June 13, 2005
The Re-Founding Of The City Of Portland
Underneath Mayor Potter's 'Innovations'
Something of a jarring -- and more than a little disconcerting -- realization hit us this evening, as we sat within the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center listening to the first meeting related to the Bureau Innovation Project recommendation to restructure and revitalize Portland's neighborhood system.
What little coverage there's been so far of Potter's initiatives to review and revise various elements of City governance has been of the vaguely wonkish variety, painting a picture of some policy tinkering with a possible abandonment of commission government thrown in for good measure. But that misses the big picture, just as much as we ourselves have been missing the big picture.
To see that big picture, however, we should be familiar with at least a few of the discrete elements Potter's been slowly putting into motion -- in this case, four of the twenty recommendations out of the Bureau Innovation Project.
- Develop a Citywide Strategic Plan in Collaboration with a Community Visioning Process by March 2006. An extensive community process, beginning in July 2005, will identify the shared values of all Portland citizens. The results of this process will be used as a platform to develop a citywide strategic plan, with a vision, mission statement and goals for bureaus to link to and develop performance measures. The strategic plan framework will focus the work of the City and provide a basis for measuring progress and to make further organizational changes within the City bureau structure.
- Redefine and Revitalize the Office Of Neighborhood Involvement. Conduct a complete assessment of ONI’s mission, goals and organizational structure to reinvigorate citizen participation and involvement and supporting the City’s goals of diversity and inclusiveness to build community capacity.
- Collaborate with the Portland Development Commission to Determine Common Goals, Clarify Roles and Responsibilities and Improve Public Involvement. Appoint a work team to determine common goals and priorities among the Commission and the City Council, provide for greater City Council direction and oversight of Commission activities while maintaining their independent authority, clearly define roles and responsibilities and identify improvements to PDC’s citizen involvement process.
- Appoint a City Charter Review Commission by October 1, 2005. Assess the City’s charter to consider alternative governing structures and changes which will improve customer service, streamline government operations, offer more flexible hiring practices for bureaus, encourage better collaboration with PDC and update, simplify and clarify rules which no longer apply, are unclear, or could be accomplished more efficiently.
You can see how even the Project's own use of language in its recommendations makes for a fairly mundane and wonkish read. You have to step back and envision how these four elements may play themselves out in order to see what's really at stake here. To do that, we turn to the example of the recommendation to redefine and revitalize the Office of Neighborhood Involvement as discussed at Monday night's meeting.
We're not, for now, going to dwell on the details of the two-hour discussion. What's important is that the assembled group was challenged to think of the task before them in this way: For the sake of argument, put aside the current structure of neighborhood coalitions and associations. If you had the opportunity to build a system of institutionalized neighborhood involvement from the ground up, what would it look like?
Think about that for a moment. Whether or not the system eventually designed was a retooled version of what currently exists, the mindset of the above describes a process where everything is on the table, and where Portlanders take the time to imagine their best system and what it would take to create it.
Now extend that to the other four recommendations we listed above.
The proposed community visioning process has been described in more readily-accessible terms this way: What kind of City do you want Portland to be thirty years from now? The potential scope of that discussion alone is enormous.
Examining the Portland Development Commission is no small matter either, given the central role that the use of state-sanctioned urban renewal tools have played in the direction of Portland since the agency was created in the late 1950s. What tools are available, and who ultimately controls them, will have as significant impact on Portland's next forty years as the chartering of PDC had on the last forty years.
Which of course brings us to the coming review of the City Charter, which brings with it the most visible of the potential changes to Portland's structures: The possibility of moving away from the commission form of government under which the City has functioned for nearly one hundred years.
To be sure, any given one of these four examinations will range as widely or as narrowly as their participants decide. But if tonight's meeting is any indication of how all of the above recommendations are going to be handled, the doors are being thrown open. It's just a matter of whether or not Portlanders walk through them.
What's being contemplated here, but what no one is discussing overtly, is a process which enables the nearly wholesale rewrite of Portland's civic structures. If, and only if, the City's body politic so desires.
