Wednesday, February 17
On Wednesday evening, the Public Engagement Committee of the Cuyahoga County Transition process will host a Transition Public Engagement forum at CSU's Levin College. It should be a great opportunity for those with ideas about how to engage the public and keep them informed during the process to come and provide them.
To prep your thinking on the topic, here are some stats on the challenge faced by the process:
- There are over 1,000 people who have volunteered to be a part of the process. They range from well known people that run institutions and organizations in Cuyahoga County to concerned and interested citizens who profess no knowledge of government or processes like the one we are beginning, but have a sincere desire to help.
- There are ten transition workgroups currently that are charged with better understanding various aspects of County Government and beginning to deal with the myriad of issues and concerns that must be addressed as we move to a new form of government.
- 100% of the preparation for the transition is vested in the three Cuyahoga County Employees that have been appointed by the Commissioners per the Charter to oversee the work to ensure a smooth transition in January 2011. Those individuals have opened the process to members of the private and public sector and the public overall to help to provide ideas, insight and recommendations for the new government. There will certainly be things that will have to be done prior to January 2011 to prepare for a smooth cutover. However, a lot of the work will end up becoming briefing reports and recommendations for consideration by the new County Executive and the new Council Members.
So here are some questions that you could start thinking about or providing feedback on to help answer some of the questions and concerns about public engagment at the forum.
You can put your comments here and we'll get them to the transition team or you can email the transition process directly at charter@cuyahogacounty.us Or, you can provide your commens at tonight's forum:
1. How does the process balance "doing work" vs. "involving everyone." 100+ person committees (1,000+ volunteers/10 committees) are logistically and conversationally very difficult. In addition to inclusion of some number of volunteers on the committees themselves, could an approach where meetings are open to the public and there is a specific input time period at the end work? What about the idea of having monthly "forums" for each committee where the committee could summarize it's work and get the counsel and input of the public that want to be involved?
2. What's the balance of "expertise" and "public" involvement on each committee that makes sense? Many of these committees are dealing with detailed issues from finance to personnel to community economic development. Should there be a set minimum number of seats set aside for people with a strong interest but no specific background in a topic area? Or is it ok to vet involvement based on backgrounds and experiences (technical and not)?
3. How can the transition process use technology to make all of this easier, seamless, more transparent and more connected? Is the current Cuyahoga County Transition web site a good start? Should the transition be using a unique facebook (currently using Cuyahoga County's Facebook page) or other social media tools? A blog? The goal is to make the process as open as possible...how much responsibility should be on the part of the interested members of the public to do things like provide their email, fan the facebook pages, etc.?
4. Finally -- here's the big one -- what is it that the Public Engagement Team and the process overall can do to gain and maintain the trust of the public in this process? I think everyone takes very seriously the mandate the voters put out there in November to make change. And, the County has a responsibility to do all it can to make that transition smooth and to have it not create and service gaps for county residents. What can be done to ensure that the spirit of transparency, openess and candor that the county's appointed transition leaders have embraced is recognized and realized by the public?
Just a note about the work done so far...
A lot has been made of the fact that some of these committees have started to work and have not done so in a public way. I think we all need to be a little realistic about getting a process like this started. The County has few resources to focus its efforts here and from what I have seen county leadership has been remarkably open to involving the community in the process. It does take a little time to get organized!
Based on what I have seen and heard as a part of the process, in every committee, the only "real" work that has gotten done is to begin to talk about the objectives of the committees as set by the County Transition leadership and to begin to filter through the volunteers and their interests to start to build the committees and interest groups that will be needed in the process. The Public Engagement Committee also reviewed an RFQ for transition communications support .
Tonight's forum is the first step in engaging the broad public in the process. Every committee is just starting to begin to provide the Transition Committee Meeting Schedules, communicate the agendas and find venues that can accommodate the work and the public access that has been deemed necessary. There is going to be a lot of work for all of us to do to simply make recommendations that will ultimately have to be weighed and decided on by the elected executive and council. I hope you'll attend the forum or provide your thoughts on how to make this process effective.
Posted by:Steve Millard