Community Engagement in Raleigh

[keita]

The final report that recommends Raleigh’s post-CAC game plan is out, to be discussed in Tuesday’s City Council meeting!

Notice I didn’t say “the replacement to CACs”; that’s on purpose.

The report thinks much more deeply by reframing the question to understand why CACs became what they became (click me!)...

@Fearn report (p.9-10) - emphasis mine

We [the citizens of Raleigh] did not implement a community engagement system that adapted and evolved intentionally, and strategically and to Raleigh’s changing human, economic, and environmental
landscape.

The organizations given responsibility for […] community engagement were left to determine their own path. This left a void that created inconsistencies in what CACs did and how they were perceived. We did not experience CACs adapting and evolving according to demographic changes and other challenges. We were making important decisions with a non-representative sample of the citizenry. CACs seem to have evolved randomly without specific guidance from City government.

…and recommending that the city make two new functions of local government. Neither of them are what you’d think they’d be from just their names.

1. Office of Community Engagement

Think of them like a constantly-curious group of consultants. Instead of having planners upload online surveys or making parts of rezoning hearings into NIMBY soapbox platforms, this office would work with existing functions of the city as a one-stop shop the city and residents to engage with each other. City employees here would be the policy experts on getting citizen input on city functions, and lead the way in strategic efforts to make Raleigh work in a more democratic way.

2. Neighborhood Enrichment Units

They may sound like the old CACs, but they’d have a much more defined purpose with specific responsibilities. They’ll be expected to be the eyes, ears, and mouths of their local communities by training neighborhood ambassadors, organizing block parties and neighborhood cleanups, and otherwise creating direct ways to build lasting connections between Raleigh and its residents. (Sound like a certain website we all know of…?)

More about these two functions...

This is how the report describes them:

…and the two branches will have the following shared responsibilities:

@Fearn report (p.3-4)

Office of Community Engagement and the Neighborhood Enrichment Unit: Joint responsibilities

• Communications, Equity and inclusion, Innovation and creativity, Continuous learning, collaboration with constituents and stakeholders, budget and funding
• Lead the implementation of community engagement as a City-wide core organizational value as opposed to disparate, episodic, activities?
• Identify which community engagement issues are universal to all constituents, and which are unique community engagement concerns of specific communities, and create responses to both.
• Design and implement continuous learning and capacity building strategies and activities for all City departments, community organizations, and consultants conducting community engagement on behalf of the City
• Provide technical assistance to City departments, constituent groups, and other external stakeholders
• Create new portals “inspiring and sustaining the engagement of constituents new to community engagement
• Ensure the appropriate use of technology as not to replace other personal and intimate forms of engagement. Find and sustain the correct balance between post Covid virtual and in person engagement.
• Identify opportunities that address the generational (age) inadequacies of current community engagement activities
• Work constantly, seamlessly, and collaboratively with the Office of Equity and Inclusion and appropriate community stakeholder organizations to discover ways to inspire and sustain the engagement of constituents who have not been drawn to, have been excluded from, or have been inadvertently discouraged from engaging in public processes.

So the idea is that the Office and Enrichment Units work together to constantly inform each other of things citizens want, as well as what the city wants to do.

The report has a full table of what each arm is, and how they’re different from each other. The OCE is proposed to report directly to the City Manager, while the NEUs are only as influential as the OCEs let them.

This is just a recommendation, though, and the city will need to accept them and come up with new funds/methods to bring any of these things to life. Until then, we’ll still be stuck with lots of unknowns like how many NEUs will there be or how they’ll be formed/held accountable.

EDIT (in hidden text): the report said the proposed OCE will report to the City Manager, not City Council. This is probably the smarter idea, since it makes citizen engagement into less of a nonpolitical process.