The Big Questions

We have a comp plan board! (belated post)

As Richard Conti so helpfully posted in the comments, the Comp Plan Board was selected on 4/21/08 (text of the resolution below), right in the midst of a number of things that kept me from finding out about or being at the meeting. Alas. But now that this means the process is moving forward again, I shall get back in the saddle and try to keep on top of it.

RESOLUTION NUMBER 40.42.08R
RESOLUTION OF THE COMMON COUNCIL APPOINTING ADDITIONAL MEMBERS TO THE CITY OF ALBANY COMPREHENSIVE PLAN BOARD

WHEREAS, on May 7, 2007 the Common Council adopted Resolution 25.31.07R (as amended) establishing the “City of Albany Comprehensive Plan Board” with the charge of developing a comprehensive plan in accordance with section 28-a of the NYS General City Law; and,
WHEREAS, such Board is to be comprised of 30 members to be appointed by the Common Council; and
WHEREAS, Resolution 25.31.07R (as amended) designated 10 ex-officio members, one of whom shall be a member of the Planning Board; and
WHEREAS, upwards of 100 individuals expressed interest in appointment to one of the remaining 20 openings and a joint committee representative of the Executive and Legislative branches of government interviewed nearly 50 applicants; and
WHEREAS, such committee through consensus has identified a diverse and representative slate of nominees for appointment to the 20 openings on the Comprehensive Plan Board.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the following named individuals are hereby appointed members of the “City of Albany Comprehensive Plan Board” as established by and in accordance with Resolution 25.31.07R (as amended):
Matthew Baumgartner
Samantha Bosshart
Kathleen Cloutier
Elizabeth Doran
Maxine Fantroy-Ford
Jeffery Gritsavage
Christopher Hawver
Helen Klaeysen
Herbert McLaughlin
Louise McNeilly
Jeffery Mirel
Sandra Misiewicz
Dennis Mosley
Brenda Motley
Robert Schofield
Gene Solan
Joseph Stellato
Karen Strong
Scott Townsend
Arlene Way
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Ryan Hancox is appointed a member of the “City of Albany Comprehensive Plan Board” representing the Planning Board.

Not dead yet!

Hey everyone. I'm sorry for the radio silence. Partly it has been my own busyness, but partly that there was, well, little to report. But things may be creaking into gear into again:

From Cathy Fahey, an update on the Comp Plan board: "The City received over 100 applications for the Comprehensive Plan Board. Upwards of 30-plus individuals were chosen to be interviewed. Most of the interviews took place late last year. Council leadership stated that there was a long delay by City administration in scheduling the completion of the interviews. The last several interviews are being conducted this week so the upshot is that this slow moving process is moving forward once again."

From Alan Mallach on the final, more detailed report from the Sustainable Design Assessment Team process last summer: "In answer to your unasked question, the SDAT report has been finished for some time, and seems to be stuck in some design/production black hole at AIA. The short answer is 'any day now.'"

Nothing earth-shattering, but perhaps we're all about to come out of hibernation. I'll try to find out more as it happens. As usual, anyone with more details, especially anyone who participated in a Comp Plan Board interview, feel free to pipe up and offer your thoughts.

Inclusive Planning

Councilwoman Barbara Smith, the planning department, and the Arbor Hill and South End neighborhood associations are hosting a community meeting with the specific intent of getting "residents from Albany's most challenged neighborhoods to get involved in the comprehensive planning process and in other planning initiatives or at least to become better informed about them."

It will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 9, 6-8 PM at the Albany Housing Authority building, 200 S. Pearl Street. Refreshments provided. Spread the word if you know anyone who lives in those neighborhoods.

It will be very interesting to see what kind of turnout this has, and what sorts of ideas it generates. I think it's great that this is happening so early in the process.

On that note, I've been meaning to share with you the insights of Carmen Duncan, a young woman who participated in the SDAT process and had some good thoughts about inclusive outreach so I pestered her to write some of them down. (I'd been hoping, I admit, to collect answers to these and other questions from more folks, but I haven't had the time to harangue people.)

How should the comp plan process in general, and particular meetings in specific, be publicized?

Information should be posted throughout Albany not just in particular places. In such places as Equinox, bus stops, and colleges  i.e. Hudson Valley, Sage, RPI, SCCC, etc. 

Where should meetings be held? 

Meetings should be held at a neutral place, a location that all are familiar with whether it be because they have been there or heard of it. My suggestion is UAlbany.

What language should or shouldn't be used to describe them?

Use vocabulary that all are able to comprehend and/or if words such as "charrette" are used the meaning to that word should be in parentheses next to it so  those that are unfamiliar with the word will have now learned a new word and the meaning for it. This will be two lessons in one just from reading a posting.

What evidence of good will could convince the disengaged to engage?

