Raleigh disbands Citizen Advisory Councils (CACs) and is looking to improve engagement
What does community engagement 2.0 look like for Raleigh residents?
There has been a lot of chatter about the CACs disbandment. And some good media coverage from the N&O and CityLab with background details and history that I encourage you to read before spewing uninformed comments.
I feel like this was a long time coming. The bottom line is that the Raleigh City Council wants to revamp what community engagement looks like and wants to create an Office of Engagement. I don’t know that we necessarily need something new considering we already have a Community Engagement Division, but it’s worth exploring and reporting back.
Although I disagree about how swift this was done without a better transition plan, I’m confident that the end result will be better than a broken CAC system that wasn’t representative of the areas they covered. And I get the irony that the council did this without seeking input on this decision, but there’s some history there that you should read about.
I don’t know the details of the newly proposed plan, but the mayor did respond to me publicly on a thread with Anthony McLeod who stated, “I hope a new vehicle emerges to connect the neighborhoods and help bridge the new and old in Raleigh.”
“I promise you both it will. And there will be opportunities to participate in Community Engagement 2.0,” said Mayor Baldwin.
https://twitter.com/maryannbaldwin/status/1225256492774887424
The only constant, in a growing city like Raleigh, is change. I think people take a snapshot of their residence when they move in and expect it to stay that way forever. I’ve seen so many changes in my neighborhood since moving into our home in April 2001. I didn’t agree with some of the changes when they took place, but I feel like I’ve gotten a bit wiser over the years. One thing I’ve learned, change is hard.
For example, I was concerned that a new apartment complex geared for luxury student living was going to flood our streets with parked cars. I was gladly proven wrong and I’m now happy this project brought new housing stock to our area — even though I was eager for that property to be a mixed-use development when it was proposed.
We’ve seen some great additions to our community, like a new neighborhood park named after long-time civic leader Mary Belle Pate. Another example, most of Lineberry Drive, a nearby neighborhood collector street, got a road diet (reduction of lane size) and we have the first set of dedicated bike lanes in our community.
Out with old: How to reach more people
As I heard the news about the CAC disbandment, I was a little upset— but only for a minute. The way people consume information has changed in recent years, even since my time as chair of SWCAC from 2010–2012. I lost interest in attending the monthly SWCAC meetings. I could get most of the information I needed online and frankly, I didn’t like how opposed most people were to almost any zoning case or change in our CAC.
I also started thinking about how much time city staff invest in CAC meetings. From time to time, staff from various city departments would attend CAC meetings to present details about upcoming projects or city-wide initiatives. For city-wide presentations, that means staff would have to visit 18 CAC meetings, which are usually in the evenings. That’s a lot of staff time.
Imagine, instead of the old way, we could have a video of that presentation available to watch and instead of 18 presentations to smaller audience, hold 3–4 evening presentations at larger forums around the city. We could gather questions from both in-person and online forums and create a frequently asked question addendum to the video presentation.
What would an Office of Civic Engagement look like for Raleigh?
I don’t have the answer, but I believe it starts with stronger, well-defined neighborhoods. And I want to help shape what it looks like and generate ideas on how it could be inclusive and more engaging than the old way. So I started doing some research on the topic. I’m a big fan at seeing how other communities do things well, borrow what works, and modify it to fit the needs for Raleigh residents.
At the top of the list is Minneapolis who has a Neighborhood and Community Relations program. In taking a look, they have strong Neighborhood Programs that “supports strong, vibrant neighborhood organizations. Neighborhood organizations encourage resident participation in the decision-making that affects them at the most local level.”
The City of Los Angeles has an Office of Civic Engagement that would also be worth looking into.
From the outside, it looks like Minneapolis has well-defined neighborhoods that allow them to implement this type of model, something that Raleigh lacks in some capacity. For example, we have well defined neighborhoods such as Brier Creek, Boylan Heights, North Hills, Oakwood, Renaissance Park, and Wakefield, that are able to activate and inform residents when important issues arise.
Compare that to my neighborhood where we have several communities of single family homes, townhomes, and apartments. Communities like Broad Oaks, Camden Crossings, Orchard Pointe, Pleasant Ridge, Ramsgate Heights, Sterling Townhomes, Trailwood Commons, Trailwood Heights, Trailwood Hills, Trailwood Knoll, Trailwood Springs, Trailwood Valley, and Whitehurst Townhomes could be united to form a representative community.
I attempted this years ago with some success. Lineberry Drive is a road that connects most of these communities together, so I called this community of communities the Lineberry Alliance. The vision was that we share common issues such as transit, crime, and housing affordability and could represent the needs of all of our neighbors to city council, city boards, and city commissions, because no one knows our communities needs better than we do.
I think there is opportunity to work with City of Raleigh Community Engagement Division to get a better understanding of our established neighborhoods. I’d like to get their input as to what’s worked well in the past, what hasn’t worked, and what ideas they’ve been wanting to try and experiment with, to increase community engagement.
I think there also might be a few ideas in a book called Crowdocracy, by Iman Stratenus and Dr Alan Watkins, that could introduce some futuristic thinking and creativity to whatever the next form of community engagement looks like for Raleigh.
I invite you to share your thoughts in the comments and answer this question: What does community engagement 2.0 look like for Raleigh?
