Improving community decision making

How many of you live in communities where community meetings are boring affairs punctuated by outrage?  How many of you feel like influencing your local government means showing up en masse with a pettion or an organized campaign to get them to make a small change?  How many of you are just plain disillusioned with your local government and have given up trying to help them involve citizens in decision making?

And how many of you are leaders that are frustrated by citizens who just yell at you all the time?  How many of you don’t actually know what you are doing, but could never admit that in public?  How many of you have tried to involve the community once, failed and vowed never to do it again?  How many of you have strategic communications strategies (public or secret) for dealing with your own citizens?

This is what it has come to in many places.  In my local community, not unlike many others across Canada, our local Council was elected on a tide of resentment that was stoked against the previous Council.  For most of the previous Council’s term, a group of citizens mounted a campaign of smear and slander, including starting a newspaper funded by developers devoted to criticizing almost every Council initiative and culminating in an election campaign where four of the sitting members of Council were branded “The Gang of Four.”  And even subsequent to the election 18 months ago, there has been an ongoing litany of blame against the old Council and people considered to be nsupportive of the old Council (and I count myself as one of them).  The result is, on our local island, there is a real sense of cynicism.  The new Council has not created any new initiatives with respect to involving citizens, and has, if my records are straight, only one “town hall” meeting.  We have been short on dialogue and deliberation and if there are any decisions being made at all, they are being made without the invitation of the community.  It feels sad, not because somehow the old Council was better than this one, but because our community can be so much more interesting and engaged.

Over the years citizens on Bowen have self-organized not just is lobby groups to advocate for particular policy decisions, but to actually build things that local governments should otherwise be doing.  A group of citizens from across the political spectrum participated in a unique group called Bowen island Ourselves, which sought to undertake these kinds of initiatives to compliment local government services and functions.  As a result, we did things like develop a crowdsourced road status tool, hosted a parallel process of Open Space dialogues alongside the formal consultation process for our official community planning process, sponsored deliberation meetings on issues such as local agriculture and the proposal to create a national park on Bowen Island, organize and implement BowenLIFT as an alternative transportation system.  Lots of stuff.

But when the well becomes poisoned and citizens and elected officials begin just screaming at each other, fear takes over and stuff like that shuts down.  We are in a period like that right now on Bowen, and the result is that a number of decisions are being made that have a significant impact on the future of our island, especially with respect to our village centre, without having any creative public dialogue.  There is simply no place for the public to be a part of co-creating the future.  We will get open houses on the plans that Council designs with a few advisors.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.  There are thousands of tools out there that can help people do interesting and creative community engagement.  This list of decision making tools from the Orton Family Foundation came through my inbox today. What is required to choose these tools?

Well first, a local government must be brave enough to stand in front of it’s citizens and ask for help.  Assuming that you have the answers to complex questions is unwise.  Better to be learners in office than heros.  Second, a local government has to trust it’s citizens and create a climate where ideas can be discussed respectfully.  Sure there are always going to be people wanting to take shots at you (especially if you played that way before you were in office) but as local leaders, there is an art to opening space where citizens can be in dialogue rather than debate.  Third, local governments have to be serious about using what they learn and being clear an transparent about why they are choosing some ideas over others.  Lastly it helps if local government leaders actually relish their jobs and see their community members, even the ones they disagree with as interesting and worthwhile neighbours.  I have heard many local elected officials over the years express outright contempt for their citizens (although rarely does it happen while the official is sitting in office)

If you get some of this right, things can open up.  If that’s what you want.  But it takes leadership, and not just the kind that massages agendas and works behind the scenes.  It requires leaders to stand up in front of their citizens and declare their willingness to make a new start and to leverage the best of their community’s assets.  It requires leaders to trust their citizens and to relish working with them to create community initiatives and services that are loved and enjoyed by all.

I’d love to hear stories of local governments that changed their tune midstream to become open and excited about inclusive and participatory decision making processes.  It would inspire me to hope that maybe something like that is possible where I live.