That would make this is a foundational moment -- a Founding moment. It sounds hyperbolic, and we understand the instinctive and immediate recoil such language provokes. But the processes being put into place by the Potter administration issues precisely that challenge to the people of Portland.
At tonight's meeting, Potter spoke of children and grandchildren thirty years from now looking back and recognizing just how important were the events of 2005.
What he's talking about is the possibility that decades from now, future E. Kimbark MacColls and Jewel Lansings will describe today's Portlanders as the generation that in essence re-founded the City of Portland.
Comments (11)
tomhiggins on 14 Jun 2005
If this is a golden oppertunity then it will need thoughtful well reasonsed citizens to sieze upon it and make it more than just a wonkfest. Without the gestalt of the citizens in the mix this will all become YetAnotherBlahBlah moments in the city's run up to more status quoism.
Portland needs folks to take part, to make sure the plethora of viewpoints are stired into the mix. We need those people to stand up and take it to the process.
Feeling a bit of a "draft" coming on bix?
Activate Your Inner Citizens
-tomhiggins
Steve Schopp on 14 Jun 2005
I wonder what this is supposed to mean.
"Portland needs folks to take part, to make sure the plethora of viewpoints are stired into the mix. We need those people to stand up and take it to the process."
And what is "neighborhood involvement" is supposed to mean.
Having witnessed enormous involvement by many folks and multiple neighborhoods during the South Waterfront process I can say "involvement does not mean influence.
Countless volunteer hours, and expenses, by many led to virtually no effect on the SoWa planning decisions. Regardless of the quantity and quality of objections or concerns brought to the table by neighborhood representatives and numerous folks on their own. On a number of issues fatal flaws were all but ignored.
This sort of involvement without influence is worse than no involvement at all in that it enables the city to claim "broad public participation" even though they had no little or no effect.
At times this so called "broad public participation" is also morphed into broad public support.
There are plenty of people who get involved. The problem is that too often the public agency staff works against everything they bring and in support of the often predetermined outcomes for the truly powerful.
allehseya on 14 Jun 2005
I didnt attend the meeting and it's not because I didnt want to.
I'm conducting an experiment, actually -- to see how the information from these meetings gets distributed to regular citizens for further involvement.
I raised this issue at the 'salon' so often mentioned from previous posts on other threads regarding ONI and its purpose, past present and future without much response.
And by the way --- from my experience with the salon and other discussions with NA members -- the idea of ONI doing anything more than serving NAs and coalitions is not going over well with the majority of people heading up NAs and coalitions themselves. In fact, from the discussions I've had in the one salon and in other discussions with NA members -- they see this "founding moment" as an opportunity to have ONI return to its original purpose when it was ONA -- back in the days of good ole Portland.
The 'vision' is that some other bureau or new entity / bureau could emerge rather than see ONI continue on its track of serving a broader "Citizen Involvement" or "diversity' mission -- at the apparent expense of NA and coalition funding. (I disagree with this approach but do understand why the NAs and coalitions feel so strongly about it.)
That isnt my main beef right now though - my main concern right now is with the process in which these issues are being discussed.
While I completely agree that this time does have the potential to indeed be a revolutionary -- or "founding" moment -- I daresay that unless citizens get the message -- the only thing that will happen is precisely as Tom stated:
"If this is a golden oppertunity then it will need thoughtful well reasonsed citizens to sieze upon it and make it more than just a wonkfest. Without the gestalt of the citizens in the mix this will all become YetAnotherBlahBlah moments in the city's run up to more status quoism."
Consider: there was opportunity for the event to be video-taped -- but ONI never seized it.
There was a suggestion that you, b!X -- become key as an active organizer for the event towards distributing information and obtaining feedback from the community -- but that fell flat (not that you'd even want the role, perhaps).
So I wonder -- as an ordinary citizen - how will I know that I am
(1.) living in a critical time in Portland history and
(2.) how I may contribute to its unfolding / shaping and especially --
(3.) speak for myself instead of some organization or NA / or coalition speaking 'for' me or on my behalf -- while simolataneously admitting that they dont even 'represent' me?
I'll be scouring the newspapers this morning with my tea to find the answers to these questions.
