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