Randy flickers

Every year the dawn chorus swells between February and late June.  Birds on their way north stop off here and make some noise, and the resident nesters carry on finding mates and raising young, and in the case of eagles and ravens, eating everyone else's eggs.

This year, for whatever reason we have one northern flicker that has taken up residence around our house and flies from tree to tree to roof to tree making a huge noise.  It laughs all the time - ALL the time - and then lands on top of the metal roofs or the transformers on the power poles in fron of our house and drums incessantly.

Have a listen to him laughing away.

So we are officially advertising for a mate for our randy flicker.  Come and get him, females...he's hot to trot.

Past last frost

Came back from a week skiing at Sun Peaks and found that Bowen had been bathed in sun and warm temperatures. Spent the evening conditioning the soil and getting ready to plant. Here's what's already up:


Chives




A rogue borage that has nice edible flowers for salad.




Hyacinth, daffodil and some rock flowers.




Over wintered kale




Rogue sorrel




Chard also from last winter




Beds all ready to go.

Hitching on Bowen

Bowen LIFT got a nice boost on CBC Radio this morning. Listen to the podcast here.

Protecting Howe Sound

Now that Howe Sound is well on the way to recovery from years of toxic leeching from gold mines, mills and industrial development, it's time to wreck it again!

“This repeated series of proposals for heavy new industry in Howe Sound, we believe, underscores the need for a comprehensive management plan put in place for the Howe Sound region,” he said.
As an example of the current piecemeal approach, he said Sunshine Coast Regional District has a document called “We Envision” that sets forth a set of ecosystem management objectives. But the document’s reach stops at the north end of the Howe Sound Pulp and Paper mill at Port Mellon, he said.

“There have been hundreds of millions spent on remediation of Howe Sound, and there’s been a significant recovery of the sound, but it’s very fragile and it’s not a given that the overall recovery will not be put in jeopardy by heavy, new industry.

“This [Woodfibre LNG] is clearly a large project. We don’t know a lot about it, but there’s certainly potential for impacts such as what I’ve outlined and we have concerns about those potential impacts.”
Though Gau didn’t want to get into specific concerns about the potential impacts of the Woodfibre LNG project, former Squamish councillor Meg Fellowes did. She told The Chief on Friday (March 8) that the “re-industrialization” of the Woodfibre site has the potential to threaten ongoing efforts to restore the sound to environmental health after decades of degradation, most of it the result of heavy industry.

The struggle to clean up the sound began well before the Woodfibre mill closed in 2006, she said, but has become much more evident since that time, Fellowes said.

Thanks in large measure to the efforts of groups such as Squamish Streamkeepers, who have worked diligently to restore the herring spawn to its former glory, dolphins and even whales have been seen at the head of Howe Sound. Tens of millions of dollars spent on water-quality remediation has also resulted in the restoration of the salmon run on Britannia Creek, she said.

Any sort of discharge from a future Woodfibre LNG plant, or from tanker ships serving the facility, has the potential to wipe out those gains in a matter of hours, she said.

Join the Future of Howe Sound Society.

This afternoon's playground

Got a bunch of work done today so to celebrate I headed out on my SUP for an hour long paddled from Tunstall Bay to Cape Roger Curtis across pristine shoreline teeming with life. Gulls eating starfish and anemones, oystercatchers with their high pitched calls skimming the top if the way. Eagles soaring over the trees.

Only the slightest hint of a headwind outward bound but glassy still on the return leg. It's so quiet out here today.

And the beauty of living on the South Coast of BC in winter is that Sunday I will go skiing with the kids over at Cypress Mountain.

Beach in Friday, ski hills on Sunday. Winter ain't so bad after all.

Passage Island

Thus morning, at the entrance to Howe Sound where I live.

We are entering early spring here in the south coast. I call it herring season. Daffodils are a couple of inches above the earth, redwing blackbirds are calling in the Cove and the rain and the sky are both lighter.

Herring will be coming soon and with them perhaps the dolphins that feed on them. It's quiet at this time of year. And we are waiting.