The Equity of Citizen Participation
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.
By Karin Roscoe
March 2, 2021
As a part of my Master in Public Administration program a few years back, I took part in 100 acts of civic participation. One of these involved attending a city council or county board meeting, interviewing the members and writing a comprehensive report. I chose an important county meeting on a hot evening in August. Even with my best efforts, I found myself distracted by the public, who kept getting up for a meeting agenda to use as a fan. The advanced age of many made quite an ordeal.
Public comment was taken in the usual fashion—people signed up, lined up, spoke for three minutes on the topic at hand, received no response, had the buzzer buzz at them, were thanked and then quietly sat back down. The board of five white men and women looked down from the dais at the speaker during their three minutes. The reaction of the board—impassive and duty-bound—remained the same regardless of whether the speaker was calm or emotional. The meeting was in order, and that was precisely what was off.
As public administrators, we are both aware of and resigned to the lack of diversity in our public meetings. Laudable creative strategies are punctually deployed to increase it, including taking meetings with key stakeholder groups, providing evening childcare, making some meetings more ‘fun’ and even doing away with the chambers altogether by hosting off-site meetings. Staff members, myself now included, have a lot of fun with coming up with ideas to build diverse participation, but such activities are resource-intensive and unsustainable. They can even come across as spectacle or political posturing.
Our familiar structures and rules of order are alienating to many of our community members, because they restrict emotional response, use procedural English and require a great deal of process knowledge. People who adeptly navigate the system and understand the ‘rules of order’ are mostly comfortable. This includes BIPOC and young people who are well-educated; indeed, we will pat ourselves on the back when ‘they’ show up, thinking we have real diversity when it is not even remotely representative. Those who can’t navigate the system, don’t understand it, don’t trust it or have been hurt or broken by it do not show up. Or they will keep showing up without finding a way to be heard. We need involvement of people the system has failed, because the only way we can begin improving things is to learn from their experience.
For sustainable and real diversity in our meetings, we should work on our institutions directly rather than distract from them. Here are three ideas how:
- Change the physical structure of the room
The physical space of the public meeting is uninviting to the public and unproductive for constructive dialogue. During Scott Lazenby’s time as City Manager of Lake Oswego, the city’s traditional dais arrangement was modified so as to have chairs seated around a mostly round table, with places for both councilmembers and staff plus a ‘floating’ seat for public speakers. This rearrangement did two things: a) it reminded both the council and the members of the public that the councilmembers were representatives and here was a place for action, rather than a show between ‘actors’ and ‘audience’; b) it brought the public speaker within the circle, which created a more welcoming and inclusive environment.
2. Modernize language and allow expression
As public administrators, it seems to me that we are hampering our ability to engage effectively with diverse communities by having a mindset that language should be a certain way. The English spoken in public meetings is full of jargon and inaccessible or hostile to many, even the most educated. Intense emotion is frowned upon. We need more examples of communities brave enough to experiment with language that can be both productive for legislation and inclusive. Technology, like simultaneous translation or Natural Language Processing that translates proposed ideas into legalese, may be positioned to assist with this in the future. In the meantime, we can decide to spell out acronyms, explain jargon, learn to respond to the public more often and constructively and not take process for granted. It is one thing to diversify the faces in our meetings—it is even more crucial that we not discriminate based on capacity and style of expression.
3. Evaluate for inclusivity, not just diversity
We need to evaluate not just for diversity, but also for inclusivity. In their 2018 paper, A Discussion of Diversity and Inclusivity at the Institutional Level, Martinez-Acosta and Favero describe diversity as being a, “Quantifiable measure of individuals in a group,” and inclusivity as unquantifiable. Inclusivity is the feeling that one’s experiences are, “Respected by those around you and that your participation provides unique perspectives that help create better solutions.” We can evaluate for inclusivity by seeking more qualitative data from our meetings and through surveys, interviews, focus groups or task forces.
Inclusive public participation should not be a side-activity. Rather, it should be embedded into our very institutions.
Author: Karin Roscoe holds an M.P.A. and an M.B.A. from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. She has worked as a Program Manager in Community Development for the City of Arcata, California, and her work there included streamlining citizen input into planning processes. She currently works for Berlin-based citizen participation platform, Civocracy, and enjoys looking for creative solutions to challenging
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The Equity of Citizen Participation
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.
