A Citizen Strategy for Civil Public Meetings
After witnessing conflict and incivility at public meetings in the greater Syracuse area (as well as cross the nation), CNYSpeaks and FOCUS Greater Syracuse recently co-hosted a forum to generate ideas about how to foster civil public discourse.
On February 18, 2011, over 80 community members gathered for a public forum called, “Making Public Meetings Work for the Public: A Forum on Finding Ways to Make Public Hearings, Forums, and Meetings more Civil, Constructive, and Productive.”
With the guidance of trained facilitators, community members working at small tables answered two important questions:
1. What does an “ideal” public meeting look like? and,
2. What are your recommendations for promoting constructive, productive, civil public meetings?
After sharing their tables’ ideas with the larger group, participants had the opportunity to vote for the recommendations they believed have the most potential to promote civil public discourse. The following ideas received the highest number of votes at the forum:
- Use a Third Party Moderator/Facilitator. A third party moderator can help maintain balance among speakers, ensure adherence to the agenda, and promote a safe environment for all parties. This moderator should be unbiased, confident, respected, respectful, and a good communicator.
- Give Notice of Meeting. To attract diverse participants with different views, meeting organizers should give advanced notice about issues such as time, logistics, purpose, and goals. Organizers should use multiple distribution efforts (including direct channels) and provide contact information for pre-meeting and post-meeting comments.
- Establish Ground Rules. Meeting organizers should spend time at the outset to explain the ground rules (such as speech time limits and rules of behavior), as well as the repercussions for violating the rules. These rules should be clearly stated to set the tone, create a common vocabulary, and establish a code of communication.
- Communicate Expectations and Factual Information Prior to Meeting. Organizers can enhance public discourse by communicating their expectations, defining the specific issues to be addressed at the meeting, and providing factual information about those issues ahead of time. Such data can help overcome informational disparities and enable non-experts to feel they have the knowledge necessary to contribute in a meaningful way.
- Offer Alternatives for Participation. By allowing citizens to call in, participate via social media, or engage through other channels, meeting organizers can gain a broader audience. Such alternatives may be especially effective in generating the inclusion and participation of those who cannot participate at public events, for example because they have small children or disabilities.
- Acknowledge all perspectives through video/storytelling. Using videos and storytelling at the meeting can demonstrate a variety of views. Doing so can help people feel that their voices are heard and generate understanding among those with different viewpoints.
The steering group (made up of citizens active in CNYSpeaks and FOCUS) that organized the forum is meeting later this month to go over these recommendations, as well as others we’ve received via this blog, and to discuss next steps.
We may hold more forums, or we may start working to take what we’ve learned so far and compile it into a guide for policy makers and others that host public meetings.
How would you like to see this initiative move forward? What do you think of the recommendations citizens put forward in February? What would you add or subtract?
Let us know here on the blog, on Facebook or Twitter. Also don’t hesitate to contact CNYSpeaks Project Manager Greg Munno at gregmunno@msn.com and 315-730-4621.
Forum on Civil Discourse Draws Crowd
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We got a great turnout at the CNYSpeaks / FOCUS Greater Syracuse forum this morning on how to host public meetings that are constructive, productive and civil. Thank you so much to all who participated and supported the event. We’ll be reporting back soon on what we learned.
In the meantime, check out The Post-Standard’s take on the event, and this piece from YNN. You’ll also enjoy CNYSpeaks Co-Director Tina Nabatchi‘s Op-Ed piece in Sunday’s Post-Standard.
Let’s keep the discussion going here online. It’s not too late for you to help us better understand the conditions necessary for meaningful and effective public meetings.
What, exactly, is civility? You tell us!
We’re continuing to collect your thoughts on how to have constructive, productive and civil public meetings, the subject of our Friday, Feb. 18th Forum with FOCUS Greater Syracuse
(Courtesy The Post-Standard) CNYSpeaks' Facilitator Sally Rock-Blake listens during a CNYSpeaks event.
Since the Arizona shootings, the discussion of civility in our public discourse has become more vigorous than ever and has raised many questions:
- What exactly is “civility”? Is it about pinkie-in-the-air politeness? Is it honoring difference as legitimate and making a good faith effort to find common ground?
- Do we even need civility to have a substantive and productive debate?
- What is required to have productive and constructive public meetings?
