So you used to be able to just go to a CAC meeting and voice your opinion, but now you will have to apply or be nominated? I hope I’m reading that wrong, bc that sounds like even fewer people will be able to participate.
We don’t know, but that should not affect citizen participation. CEBs, at least in Fearn’s report, are not supposed to be an open floor for people with time on their hands to complain while they have city officials as a captive audience. They’re supposed to be much more involved, and are actually a part of running events, organizing surveys, holding listening sessions etc. …and it’s those places where residents participate. My understanding is that CEB members are more like formal ambassadors to thee communities they belong in.
To elaborate further...
I think there’s some benefits to having to apply to CEBs, too. It ensures that members are committed to being a part of civic engagement, plus cities can weed out crazy people who can’t debate in good faith or people who are too inarticulate to give their neighbors the voice they deserve. After all, unlike CACs, there are a lot of responsibilities mandated onto CEBs.
Also, remember that the ideas on those slides are not final. They’re just proposals that city staffers had, and wanted to publicly get feedback from councilmembers on. We also don’t know the scale of these CEBs. Will there only be one board? Will there be several spread out geographically like CACs? Will there be one for different demographic groups that specifically advise on different issues? I think that will also change what that nomination process looks like -or if that even matters in practice.
For all we know, maybe it could look more like community engagement efforts that Durham’s been experimenting with lately and recently had a presentation on? As a part of their county transit plan revision, they’ve hired local community leaders (pastors, teachers, youth leaders etc.) to help get opinions from “hard-to-reach” people with some promising results. I read the CEB proposal as a more institutionalized version of this.
If you're curious about what Durham is doing...
Their pilot program actually helped them make up for how online surveys under-sampled opinions of Black residents (who make up just under 40% of their population), though they still need to work on getting similar effects for Latinx people, younger people, people living in rural areas etc.
Durham’s experiment compared three “engagement formats”: online surveys, pop-up events, and community ambassador-led outreaches initiatives. They looked at who showed up and how residents answers to two questions changed:
They were able to get this division of respondents…
…and got some curious differences in responses:
We can see what respondents had in common…
…and what they didn’t.
More details on who responded:
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Yesterday’s City Council meeting included an update by the city’s new Community Engagement Manager Tiesha Hinton on Raleigh’s new community engagement system.
TL/DR: “Community committees” that represent different types of people living in Raleigh will functionally replace the old CAC system. These would feel more like HOAs that have a seat at the table, except you don’t owe them any dues and your membership’s based on who you are (not where you live). Concerns about neighborhoods (the kinds CACs grew around) will be heard through mechanisms that already exist in the City.
I tried to summarize it below since the attached slide deck had some figures I thought were poorly designed and explained. Click each sentence to see infographics on who’s doing what:
Click here for the summary and infographics.
For each infographic, note that you (the citizen) are at the bottom center. You’re obviously both a part of the neighborhood you live in (orange) and communities you belong to (blue; e.g. being a renter, being new to Raleigh, being a cyclist). So ideally, you want both types of your opinions to be heard by the City (i.e. for your orange and blue arrows to reach a green block).
CACs were supposed to be more democratic, until they weren't.
CACs were supposed to let citizens have a direct say in local decisions. But as we all know, they ended up being an abused loudspeaker for privileged nay-sayers.
Obviously, the only types of voices that made it into the City’s ears were those from neighborhoods. This is why CACs were a problem, and it’s why they were thrown out.
So we got rid of them, and we're working on a better system.
…we are trying to come up with a better mechanism. A new Office of Community Engagement was created, but we’re still ironing out how it’ll work in the grand scheme of things.
Phase 1 of the new system involves creating a Community Engagement Board.
The idea is that, if you say ‘let’s ask our citizens about this!’, you’ll go to them.
It’s not yet clear who will be on it, how they’ll get there, and how much power they’ll have. This will be something to keep an eye on in the coming months. However, the slide deck did include the roles they’re expected to have:
Phase 2 involves connecting CEBs to the voices of Raleigh's many communities.
Once CEBs are formed, they will help organize people from different interest groups into Community Committees.
Each committee will represent the interests of its constituents, so the CEB could ask these committees for opinions on specific things. The presentation included these examples of “focus areas” that could inform what sorts of committees could exist:
- Young adults
- Seniors
- Low-wealth communities
- Renters
- City programs, projects, and services
- Newcomers
- Language accessibility
More about who will be on the committees and how they'd work.
The committees will have to do the following things:
The idea is that these groups will be “comprised of residents with similar interest and an equitable lens on lived experiences”, and act as a bridge between the CEB and the communities they represent. Members of the CEB will “serve on a committee(s) in a leadership capacity” as well.
The idea seems to be that these committees will represent stakeholder (citizen) interests, and not city functions like planning or historic district maintenance. Because of that, the committees will “cover topics that are not explicitly overseen by a current board/commission” that already exist and report to City Council.
Click here for more observations and thoughts.
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There is a difference between neighborhoods of places (e.g. Glenwood South Neighborhood Collaborative, Mordecai Townes HOA) and communities of similar people (e.g. renters, transit users, people who are new to Raleigh). The City’s latest move carves that understanding in stone.
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The City’s existing Housing and Neighborhoods Department will be seen as the part of the city that works with neighborhoods. Likewise, the Office of Community Engagement is envisioned as the part of the city that works with communities.
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You might think this process of replacing CACs is taking forever, but it’s actually super quick. The office that drafted the proposed outline is just four months old, and it only has two people on staff for now.
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Council members who were there for the presentation (i.e. everyone except David Cox) seem to have liked what Hinton had to show. All members who spoke (Stewart, Knight, and Branch) made a point of praising just how quickly they were able to create this proposal, as well as the committee groups they used as examples.
