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Levi and I have recently the chance to meet with several individuals in the Development Services Department for the City of Sacramento.
One of the themes emerging from these meetings is a general effort towards transparency and fostering open dialogue. Here’s a few examples…
Most of you probably know the city is updating its General Plan. They want community input on this plan and there’s a number of ways you can get involved. They post results from their outreach efforts on their website as well. Take a peek at their most recent survey results. Some interesting information here. Most notably, take a look at the summary of their findings, pages 4 – 6. We’re pretty excited about this data because it so strongly aligns with the eco-urban concepts that guide our development approach.
If you are interested in seeing new activity on projects that have made their applications, the DSD gives summaries of recent application activity. Right now, this is specific to design review and Historic Preservation projects, but they’re adding new reports in the not so distant future.
I haven’t been to one yet but I like the idea of their Lunch and Learn Series. The next one is Building 101 on March 23rd. They also post streaming video versions in case you can’t attend.
Here’s a beta version of a new forum the city is launching to try and stir up the dialogue between the community, developers, city planners, etc. I’m impressed that they are doing this and hope that it takes off. If you have a moment, take a peek at it and give them some input. Note the government section includes the City of Sacramento; pretty gutsy for a city, if you ask me. I believe it will be launching pretty soon.
Jason
10 responses so far ↓
1 Scott Beardsley // Mar 15, 2007 at 1:36 pm
I think a community forum is great and all (except of course all the wasted tax money going toward fighting comment spam) but I really think the city should be more interested in opening up the public record to machines. No, I’m not advocating in favor of machine rights. Instead I’d like to see the city offering all public information that they produce/gather in a machine-readable and open format. Make it easy to get this data and I guarantee people will start using it and becoming more involved. Merely putting up pdf format design review docs isn’t enough. Make that data available in XML and you’ll have all kinds of cool mash-ups emerge.
2 Scott Beardsley // Mar 15, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Oh ya, your link to the forum is broken.
3 LJUrban // Mar 15, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Yeah, that’s a whole ‘nother level of transparency. Have you seen this in other cities, Scott?
Link fixed.
4 Scott B // Mar 15, 2007 at 2:53 pm
I haven’t seen this in other cities but I am very interested in bringing a govtrack/aroundthecapitol like website to the local level.
5 wburg // Mar 15, 2007 at 2:55 pm
There is a searchable online database, a beta version of the full MATRIX software that isn’t working right, but I don’t have the link handy–it was on the “Tools of Transparency” flyer I got at the last NAG meeting. It is searchable by address and street name, and gives a fairly complete (if fairly obtuse, if you aren’t used to city development jargon) picture of where projects are in the permitting/approval process.
The city message board doesn’t seem like such a great idea. Online forums have a tendency to be less than civil, and development sometimes gets some folks hot under the collar. The fact that city staff are prohibited from commenting or using the board is also kind of a limitation, to say the least.
6 jason // Mar 15, 2007 at 3:12 pm
My impression from talking with the DSD folks was that city staff would be encouraged but not required to comment. If otherwise, I definitely share Bill’s concern.
As to whether or not the forum will be helpful, its certainly unknown for now: much will depend on the quality of thought from the participants. By posting about this, I’m hoping some of the intelligent and thoughtful people reading will be shapers of that dialogue.
Dialogue interests me (thus, this blog) as a learning tool and as a democratic exchange. I’ve seen good and bad forums out there: some that really elicit creative thought and intelligent exchange and some that are simply chains of rant. Bill’s prediction is probably right though: I do expect it will get hot sometimes, whether that is for the good or ill of the city remains to be seen. I’m hopeful, but then I’m that way in general.
7 jason // Mar 15, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Scott, thanks for the links. Wow: the city application seems so obvious now. Are you doing anything to make something like this a reality?
8 Scott B // Mar 15, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Grrr… my session timed out and I lost my comment.
So, I have done some work on this. Most of my work has been with geo and election data at the federal level. Of course a lot of that applies to the city level too. Lately, I’ve started taking a different approach and have am working on a semantic/structured extension to the daviswiki.org software (called Sycamore). Wiki’s add an interesting dynamic to a local political scene.
Send me an email if you’re interested in talking more.
9 E // Mar 18, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Jason - thanks for posting the links about the General Plan — every little bit helps, especially for a major project like this that has been ongoing for 2.5 years and is still going… people tend to lose interest, so the more we do to encourage public interaction the better.
To Scott - I couldn’t agree more with your points, I think it sucks that local governments tend to post everything in PDF. There has to be a better way to put up relevant and useful info in a better way. Attorneys and other planning professional types are addicted to that kind of information transfer, but it’s very limiting.
One of the things I’ve been trying to bring into the conversation about the General Plan is how we use the website to display the “product” once it’s ready or at least when we have a public review draft that is ready to go live, and also allow people to comment on the draft on-line. I’ve heard so many different angles on what is and is not meaningful public participation in governance, and it’s crazy that so many local governments have such a great opportunity to use the web in an interesting and useful way but never really get it. The link Jason posted to the DSD’s One Voice thing is a start, but I’d like to see something more interactive with maps, graphics, etc. — something that allows people to really see the consequences of choices we have to make, and to leave feedback that is relevant and helpful.
10 Jill // Mar 20, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Jason,
Thank you for posting this information and spreading the word about Tools of Transparency. It’s also great to read some of the comments and feedback. If anyone is interested in learning more about these tools and providing more feedback, the next Lunch and Learn Session is actually next Thursday, March 29 from noon to 1:30. The session will be all about Tools of Transparency, and anyone is welcome.
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