In the meantime -- the IFCC facility continues to be available for these discussions -- although I strongly suggest that in the future -- Potter and company take advantage of the videotaping services and live cable feed for public airing that we have housed here...
The One True b!X on 14 Jun 2005
Actually, it was announced that the meeting was taped and will be on City Net 30.
allehseya on 14 Jun 2005
heh. It was videotaped just not through IFCC -- it was arranged directly with PCM : )
allehseya on 14 Jun 2005
Actually, it was announced that the meeting was taped and will be on City Net 30.
Yes -- apparently they were working with Portland Community Media directly.
The One True b!X on 14 Jun 2005
I would assume that would be because PCM/CityNet30 are the oens responsible for producing/disseminating government-related video.
Anne Dufay on 14 Jun 2005
allehseya -- I agree that answering the question of how folks will learn of this process, follow it, and engage in it as it evolves is critically important.
It's still way early in the process though, so I wouldn't despair yet, but rather do what you are doing - raise the issue, and keep it up there. I've already spoken my mind on this exact subject to my fellow ONI Bureau Advisory committee members -- and the more people suggesting more and better ways to communicate, the better.
As for who will speak for you in the process -- there are many organizations who have been asked to take part in the process, not just the NA's/Coalitions. Certainly none of them can claim to represent every Portland citizen, but among them all, surely there's one that might feel like your happy home?
And, of course the NA folks want better support and opportunities to do their work. They are proud of what they do, they understand its value to the city and their neighborhoods. They are mission-driven folks, just like all the volunteers working in all the other non-profits in Portland. And the "value" of their work to Portland is like that of most other volunteers as well -- priceless.
allehseya on 14 Jun 2005
I would assume that would be because PCM/CityNet30 are the oens responsible for producing/disseminating government-related video.
Yes, this is true -- but there's a process for this to occur. How do we ensure this dissemination is the point. The process was completely ignored. ONI and the City didnt ensure it with/through PCM as I had assumed -- our community partnership ensured it as PCM provided the service anticipating such a need and trying to meet it - should it arise -- and that in large part because our PCM partners knew I was pushing for them to be prepared for it in the event that ONI or the City ever responded to the option. You see, if it werent for the PCM initiative, it wouldnt have been videotaped or aired at all.
I'm thrilled that my contact at PCM has that kind of initiative but the process should be addressed nonetheless.
It's still way early in the process though, so I wouldn't despair yet, but rather do what you are doing - raise the issue, and keep it up there.
I should say that ONI is very cooperative about addressing the process now -- and -- now that they and the Mayor's office apparently see the value and merit of it being taoed and aired (I'm making a broad assumption here -- I do know the Director of ONI sees its merit) -- maybe it will become a part of the general process as these meetings continue throughout the year. I for one, hope so....
allehseya on 14 Jun 2005
And, of course the NA folks want better support and opportunities to do their work. They are proud of what they do, they understand its value to the city and their neighborhoods. They are mission-driven folks, just like all the volunteers working in all the other non-profits in Portland. And the "value" of their work to Portland is like that of most other volunteers as well -- priceless.
I agree completely regarding their value and I do value them, as I think you know -- I also think that there are some real and even -- valid -- issues centered around the reservation that ONI be the bureau that is charged with a broader "Citizen Involvement" mission.
Chris Lowe on 14 Jun 2005
An extensive community process, beginning in July 2005, will identify the shared values of all Portland citizens.
It occurs to me that one value shared fairly widely, perhaps more widely than any other, is that it's a good thing that Portland culture tolerates and encourages a diversity of values.
The presumption that there are shared values of all Portland citizens seems to me to need scrutiny.
The restriction of a strategic plan to such values or something approaching that level of consensus also troubles me. Shouldn't a strategic plan include strategy for dealing with things people disagree about, and for dealing with disagreements in a constructive way?
I am completely ignorant about the Bureau Innovation Project and what persons, forces or interests shaped its recommendations. But this has me worried. The thing is, I don't know whether to be worried because this consensus focus is a recipe for doing nothing, because so little will be included unless it is at the level of being all things to all people? Or should I that this is a vehicle for powerful interests to define values they prefer as consensus values, falsely?