Public Meetings SOS in review

Attendance at the IAP2 Cascade Chapter workshop on hostile public meetings was exceptionally high, with over one hundred public participation practitioners in the audience for the afternoon event.

Last Thursday, the Cascade Chapter of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) hosted its Public Meetings SOS workshop at the Kennedy School in Portland. The event exceeding our organization’s expectations, with over a hundred attendees from public agencies and governments throughout the Pacific Northwest.

The focus of this even was to discuss how public participation practitioners might be able to address the increased challenges facing them as opposition to public processes become more sophisticated. The events of this year showed how organized parties can dominate public meetings not with the purpose of providing their own input, but with the purpose of shutting down such input entirely regardless of the content. A panel of practitioners addressed the crowd and then worked with the attendees to formulate ideas.

A number of interesting ideas and stories emerged from the panel and the group as a whole, including panelist Jim Gladson of Berger/ABAM recounting a time when an environmental group lead a raccoon and a beaver to a podium to provide testimony. What did they do? “We responded to the disruption as if it were normal and accepted the testimony of the beaver and the raccoon.” When asked what they testified, he noted that “they did not want to be trapped.”

Ideas and questions generated by attendees were numerous.

On a more serious note, there were many practical lessons that emerged from the workshop, including:

As the workshop wrapped up, a bit of focus shifted to the possible roles of social media. “The public meeting isn’t dead,” said Gladson, “but it has a fever.” JLA Public Involvement founder Jeanne Lawson noted some of the work that her firm is doing in social media outreach, pointing out that the future of communication is more and more on the web. There are downsides, however, with Lawson noting how the comment sections on newspaper articles and the like are often filled with “vile” content that is not representative.

Lawson also noted that “public process is there to inform the decision makers, not to make the decision for them,” a comment that speaks very much to a point I have discussed here previously.

Overall the workshop was exceptionally worthwhile and showed just how much the local public participation community feels the need to craft better practices for meaningful inclusion of the citizens in the decision making process. It was a pleasure to be a part of this event, and thanks go out to everyone at the IAP2 Cascade Chapter who was a part of making this event happen.