- How can public meetings be designed to help promote civility, and, perhaps more importantly, to allow citizens to express themselves in a substantive way that truly helps inform our elected representatives and other policy makers?
These are questions we’ve been wrestling with on this blog since this post first went up in a slightly different form last week, and that citizens wrested with on Feb. 18 during a free public forum.
Let’s keep the dialog going. Check out what others are saying in their comments below and please share your own thoughts.
Tell us how you define civility, or give us your take on any of the other questions above. Or tackle it another way and talk about a public meeting you attended that worked — or about one that got ugly.
Chime in any way you want. CNYSpeaks is listening!
Salt City Dishes Event this Sunday
Vote on Public Art Proposals at Salt City DISHES’ Quarterly Dinner this Sunday!
Sunday January 23, 5:30-8 pm, St. Clare Theater (840 N. Salina Street)
Salt City DISHES is a quarterly dinner that features a variety of different public art proposals from local Syracuse artists. The dinner audience votes on their favorite proposal and all of the admissions money ($10-15 per person) goes towards funding the art project. At the next dinner, the previous winner presents their completed project to the audience and the audience votes on a new project for the next quarter.
Join us in supporting the local Syracuse art community this Sunday! Buy tickets in advance at Craft Chemistry, 2nd Story Cafe & Bookstore, and Sound Garden.
For more information, visit
Salt City DISHES
Making Public Meetings Work for the Public
CNYSpeaks and FOCUS Greater Syracuse to Host A Forum on Civil Civic Discourse
Free Public Event to be held at 7:30 a.m. Friday, Feb . 18, at City Hall Commons
CNYSpeaks and FOCUS Greater Syracuse want to collaborate with YOU — the citizens of Central New York — to find ways to make public hearings and meetings more civil, constructive and productive.
(Mike Greenlar / The Post-Standard) Participants at CNYSpeaks events like the one pictured sit at small tables and work with fellow citizens and trained facilitators to brainstorm ideas and identify solutions to community issues. We'll be using this format on Feb. 18th to explore how we can make public meetings more civil and constructive.
Combative school board sessions and angry town hall meetings on health care have obscured the fact that public officials and citizens must work together to solve the complex problems we face here in Central New York and across the country.
Yet public officials are given little guidance on just how to structure public meetings to ensure that citizens are heard, and citizens have little guidance about how they should behave at those meetings to ensure that their interests are understood and that the meetings are safe and productive.
On Feb. 18, FOCUS Greater Syracuse will devote its monthly Core Group meeting to exploring this topic, with the goal of hearing from citizens about how they believe public meetings can be better designed to be productive, civil, and effective.
The forum, which is free and open to all, will run from 7:30 to 9 a.m. at City Hall Commons, 201 E. Washington St., Syracuse.
Participants will work in small groups with trained facilitators from the CNYSpeaks Initiative and the Maxwell School’s Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration to discuss questions such as:
- Why do people go, or stay away from, public meetings?
- What do public meetings that “work” look like? What do such meetings accomplish? What processes are used?
- How should public meetings be designed to be more inclusive, productive and constructive?
- What are the minimum standards of behavior required of citizens — and officials — to have successful public meetings?
Please join FOCUS and CNYSpeaks as we tackle this important issue, and thank you in advance for helping us spread the word about this event. Again, it’s free and open to all. There is no registration required. The event will start promptly at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 18, and be over by 9. Coffee will be served.
For more information, please contact FOCUS at (315) 448-8732 or CNYSpeaks at cnyspeaks@maxwell.syr.edu or 315-730-4621.
[Both CNYSpeaks and FOCUS are nonprofit, nonpartisan organizations. CNYSpeaks is funded by a Chancellor's Leadership Grant administered by the Campbell Public Affairs Institute at Syracuse University.]
Participation 2.0: Citizens and the Internet
Tina Nabatchi and Ines Mergel at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University recently published an essay for the report “Connected Communities” edited by James H. Svara and Janet Denhardt, Arizona State University. The report, which was drafted for the Alliance for Innovation, identifies steps local governments can take to connect communities and achieve a higher level of citizen engagement. Through identification of model case studies, alternative strategies and methods, the report reveals answers to four questions:
- What are the alternative goals of citizen participation and engagement?
- What is citizen engagement and what forms does it take?
- Who is responsible for citizen engagement efforts?
- How does citizen engagement contribute to community building?
