Tonight's comp plan info session was held in the lobby of the Albany Housing Authority, and moderated by Barbara Smith. It began with a short presentation by Doug Melnick, the city's planning director, and then Doug and Barbara listened to comments and answered questions.
The content of Doug's presentation was right on target and really nice to see. He started at the beginning and laid out all the basics: What is a comprehensive plan? What does it do and what doesn't it do? Why should you care? What topics might it cover? How will the process work? This is exactly the kind of information that is often skipped over, which leads to only people in the know feeling welcome and able to get involved.
How much of the audience got as much as they could have out of the presentation isn't entirely clear. Doug had competition from the singing in the neighboring meeting room, but even without that, he was speaking softly and quickly. As countless older people have beat into my head at places I've spoken, slowing down and speaking up is essential. And tough, I know.
Also, he fell into a very common problem with Power Point presentations: He had put a fair amount of information on each slide, and he seemed to think it would be repetitious to actually say everything on there, so he'd start to describe each slide and then trail off. Even for the speed readers like me in the audience, this made the presentation a little hard to follow and made Doug seem more unsure about what he had to say than he probably was. And many people don't absorb information visually that well at all. Making sure you are always amplifying what's on the screen, rather than summarizing, is much safer (Doug has promised to make the Power Point available. Perhaps I'll be able to link to it or post some it later.)
Both Doug and Barbara handled the wide-ranging discussion (more on that next) quite well. Barbara has a knack for diffusing hostile comments without dismissing the concerns expressed. And I in particular have to give Doug major kudos for being a city official who is (1) willing to say "I don't know but I'll find out" and (2) willing to say "We didn't do X as well as we could have; We've learned from that. We're going to do it differently next time" (in this case outreach to communities of color for the SDAT) instead of being defensive. Or really just being able to respond to hostile questions in general without seeming defensive. These are simple, but very very powerful and all too rare things (especially the latter). They are much harder to learn than the finer points of public speaking.
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