Fort Walton Beach Council agenda — 09-16-08 workshop agenda — reading text

that the steering committee involve one hundred to one hundred fifty stakeholders to meet on a regular basis over the course of three to six months to analyze the charter and develop recommendations for change. Conduct outreach to the broader community. In addition to involving a core group of stakeholders in the revising the charter, the steering committee must develop methods to reach out to the broader TV, community. Mechanisms such as neighborhood -based meetings, town hall meetings, radio, newspaper and speakers bureaus can assist in educating the general public about potential changes to the charter and gathering additional feedback. Provide staff to manage the process. Projects that bring many people together to deliberate over important community issues require significant staff support to ensure success. At a minimum, a half t-ime staff position will be required. Additionally, the steering committee may consider utilizing a professional facilitator to assist in the design and implementation of the citizen engagement phase of the project. Recruit technical experts who will support the process. A charter reform process requires technical assistance and advice in a number of areas such as municipal law, municipal finance, electoral process, and governmental structure and accountability. Additionally, the reform effort may require research into the experiences of other cities as a way of providing citizens with examples of possible reforms and their potential impact on government structure and performance. Address and manage logistics such as meeting sites and food. Meeting sites must be selected that encourage strong and equal participation. Issues such as transportation and childcare should be taken into consideration and food should be provided to ensure attendance. Citizen Engagement Stave After the foundation for the project has been laid through the efforts of the steering committee in the Initiating Stage, one hundred to one hundred and fifty stakeholders will meet over the course of three to six months to analyze the charter and develop recommendations for change. We suggest that stakeholders meet approximately every three weeks to conduct the work of charter revision. The steps of this process are discussed below. A. Review current charter ( one to two meetings) v Before citizens can begin to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the charter, they need to have a clear understanding of its current configuration. A summary document of the current charter should 75 be developed for stakeholder use, and educational presentations need to be developed to inform stakeholders how particular government structures affect the practice and conduct of governmental affairs in their city. This will lay the groundwork for informed decision -making in the latter stages of the process. B. Creating a shared vision for local government ( one to two meetings) Successful citizen engagement projects often start with agreement on the shared values and overall vision that drive the project. Creating a shared vision of local government will allow participants to find agreement on the broad goals for the project and provide a framework for the meetings that follow. It can also serve as " the glue" of the project when disagreements arise and consensus seems hard to reach. An exercise to develop a shared vision for government could be catalyzed by set of simple questions such What should government be about? What should it do? If our local as " government was working at an optimal level, what would it be doing? What would it look like? C. Identify key areas to address ( one to two meetings) After stakeholders have had some education on the current charter and developed a vision for the kind of government they would like to see, discussions can begin about the areas of government structure and the charter that need attention. Presumably the existing charter is not going to be discarded in its entirety. ( For communities that are creating their first charter, recourse to the eighth edition of the Model City Charter is strongly recommended.) The steering committee, especially those members who are key experts in one or another area of government structure, should help the stakeholders frame this discussion. At this juncture, these key areas do not have to very specific. They will be further defined and analyzed later on. Key areas could include composition of the city council, power of the mayor, role of the city manager or chief administrative officer, municipal finance, and redistricting among others. Another important task in determining the key areas for charter revision is to develop some way of prioritizing the areas in which stakeholders want to make reforms. It may be that stakeholders develop a long list of possible changes that can' t all be explored at the same time. It is therefore necessary to develop an agreed -upon set of criteria such as significance, legal. feasibility, and political viability to rank the areas in order of importance. D. Evaluating key areas of the charter ( 8 to 12 meetings) After an agreed -upon set of key areas have been developed, the steering committee will need to consider two process options as they continue to guide the charter revision project. Both of these options have their strengths and weaknesses. Option I One possibility is to keep the original stakeholder group intact as an ongoing body to analyze each of the key areas for charter revision. This option allows for continuity and stronger citizen education in all aspects of the charter under consideration. Its drawbacks are that it relies heavily on technical experts to fill in the gaps that will undoubtedly emerge as citizens attempt to assess an incredible amount of material. Furthermore, this approach requires a sequential, one -at -a -time assessment of the key areas and will likely take many months. 76 Option 2 The second option is to break the stakeholder group up into work groups around each of the key areas. Work groups of 15 to 30 people meet every two weeks to analyze their key area and develop charter revision recommendations. This approach ensures deeper citizen analysis of each key area. It creates the opportunity for additional citizen involvement as the work groups can recruit other citizens to join a work group. And it allows each key area to be analyzed concurrently and thus avoids an extremely lengthy citizen engagement process. The challenges are that it requires additional facilitative expertise ( to guide each of the work groups), it requires additional efforts to ensure overlap between the work groups is synthesized, and it necessitates the identification and involvement of technical experts in each of the key area work groups. the Issues such as the number of key areas, the complexity of the issues to be addressed, enthusiasm /attendance of citizens to this point in the process, the timeline and resources available should all be taken into consideration when making the decision about the best process option. Option 2 is the more thorough of the two approaches, and the description of the process design below is based on this choice. But the steps described can easily be adapted to suit Option 1 as well. A. Structure work groups for charter revision Strong leadership and guidance is required for each work group to ensure that sound and credible recommendations for charter revision are developed. It is likely that each work group will need a chairperson( s) to manage the development of their recommendations. This person must be viewed as a respected community leader who has the ability to rise above the fray to solve disputes and keep the group focused on its goals. If process facilitators cannot be identified to work with each work group, then the chair must also possess strong facilitative and group process skills. In addition to strong leadership, each work group will require technical support in their key area. The technical expert( s) should be a resource for the specific key area the work group has undertaken. This person( s) should possess strong research and writing skills. As citizens break into work groups of their choice, it is likely that key individuals and perspectives will be absent. It is therefore necessary to identify and invite key individuals that can bring additional knowledge and perspective to the work group. It is critical that the chairperson ensure that a Work Group is balanced and is not dominated by one interest group. B. Education —what is the current status? Before deliberations can begin, each work group will need well -presented information about the current condition of their key area for charter revision. This information should include a thorough description of the current design and structure, the legal parameters of this structure, the impact of this structure on government practices and on the overall quality of life of the community, and examples of structures from other cities and towns. This presentation will be used as a springboard into the assessment of the key area. C. Analyze the key area Early discussions should focus on identifying the key issues and problems within the scope of the work group. It is important to first guide participants to agreement on what the problems and challenges are before they begin to move into solving the problems. From these discussions, the 77 work group should emerge with a set of clearly identified and agreed -upon issues for further analysis. D. Draft option memos Technical experts play a critical role during this phase in the process. Most citizens are not aware of alternatives to the current element under scrutiny and require additional information and education from technical experts. Based on the early deliberations of the work group and the issues and challenges they have identified, the technical experts will draft option memos for work group consideration. Option memos are documents that present a series of alternatives for revision of the charter. An option memo presents alternatives for charter revision on a particular topic and describes the potential impact of each option, with supplementary material from case study examples from other cities and towns, if available. E. Select options It may take a few meetings for the each work group to come to agreement on the options that they want to propose to the stakeholder group. But with three to four clear alternatives presented in the option memos, the work group should be able to stay focused on the issues and their potential by the during these discussions is crucial because solutions. Leadership chairperson( s) disagreements will emerge during these discussions. The chairperson must ensure balanced participation from the entire group as he /she leads them towards the development of a viable set of revisions. F. Propose changes to the stakeholder group Up until this point, all of the deeper analysis of key areas for charter change has occurred in separate work groups. it will be necessary to bring the Before final agreement can be