By Karin Roscoe
March 2, 2021
As a part of my Master in Public Administration program a few years back, I took part in 100 acts of civic participation. One of these involved attending a city council or county board meeting, interviewing the members and writing a comprehensive report. I chose an important county meeting on a hot evening in August. Even with my best efforts, I found myself distracted by the public, who kept getting up for a meeting agenda to use as a fan. The advanced age of many made quite an ordeal.
Public comment was taken in the usual fashion—people signed up, lined up, spoke for three minutes on the topic at hand, received no response, had the buzzer buzz at them, were thanked and then quietly sat back down. The board of five white men and women looked down from the dais at the speaker during their three minutes. The reaction of the board—impassive and duty-bound—remained the same regardless of whether the speaker was calm or emotional. The meeting was in order, and that was precisely what was off.
As public administrators, we are both aware of and resigned to the lack of diversity in our public meetings. Laudable creative strategies are punctually deployed to increase it, including taking meetings with key stakeholder groups, providing evening childcare, making some meetings more ‘fun’ and even doing away with the chambers altogether by hosting off-site meetings. Staff members, myself now included, have a lot of fun with coming up with ideas to build diverse participation, but such activities are resource-intensive and unsustainable. They can even come across as spectacle or political posturing.
Our familiar structures and rules of order are alienating to many of our community members, because they restrict emotional response, use procedural English and require a great deal of process knowledge. People who adeptly navigate the system and understand the ‘rules of order’ are mostly comfortable. This includes BIPOC and young people who are well-educated; indeed, we will pat ourselves on the back when ‘they’ show up, thinking we have real diversity when it is not even remotely representative. Those who can’t navigate the system, don’t understand it, don’t trust it or have been hurt or broken by it do not show up. Or they will keep showing up without finding a way to be heard. We need involvement of people the system has failed, because the only way we can begin improving things is to learn from their experience.
For sustainable and real diversity in our meetings, we should work on our institutions directly rather than distract from them. Here are three ideas how:
The physical space of the public meeting is uninviting to the public and unproductive for constructive dialogue. During Scott Lazenby’s time as City Manager of Lake Oswego, the city’s traditional dais arrangement was modified so as to have chairs seated around a mostly round table, with places for both councilmembers and staff plus a ‘floating’ seat for public speakers. This rearrangement did two things: a) it reminded both the council and the members of the public that the councilmembers were representatives and here was a place for action, rather than a show between ‘actors’ and ‘audience’; b) it brought the public speaker within the circle, which created a more welcoming and inclusive environment.
2. Modernize language and allow expression
As public administrators, it seems to me that we are hampering our ability to engage effectively with diverse communities by having a mindset that language should be a certain way. The English spoken in public meetings is full of jargon and inaccessible or hostile to many, even the most educated. Intense emotion is frowned upon. We need more examples of communities brave enough to experiment with language that can be both productive for legislation and inclusive. Technology, like simultaneous translation or Natural Language Processing that translates proposed ideas into legalese, may be positioned to assist with this in the future. In the meantime, we can decide to spell out acronyms, explain jargon, learn to respond to the public more often and constructively and not take process for granted. It is one thing to diversify the faces in our meetings—it is even more crucial that we not discriminate based on capacity and style of expression.
3. Evaluate for inclusivity, not just diversity
We need to evaluate not just for diversity, but also for inclusivity. In their 2018 paper, A Discussion of Diversity and Inclusivity at the Institutional Level, Martinez-Acosta and Favero describe diversity as being a, “Quantifiable measure of individuals in a group,” and inclusivity as unquantifiable. Inclusivity is the feeling that one’s experiences are, “Respected by those around you and that your participation provides unique perspectives that help create better solutions.” We can evaluate for inclusivity by seeking more qualitative data from our meetings and through surveys, interviews, focus groups or task forces.
Inclusive public participation should not be a side-activity. Rather, it should be embedded into our very institutions.
Author: Karin Roscoe holds an M.P.A. and an M.B.A. from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. She has worked as a Program Manager in Community Development for the City of Arcata, California, and her work there included streamlining citizen input into planning processes. She currently works for Berlin-based citizen participation platform, Civocracy, and enjoys looking for creative solutions to challenging
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