September 23rd, 2008 Collaborative Meeting

CPP Collaborate Meeting Notes, 9.23

Discussion of the internal decision-making process:
Action Teams should be the focal point within the process, and the majority of the decision-making should take place within the Action Teams. Wanted to steer away from making the Collaborative Meeting a governing body and instead use it as a place to discuss what the Action Teams are proposing and provide feedback; up/down votes will most likely be a rare occurrence within the Collaborative Meeting. Quorum will be loosely defined for. It is important right now to have the Action Teams moving forward, with the Teams focusing on their respective areas of interest and serving as the main place for decisions to be made.

Discussion of the proposed Vision/Mission Statements:
Proposed Vision Statement:
Successful democracy is based upon shared accountability between empowered citizens and their government. The Citizen Participation Program ensures citizen empowerment and joint accountability, resulting in the most beneficial outcomes for the community as a whole.
Comments:
Might be helpful to define who a “citizen” is, as well as define “government” clearly, meaning does the CPP target departments, civil servants, elected officials, etc.
“Shared accountability” is a term that could mean many different things, perhaps better to use a phase like “shared responsibility”; also good to maybe allude to what that responsibility/accountability is for citizens.

Proposed Mission Statement:
Trust and confidence in government is built through citizens' ability to effectively participate in public decisions. The mission of the Citizen Participation Program (CPP) is to enable citizens to have a greater say in city government's priority-setting and decision-making, and to give government officials a more effective and clearly defined way to communicate with the people. The CPP is an official vehicle to establish continuing dialog between communities, neighborhoods, and officials, in order to facilitate a process where citizens can have a direct impact on all aspects of government policies, actions, and public services relevant to their quality of life. The views within CPP are derived democratically, and strive for consensus by taking account of not only the rights and needs of individuals and locales, but the interest of the city as a whole.
Comments:
It might work better if it were more condensed. The second sentence in particular could work as a base for a truncated mission statement.
It is a strong change from the 2004 mission statement- it went from “providing an additional tool” in 2004 to being “the official vehicle”. Is this what we want to say? Perhaps say “the preferred vehicle” in order to leave open alternate forms of citizen participation.
“Democratically derived” also means “majority opinion”. Should we include something about CPP being a way to express minority opinions as well?
“Public decisions” should be made clear. Which decisions, and who has a right to have input in which decisions? IE does everyone get to help make decisions for a certain neighborhood, or will the decisions mainly be made by those who are affected by them?
“All aspects of government policies” should be made more clear.
A lot of this mission statement could be refined into goals- We can create a shorter mission statement that is more easy to remember and concise, and then also supply a list of goals that can draw from a lot of this information.

Feedback will go back to the Vision/Mission team, and they will work on the language some more.

Discussion on the timeline/using the 2004 model as a starting point:
Using it as starting point does not mean accepting it as is in regards to implementation. It will be a working document, and still available for changing as necessary. Group decides to move forward using the 2004 draft as a starting point.
The timeline seems good- it’s not set in stone, some teams might not be ready to present when they are scheduled, etc, but having a target end date as May 2009 is a realistic goal. Would be helpful to set out some writing assignments for teams around Nov./Dec. Certain teams should expect to be involved in supplying language/writing for the final document.