In engaging the disengaged, one main thing is to recognize their suggestions and include them in the process. Example: In rebuilding Arbor Hill and South End let the individuals that live in this community assist in the clean up and rebuilding process. Many individuals in these communities do have skills that everyday contractors, laborers, and clean-up crews have. To have the opportunity to work with those that do the job everyday will also help make people feel good about themselves. The children should definitely be involved. For those that have to do community service and/or are on social services that do not have employment should have to work in their neighborhoods, particularly closer to their residence, during this process. This will provide a sense of inclusion which will aid in maintaining the cleanliness because they have put their hard work and time into it.

What will shoot any attempt at inclusivity in the foot?

People may turn their back on attending a meeting to learn information if the meeting is at such a place that is known for "business men/women" When posting the information for times and dates in bold print it should read "WE WANT HELP FROM THOSE IN THE COMMUNITY" and provide the communities, i.e. pine hill, south end, arbor hill, etc. because this way it is noticeable that it is not just about the "business world"

Touché

There were several points made throughout the evening about basic underlying matters of practice that Albany will need to achieve in order to move forward with some of its needed systemic changes. They almost seem too obvious to recount, and were presented as very basic, but a couple of them, shall we say, touched a nerve with the audience, and for the same reason that they did so, they are worth belaboring over and over until they come to pass:

The city needs better record keeping and databases about things like vacant properties, and all of that information needs to be open, transparent, and easily accessible to the public, as in online. Mallach made this point several times, and it generated spontaneous applause the first time. "Information is best when it's shared," he noted. [Ed note: anything involving a FOIL request or people having to show up at the Common Council to demand access so doesn't count.]

Inclusive partnerships need to be the foundation of future planning. "This is not easy because power is not evenly distributed, and people who have more are reluctant to share," said Mallach. They need to.

And all the rest is implementation: SDAT report

I had a good bus day getting to and from the final presentation of the SDAT team at St. Rose tonight (you bus riders know what I mean), so I'm in an optimistic mood. I'm not going to try to report all the details of the presentation, since the power point will be available to link to shortly and a more full report done in a few months.

Overall, I was impressed. This is with caveats—I thought the quality of the presentation was uneven and unusefully vague in spots, and I still haven't shaken my feeling that a lot more use could have been made of the collective brain power of the people who showed up with more focused, facilitated charettes. However, the good news is that there was a lot of good stuff in this presentation that I haven't actually been hearing said elsewhere, some of it that we clearly need to hear, and some of it very concrete about what we can do.

As before, I'm going to make several smaller posts roughly by theme. Please chime in, add, disagree, etc.

In which I prove yet again that I am a process nerd

It is, perhaps, a good thing that despite my great interest in it, that I am not actually a planner. The reason being that I have a great deal of impatience with off-topic comments and vague wandering unfocused discussions.

Alan Mallach, the SDAT team leader, seemed to be doing quite fine at pulling useful themes out of the conversations at the charette today, and remarked unperturbedly when I mentioned the people who couldn't stick to a request to discuss strengths of the city that most people came to something like this with something particular to say and they were going to say it whether it matched the question or not.

He is, I'm sure, right, and there is value in using such conversations to get the gestalt and tease out what's on the top of people's minds.

But I'll admit that as a participant, I was hoping for conversations that were a bit more focused: specific questions to answer, visioning exercises, brainstorming sessions about feasible solutions, group prioritizing efforts, team members offering examples on the fly of how people's concerns are dealt with in other cities for people to react to (this did happen some). I would have liked to have more interaction and even to have been pushed

I very much respect the power and creativity of the public to step up and participate in crafting its own solutions, but sometimes we all need to be shaken off our own little hobby horses and work through a structure to make that happen. At least in my experience with strategic planning processes and such, more structure leads to more useful results.

I assume that part of why this didn't happen is they didn't want to limit the direction of conversation or range of topics, and I appreciate that. Perhaps I am asking too much.

A few thoughts on the enabling legislation

Councilwoman Cathy Fahey rounded up her own summary of the last Planning Committee meeting by writing "Though, I was not completely satisfied with the outcome, the legislation is adequate and I plan to vote in favor of it at the May 7 Council meeting."

So it seems likely that the legislation will pass. After all, it's very rare for the council not to pass something that a committee recommended for passage. (Once upon it time it was rare for anyone to vote against anything . . .)

This should not mean that anyone should avoid coming to make comments if they have them. Because the legislation is leaving a lot up in the air, the way the new board will operate is still subject to discussion.

The one main point that has been under contention and will actually be decided in this legislation is that four city employees—the chief of police, the commissioner of development and planning, the commissioner of general services and the director of Albany Community Development Agency—and one appointee, a member of the planning board, will be voting members of the new board.

Many people have questioned both why employees who should be expected to be working on this process as part of their jobs also get to being voting members, and others have questioned why these people in particular; why the police chief for example, as opposed to, say, the commissioner of the Department of Recreation or a member of the Water Board.