Nabatchi and Mergel’s essay in the report is entitled, “Participation 2.0: Using Internet and Social Media Technologies to Promote Distributed Democracy and Create Digital Neighborhoods” and explores the use of Internet and social media technologies to engage citizens in the work of government. The essay begins with a brief history and discussion of Participation 2.0 and then provides several examples of innovative projects in local government where Participation 2.0 is being used to promote distributed democracy and create digital neighborhoods. The essay then turns to a brief discussion about the challenges of Participation 2.0 and considerations for local officials wishing to engage in such activities.
This blog will explore some of the issues in the report in subsequent posts throughout December. The full report is available for download here: http://www.tlgconference.org/communityconnectionswhitepaper.pdf
Artist Finds Beauty in Spoiled Landscape
This photo, by Willson Cummer, is of Ninemile Creek in Solvay as it runs under State Fair Boulevard and 690. Cummer, from a canoe, is looking downstream as the creek flows north before entering Onondaga Lake.
Willson Cummer / Onondaga Lake #43, inkjet print, 2010
Some artists help us expand our sense of the possible by deconstructing or altering reality. Others, like Willson Cummer, do something perhaps even more amazing: They show us the reality right in front of us that we’ve somehow failed to see.
Cummer focuses his camera on the places where the man made meets the natural, like the roofs of parking garages and the forgotten places under overpasses, which CNYSpeaks has written about before. He has a knack for at once showing us the enduring beauty of nature and the destructive force of human development. He juxtaposes the beautiful and the ugly, creating images that deepen our understanding of beauty itself.
Cummer’s new subject is Onondaga Lake and its tributaries. His exploration of this body of water at the heart of our region comes at the perfect time. Central New Yorkers have slowly begun to cast aside the view of the lake as a burden, an embarrassment, a literal and figural drain. We’re starting to see it for what it is: a tremendous natural resource that needs to be fully restored, protected, and developed — all at once. It’s a paradox, for sure. Cummer’s work helps us to understand this mind-bending reality.
As good as the images look on Cummer’s Web site, they look even better printed. His photographs are currently hanging with other artists who have a similar bent to their work in an exhibition at the Gandee Gallery in Fabius called “A Sense of Place — The Real Central New York Landscape.” The show closes November 21st.
Here’s Cummer’s artist statement for the project:
“Onondaga Lake, which borders the city of Syracuse, NY, is a Superfund cleanup site and a holy lake for the Onondaga Indian Nation. I have explored this paradox, photographing the lake and its tributaries from a canoe and on shore.
I find the lake gorgeous at times and repulsive at others. Raw sewage flows into the lake during heavy rains, as the municipal wastewater treatment plant is overwhelmed. Algae grows in the phosphorus-rich waters, giving off a stink in the summer.
Mercury and other heavy metals lie on the bottom of the lake — remnants of chemical industry in years past. Swimming has been banned since 1940.
Still, bald eagles have taken up residence on the lake, and great blue herons are numerous. The lake is an extreme example of much of our natural world: polluted yet still achingly beautiful.
I hope that my images will cause viewers to contemplate our relationship to the natural world and consider our impact. I also hope to inspire people to explore this lake, which remains captivating despite its long history of abuse.”
[Disclosure notice: Greg Munno, the author of this post, is friends with the subject, Willson Cummer.]
The Cozy Way to Contribute
Home HeaQuarter’s efforts to win a Pepsi Refresh Challenge Grant and the IDEAS Collaborative‘s recently launched survey are two excellent chances for citizens to make a difference from the comfort of their own homes.
Volunteers at a Home HeadQuarters Block Blitz do everything from plant flowers to serious construction work, concentrating their efforts to make a big difference in a targeted area.
Brrr. It’s nasty in Central New York today. Raw, 40 degrees and raining.
I sure am glad I don’t have schlep myself to a forum tonight or, even worse, work outside. I bet you feel the same way.
Thank goodness for the Web, which allows us all to make contributions to the causes we care most about from the comfort of our offices and homes.
Two great examples popped up this week. Home HeadQuarters, which organizes the Block Blitz, launched a campaign to win a Pepsi Refresh Grant to help fund the effort. To boost the initiative, there’s no need to don work gloves and tromp out into this grisly weather. Simply follow this link, vote for the Block Blitz idea, and help spread the word via Facebook and Twitter.
