Will 21st century public meetings law in Oregon be bound by 20th century definitions? The City of Lake Oswego seems to hope so.
Oregon has a reputation as a state with a high degree of transparency, thanks largely to its open meetings laws (see ORS 192.610, or the Oregon Department of Justice’s Public Meetings Handbook). Yet [...]

TriMet’s new light rail alignment through downtown would not have happened as smoothly without a highly effective public outreach program. Yet how do practitioners become equipped for this kind of work?
Recently I had the pleasure of joining the local chapter of the International Association for Public Participation (also known as IAP2) for a social event [...]

This morning, a fighter, a citizen activist, a pillar of local politics, and a vast influence on my life passed away. Her name was Martha Bishop, and she was 87 years old.
I first met Martha when, at the age of 17, I walked into a City of Tigard committee meeting and got “hooked.” To me, [...]

Last week, Rafe Needleman at CNET had an interesting article on open data and transit agencies. The long and the short of it is that while some agencies (such as our own TriMet and San Francisco’s Muni) are at the forefront of making their data available to the public, other agencies are going the opposite [...]

I’ve been watching the progress of WES, TriMet’s first commuter rail line, with great interest since its opening in February. One of the many aspects of it that strikes me as fascinating is the total lack of understanding by some of the function of commuter rail. On more than one occasion, I have heard people [...]

Previously, I talked about how to illustrate the transition of an area in relation to building forms and mass. Displaying anticipated or proposed changes such as these to the public can be fraught with conflict, as citizens display community change adversity in the face of what feels deceptively like a cohesive civic juggernaut.
Another example [...]

Recently I was reading a post on David Eaves’ blog about how involved (or uninvolved) today’s youth are in politics. Eaves makes the point that many of the younger generation are not uninvolved, they are simply involved in what he terms “extra political engagement:”
But because the efforts are often invisible, herein lies the real dangers: [...]

Planners have what I consider to be one of the toughest jobs in government. They are charged with charting long range courses that are often beyond visualization to all but a few dreamers, and often those very dreamers are either cranks or, well, other planners. (Please hold all cynical remarks, thank you!) But what makes [...]

For those of us who have spent long hard years in public service as citizen activists, it is sometimes hard to understand how government really functions. I don’t mean who reports to whom, but rather why governments act the way they do, and who really makes a given decision, and how they are reached. At [...]

Public outreach is something that — especially in the Portland region — we talk a good game about, but rarely do we do it well. Sure, we make lots of pretty brochures and web sites, but when it comes time to go out and do some face-to-face with the public time, we tend to become [...]