Collaborative Meeting Notes, 11.18

CPP Notes
Collaborative Meeting, 11.18


Meeting begins with staff update about CPP, attending the Master Plan meetings, and the Community Survey, which has so far reached around 175 individuals, most who have not heard of the CPP prior to the survey. CPP staff will look into creating an online survey via survey monkey.

Scope of Activities Team Report
Team started by looking at charter for points of entry for citizen participation; this was difficult and produced vague results.
Team is primarily concerned with three issue areas under which many different concerns can be clustered: Land Use and Zoning, Participatory Budgeting, and Program Review/Service Delivery
Program/Service Review and Participatory Budgeting are close in concept; gives citizens the ability to see where the money comes from, where the money is going, and what they are receiving as far as services/programs are concerned.
Perhaps the place to concentrate citizen participation in regards to the budget and programs would be at the council-district level- but it’s important to strike the right balance between constituencies and the people elected to the council. But using council districts as a focal point could greatly inform the actions taken by the executive/legislative branch.
Also possible place for interaction would be at the department level rather than the council level, especially for program/service review.
Must be pragmatic and realistic about what CPP should be able to do in order to not spread ourselves too thin and dilute any real impact that the program can have.

Important to create win/win situation between citizen and government so both sides are impacted positively by CPP.

Should CPP be based around planning districts or political districts? Decision has yet to be made.

CPP and the Master Plan
CPP was recently informed that we should provide an abstract to the City Planning Commission and Goody Clancy describing the project and the conversations occurring within it so they can integrate it with the “Future Vision” Working Group. That WG is where the CPP is currently housed- it’s the group tasked with describing what New Orleans should look like in the future.

Timeline issues: The Master Plan will be doing their first draft in Jan/Feb, but CPP is not doing a draft until March. Will the MP supersede what the CPP produces? No, because we will be done in May, and they will not have their plan finalized until September.

CPP should take this opportunity to integrate to an extend with the Master Plan- capture some of the momentum, for instance- but there are several aspects of the CPP that are not wholly related to the Master Plan, and we should not get hamstrung by tying CPP to the CPC or the Master Plan so early in the process.

A lot of people are still confused about the relationship between the MP and CPP. Perhaps some language that is simple and explains the relationship would be good to develop and have on hand.

Also important to remember that some areas/neighborhoods are just beginning to get organized and will need help understanding CPP when the system is in place.

Next Collaborative Meeting: Tuesday, December 16th

Scope of Acitivites Team Meeting Notes, 11.13

11.13.08
Scope of Activities Team Meeting

Brief discussion of work thus far regarding the exploration of participatory budgeting.
In LA, the city distributes a small blue book that is a comprehensive tally of all the income and then allocations of the city budget. Each neighborhood gets one, and during budget day, neighborhoods can help discuss different appropriations and budgetary concerns.

Participatory budgeting and program/service review are closely related. Participatory budgeting strives to include citizens in the allocation process, while service review makes sure that the money allocated is being spent wisely and the services/programs the city is running are performing adequately.

But the roles of government and the roles of citizens should be clearly defined when pursuing this.

Should program/service review be mainly focused on city departments or specific programs?
Both, when possible.
Should be able to do a department by department look at fund, the regulations on the funds as to what they can be used for, and citizens/communities should be able to help set programmatic priorities.

Example of an unclear program:
City Economic Development Fund
“Economic Development” is not clearly defined, also, the process as to how to allocate money within the fun is not defined
Conversation comparing small versus large development is currently closed to the public and should be opened up

Metrics and definitions of what a success looks like and what a failure looks like must be agreed upon before pushing for program/service review.

How do you make programs more efficient, and how do you make sure that certain standards are being met?
Issues on the “front end” of programs /services that need to be defined:
What are priorities?
How are they implemented?
Issues on the “back end” that need to be defined:
What are the returns?
What are the impacts?

Main goal: making programs efficient versus funding programs without oversight.

Questions:
Is the City Charter too rigid to do this?

Next steps:
Contact the I.G. (Cerasoli) about coming to a meeting and discussing this aspect of CPP
One page synopsis of each of the three legs of Scope of Activities
Review of the City Charter