Likewise, the IDEAS Collaborative, a consortium of arts, entertainment and cultural organizations, has launched its survey that explores strategies for building audience for events in Onondaga County and making the arts and culture scene both more appealing and more sustainable. CNYSpeakers helped provide some of the ideas that went into the survey at the Sept. 26 forum on the arts at the OnCenter. Complete the survey, and you have made an important contribution to the strategic planning needed to grow the arts in Central New York. Not only that, but you could win a Wegmans’ card worth $250!
[Disclosure notice: Greg Munno, the author of this post, has done work for Home HeadQuarters.]
Facilitating Balanced Citizen Participation
An influx of talented graduate students this fall at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs has been a boon for the CNYSpeaks’ facilitation corps.
A core component of the CNYSpeaks Initiative is its ability to provide intensive facilitation services to the community, and in return provide Maxwell graduate students with real-world opportunities to practice the art and craft of facilitation.
New CNYSpeaks facilitators are trained by CNYSpeaks’ Co-Director Tina Nabatchi, an expert in the field, but that training does not prevent jitters when these facilitators must perform at their first CNYSpeaks event. They worry about not being able to redirect someone who is dominating the conversation and alienating others at the table, or, worse, they have visions of angry citizens recreating scenes reminiscent of the town hall meetings on health care.
CNYSpeaks encourages equal participation among citizens by dividing participants into small groups and establishing ground rules for the conversation. The small group atmosphere allows for discussion at a more personal level and fosters understanding among the participants. Truly equal participation, however, requires more than small groups. It requires both considerate participants and effective facilitators. To ensure that both are present in public deliberations, we must examine what makes an effective facilitator and how facilitators can encourage participants to be considerate.
Incoming facilitators now have two events under their belts, the Imaging America event on Sept. 10 and the IDEAS Collaborative event on Sept. 26.
The events went well, but facilitators expressed concerns that a few outspoken individuals dominated some of the small group discussions and that other participants used the discussion as a platform for tangential personal interests.
Given these group dynamics, how can facilitators ensure that the group stays on topic and that all individuals have an equal chance to articulate their opinions?
Our facilitators articulated three key ideas for future deliberations:
1. Begin the group session by asking each individual in the circle to share a key concern about the topic as they introduce themselves. By encouraging individuals to articulate views at the outset, facilitators can ensure that all individuals have the opportunity to voice what the topic means to them.
2. Actively point to similarities among arguments. When a group became particularly polarized, one facilitator emphasized that both participants agreed on the need to increase collaboration among artists. The facilitator then asked the group to focus on how the community could enhance collaboration. It is crucial to let citizens voice disagreements, but it is also important to move a polarizing conversation in a positive direction by finding common ground.
3. Reserve the last few minutes of discussion for organizational plugs and announcements about other events. By informing participants that they will have time at the end to inform the group about their personal endeavors, citizens will be less likely to use the entire discussion as a marketing opportunity. This also gives the facilitator an opportunity to redirect conversation if an individual begins dominating the conversation with information about his or her organization.
Jessica Prue is the CNYSpeaks Graduate Assistant and helped facilitate the Sept. 26th IDEAS Collaborative event at the OnCenter.
Listen to the Candidates Before You Vote
CNYSpeaks’ Co-Director Grant Reeher wears many hats, one of which is serving as the host of WRVO‘s The Campbell Conversations, which airs every Friday at noon on 89.9FM and on other NPR stations throughout Central New York. It also streams live over the Internet.
Reeher, the director of the Campbell Institute at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, brings the smarts of a political scientist to his interviewer role, and has developed a style and format of longer interviews that allows the listener to learn more about his guests, how they got to where they are, and where they plan to go. Reeher goes beyond the usual press conference questions and sound bites, and works to create an atmosphere of frank discussion and disclosure.
This is particularly useful during election season. Reeher’s guests include candidates in high profile races. Congressman Dan Maffei, D-25th District, is Reeher’s guest on Friday, for instance, and he has already hosted Maffei’s Republican challenger, Anne Marie Buerkle.
Fortunately, all the episodes are archived as Podcasts so you can listen to previously aired shows anytime you like. Other recent political interviews have included Democratic State Senator David Valesky and his challenger, Republican Andrew Russo. There’s a wealth of other interviews as well, including conversations with The Post-Standard’s Sean Kirst, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Syracuse Symphony Music Director Daniel Hege and many more.