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Who should sit in the first Community Engagement Board? Community members scouted by the Office? Volunteers approved by City Council? Both? That’s the question Hinton wanted Council to answer, but council members got carried away with talking about how cool her proposal was.
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Separate post since it’s kind of a separate topic: one of the first things the Community Engagement Board will do is to overhaul how the City handles rezoning cases and asks for public feedback.
The City already knows there’s a ton of issues with how rezoning cases are handled and communicated, how people understand them, and how much information on them is available. This is seen as so important that they will do this before they even decide how to make community committees work (see above post). Their new efforts will include:
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Creating a set of definitions and frequently asked questions about rezoning
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Recruiting and training volunteers at neighborhood meetings, and creating a community of people interested in new developments
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Creating more education programs about how rezoning and development works in Raleigh
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Create an outline and baseline expectations neighborhood meetings. This is so that developers can hold them in more consistent ways (since inconsistent communication seems to be a big issue).
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Better connection to project-specific information. This includes better signage as well as website design so that it’s easier and quicker to learn more about an upcoming project.
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Community Engagement Meeting [CACs]…cater to the retired and bored demographics.
Probably should mention this now since some of the future candidates for office want them back and they’re pointless other than to win votes.
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This is exactly why I think the city’s new approach using community committees could be super interesting and helpful! Younger people, renters, people wanting to live in more walkable places etc. would have an institution that gives people like them a megaphone that’s just as loud as the “retired and bored” naysayers.
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Any candidate that has “bring back CACs” in the first dozen bullets of their agenda lost me. No way.
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Community engagement and “neighborhood defenders” were a hot topic at the YIMBYtown conference that I participated in last week.
One example of a city that’s improved their public involvement was Cambridge, which does… a biennial, statistically valid resident survey. Council members said that the survey gives them something to point to when they make unpopular decisions, like a recent upzoning specifically for affordable housing.
Surveys don’t take as much money as you think, and certainly a lot of money gets spent on existing engagement. It would be better for the public to set priorities, not policies – to ask what government should be doing, not how to do it.
When we hire plumbers or doctors, we tell them what’s wrong, and they know the “how.” Planners also are trained in know-how, but somehow our government never trusts them and instead always asks an untrained public to second-guess them.
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does the untrained public sometimes or often get a bad plumber and/or a bad plan? can a vapor trap be replaced easier than a large public expenditure?
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"no participatory process can accurately reflect the voice of the community, no matter how well run. The reason is fundamental: there is no such thing as ‘the’ community… If there is no bounded, unified community to control development, does that mean we should abandon resident participation and rely exclusively on top-down expertise? Absolutely not. Instead, we should rethink the problem participation can solve: not uncovering community consensus, but amplifying the political voice of marginalized residents… [invest] more in low cost, ongoing exercises that produce a high volume of information, persist even after particular projects are completed, make priorities transparent, and neither seek nor assume a singular position from ‘the community’ "
New book from the same author:
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If you’ve ever wanted to speak up in City Council meetings but haven’t been able to attend (physically or virtually), there’s a new option now!
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This is from the Livable Raleigh newsletter reflecting notes from the first city Council meeting with the new members. Certainly not surprised by this, but I wonder if something is implemented, if the same dismal attendance as seen. Given Christina Jones spoke at every public hearing trying to reinstate CAC meetings, no surprise this was the first thing she did, and possibly the only reason she ran.
Councilor Jones moved that staff bring forward a proposal for in-person regional engagement meetings. Mayor Baldwin says this will be discussed at retreat. Councilor Harrison asks for immediate interim opportunity like neighborhood registry to establish a more formal community engagement structure at least in each District – monthly, with staff support and resources, residents determining structure and agenda. Asking staff to come back with menu options for community engagement, looking at the neighborhood registry and determining if that could be a method for moving forward, and bringing this forward at retreat, and ensure community engagement board understands their remit.
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Just thinking out loud. If this administration brings back CACs or something of the like, I think there will be a lot more pro-urbanism being discussed in those neighborhood meetings, as a lot has changed since 2019. Livable Raleigh might not be ready for what they’re asking for.
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LiVaBLe RaLeiGh: “We need more community engagement!!!”
Community: “Ok great, so we think density is good and want more mixed-use and varying types of residential development in our neighborhoods.”
LiVaBLe RaLeiGh: “NO NOT LIKE THAT!!!”
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Downtown Raleigh topics shouldn’t be in the hands of the suburbs so there need to be a separation.
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I don’t really care if they gather to discuss whatever. I don’t want an exclusionary club of pessimists that represent less than .1% of a region thinking they get a say in rezoning requests or other city matters. Of course all residents should get a say and an opportunity to voice their opinion, but 10 ppl voting and having that ridiculously minute representation on the record is absurd and quite honestly pointless.
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I’m very open for them to bring back these meetings. It’s been the results that I’ve always been irritated by. There should be no voting at all. The meetings should be in Q&A format, an FYI to the community and that’s it. Then the meeting can end with a, “Please send your thoughts to your councilor. This is how…”
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If some form of the CAC’s does re-emerge should the division of the core of downtown into two separate districts (C and D) be addressed? Does that division decrease or increase input from downtown residents?
I think it would be a good idea to run any engagement replacement by a city employee. I always found that the 0.1% dylan refered to getting in charge of a CAC and setting the agenda was what made them crazy. If it was run with set agendas (people could ask for items to be added to the agend) and someone who could keep the meeting going striaght that would be cool with me.
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Also the meetings were always on a random weeknight. Most people have jobs and families that take a lot of time. Making a CAC meeting on Tuesday at 7pm is not feasible when you are taking kids to soccer practice or what have you.
The demographic of people that attend and run the CAC’s is mostly retired people with nothing better to do.
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