These are good questions to ask, and I don't know that there is one perfect answer. There is at least one good reason that I haven't heard mentioned to have these people involved directly: Like anyone else, they are more likely to cooperate with implementing a plan that they feel bought-in to. And you need their cooperation to implement one, especially if you want to get into any changes beyond a simple land-use plan. That shouldn't trump public control of the process, but it's a good subordinate goal.

On the other hand, as many people have said, even the appearance of any back-room dealing or bias could compromise the process by turning people off. There are plenty of people who feel that the presence of city employees might do that.

I understand this, and even sympathize with it somewhat, but I have a couple countervailing thoughts: First, if this process is limited only to people who have set opinions about the trustworthiness of various portions of city government, then it will have been far too narrow.

And second, a planning process should be about working together. It's not about formulating two competing camps and arm-twisting people to vote for one or the other. Decisions should be made by as near to consensus as possible. So while there will likely be conflict and disagreement, and I would be reluctant to file this under the same model as much of the rest of what happens/has happened in this city. Rather, I want to see whoever is on this board enter into a process so open that even if they're used to cutting back-room deals, horse-trading, power-broking or currying favor, that there is no space for it. That would be a far greater success in my mind than flexing the might of the Common Council by keeping all members of the administration off the board.

A while back I was involved in some of the large direct-action protests that followed the one at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999. We knew that our meetings were going to be infiltrated by police. Rather than set ourselves on a futile mission of trying to be more and more secretive and exclusive so that wouldn't happen, or constantly accusing people of being infiltrators, we went the other route, doing everything completely out in the open. It was better for our souls and better for our results.

I'm pretty sure that the people who hold this concern, like Councilwoman Fahey, are not going to abandon the process if the legislation passes as is. That, at least, is clearly the right answer.

April 24th, Planning Committee: Some Commentary

If you haven't read the last three posts, they are useful background to this one. I separated this out from the quick meeting summary to make it clear that these are my (admittedly rather pointed) opinions.

Presuming the current enabling legislation passes, all five members of this committee are going to serve on the City of Albany Comprehensive Plan Board, and the board will be chaired by committee chair Dan Herring. That means that the personalities and quirks of committee members, especially their style of participating in meetings, and the dynamics between them are going to affect the process considerably. It is for this reason that I offer the observations below. They have a hard job. What follows should be taken as constructive critique, and nothing personal:

April 24th, Planning Committee: Quick Meeting Summary

First council members responded to some of the comments, noting that actually all 20 of the people who will be appointed to the board will be approved by the council, but 10 will be recommended by the mayor. Language was changed to clarify that, and to stipulate that a majority of board members would be city residents.

The major point of conflict in the committee was how much to specify about how the board would operate. Committee member Cathy Fahey, with support from Common Council president Shawn Morris, wanted to do things like give the board a time frame, specify how decisions were to be made (voting vs consensus, etc.), and specify certain topics the board should cover. Other committee members vocally disagreed, saying the board should be able to decide for itself how it would operate, with public input. Morris noted that other commissions the council has created had time frames, that bodies with no deadline often stagnate and don't complete their tasks, and that it's hard to ask someone to serve on a board if they don't know how long the commitment will be.

Fahey also agreed with those concerned about the presence of city employees on the board, and expressed a desire to have more information about how other cities have handled these questions before approving the legislation.

In the end it was agreed to add an "expected" time frame of 18 to 24 months to the legislation, but not to specify anything else about how the board might operate. A stipulation that a majority of board members be city residents was also added.

The revised legislation was passed out of committee to the full Common Council with a positive recommendation by a 4 to 1 vote, with Cathy Fahey voting against. (I will post the text of the revised legislation when I get it.)

April 24th, Planning Committee: Public Comment

Here's a round up of the public comment period at the April 24th Planning Committee meeting. In large part, comments echoed letters comments that others have been making for a couple months.

There seemed to be widespread agreement that the revision to the legislation was positive, but some remaining concern about having city employees be voting members of the board rather than just advisors. The 10 or so speakers reiterated the need for the board's 20 appointed members to be "members of the public" and a majority city residents, and emphasized the need for representation by people of diverse races and incomes, and people who don't own cars (25 percent of city residents!).

In their words:

"We need not only the appearance, but the reality of openness."
—Gene Solan, Council of Albany Neighborhood Associations

The process should be based in public participation, what the the public brings to the table, not just "invite comments" that will "beat around the edges."
—Leif Engstrom, Pine Hills Neighborhood Association

"The success [of this process] will depend on winning hearts and minds."
—Brad Allen

"I will know this is a success if I see my neighbors at these meetings."
—Lynne Jackson, Save the Pine Bush, South End resident

Feed people at meetings to increase participation. "We want this to be a happy process, where we participate because we love our city."
—Lynne Jackson (To which Councilwoman McLaughlin replied, laughing: "You would've driven that point home if you'd brought cookies.")

Poor people in the city get their news through church and school. If word has to get out, you need to use those venues. "They don't all read the TU and they don't all have e-mail."
—Archie Goodbee