08/06/1980 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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Addressing the second issue, Ms. Miller offered to brief council on the question being presented: Is the CIC to count numbers of people attending public meetings, and is that participation, or is there some way of measuring beyond how many people come to hearings to gauge the effective- e ness of citizen involvement? She felt it obvious that citizen involvement is more than numbers of people attending meetings. More difficult ques- tions are being asked here, though, relating to measuring the quality of. citizen participation. Related philosophical questions being posed are: Where is policy really made--at meetings attended by citizens or elsewhere? To what extent are staff-prepared background papers elements of the planning process in which there is no citizen involvement? Etc. She said she personally had not been able to develop a reasonable method at reasonable cost to address this issue. Mr. Delay expressed confusion about the issue at hand. Ms. Schue felt the question posed was not fully addressed in the staff's August 1 memo to the council; it is more complex than was stated. She said the question being posed to the committee could be illustrated in the effect citizen testimony had on the decision made by the County Commis- sioners on the Metro Plan, as was discussed early in the meeting. Was the citizen input process at the Fairgrounds window dressing or not? That is the type of issue being brought to the committee. Ms. Schue went on to say that the committee has not dealt seriously with the issue of measuring citizen effectiveness, for lack of a workable means to do so. Mr. Delay asked if the issue could be restated as: The present land use e planning process for zone changes (e.g.) is not working; how does the Citizen Involvement Committee evaluate those processes? If that were a correct restatement of the issue, he said he might suggest observation and comparative analysis of the various processes. Ms. Schue explained that the CIC has a work program and is actively pursuing it. She cited an example of a questionnaire being developed to survey citizens' understanding of planning processes. She went on to explain that the issue as raised is measuring whether citizen input has changed a decision being made by the councl1, though the council is acting in the best interest of the City as a whole. Mr. Delay felt the question of measuring citizen effectiveness in the process is not answerable. He noted that in some cases, too, the council's decision must be made within a quasi-judicial framework. Mayor Keller felt that the key issue is for citizens to have access to the process. Ms. Miller explained that she has not been able to attend CIC meetings recently but has kept abreast of committee activities through the agendas and minutes. She expressed satisfaction with the present direction of the committee's work activities. She felt that the council as a whole should give some similar expression to the CIC. 8/6/80--8 e