the development of self help/DIY capacity, assisted by trainings, programs, and grants. Calgary's recreation centers are run by neighborhood associations. The Federation of Calgary Communities is a technical assistance organization THAT EVEN HAS URBAN PLANNERS ON STAFF TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE TO NEIGHBORHOODS DEALING WITH DEVELOPMENT ISSUES, independent of the city planning infrastructure.
DC's ANCs have almost zero capacity building infrastructure. Not sure how much is provided for the structures in NYC (Community Boards), Atlanta (Larry Johnson has written about Neighborhood Planning Units in the past), LA, and San Diego.
I am learning about Salt Lake City's neighborhood councils, which are provided with a similar authority as that of DC"s ANCs in that they are provided with the ability to weigh in on issues before the city's Council, executive branches and commissions. I presume they are all set up comparable to the Sugar House Community Council, which represents me. There are geographically specific member districts, I'm not sure how people are chosen, but there is a formal process, albeit not chosen at elections, the way DC's two year term Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are chosen..
I don't think there is a capacity building infrastructure comparable to that which I idealize.
Even with the training and technical assistance infrastructure, I'm sure that residents are still pretty parochial. It's hard to "train out" a very narrow focus from people who are motivated to be property owners first, neighborhood residents second, and cognizant of city and county planning, social, and environmental issues third at best.
If people had to take various trainings including on the economics of the city/county, maybe it would change somewhat. It would be an interesting experiment.
FWIW, I argue that such training systems be open to community members and associations, and that more specific trainings needed to be provided to Friends of Parks groups (modeled after Atlanta's Park Pride) and Libraries groups.
Still me, two messages, combinded.
ReplyDeleteDean's post reminds me of when I first learned about neighborhood councils independent of City Councils, back when I was in college in the 1980s. In the 1970s I think, Columbus Ohio created "neighborhood commissions" that were corporatist, in that they provided for representation of community-based businesses, alongside residents, and other stakeholders, even if the business representatives didn't live in the city. I know that Seattle, at least in the early 2000s, had a form of corporatist councils too, and they were provided with some resources including funding for a staff member.
I don't think know if Columbus' commissions are still "corporatist" in structure.
https://cbusareacommissions.org/best-practices/
40 years later, I forgot the biggest reason I found the Columbus corporatist representation structure interesting.
It also included college student representation. Then (and even today), political interests often exclude student participation in local voting systems, even though the law is very much settled.
So providing a way for student interests to be represented in local/city issues as distinct from university related issues was interesting to me.
WRT Spokane's Community Assembly, DC doesn't allow ANCs to meet with each other, at the ward or city wide scales. It's believed that this is to ward off commissioners becoming viable candidates for Council. A number of Councilmembers do come up through the ANC ranks.
I also forgot to contrast Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods to other city "neighborhood engagement" efforts at the Executive and Legislative levels. Seattle's department really seems focused on fostering independent action, where at least in DC, "similar" efforts are focused on what I call incumbent protection, in binding the person or group seeking help to long term support of the mayor or councilmember, rather than developing the capacity of citizens to operate independent of government/self help.
I think the self help element is important. My criticism of DC's ANCs is they create the idea that "government" is the solution to any and every problem, no matter how small. Also, people who work for the Executive and Legislative Branches often become ANC commissioners, and I think that can create a significant conflict of interest.