A New Tool for Raleigh’s Emerging Community Engagement Model
Like most other American cities, Raleigh relies on self-selecting forms of community engagement. Prior to their defunding, Citizen Advisory Councils (“CACs”) were one of the primary engagement tools available to Raleigh residents. The “self-selecting” nature of CAC’s was one of the primary reasons they were defunded. While varied across the City, CAC attendance was spotty and certainly not representative of the City’s diverse population. Much of the rest of Raleigh’s engagement model relies on self-selecting processes like online surveys, community meetings, town halls and pop-up events, to name a few. In other words, various City departments make engagement opportunities available and those who are interested in whatever topic was under consideration can attend. Consistent with recent research, the results of this engagement model overrepresent older, white, wealthier single-family homeowners. This oversampling tends to overwhelm the input from renters and historically marginalized communities.
The City is currently addressing some of these deficiencies through the recently created Office of Community Engagement. Led by Tiesha Hinton, the office is reimagining the City’s engagement model by focusing on ways to uplift the voices across the community that are often overwhelmed by the oversampling of the self-selecting engagement model. While still relying on self-selecting tools, there have been significant improvements worth noting. One is the Community Connectors program. Community Connectors are residents from diverse backgrounds that will help reach deeper into their communities to provide information and encourage more residents to offer input across the many areas where the City seeks resident input. Another improvement is the Community Engagement portal that serves as a clearinghouse on the City’s website for every ongoing City engagement opportunity.
While no city has perfected an engagement model that captures input across all relevant demographic characteristics, some communities use lottery-selected panels (“LSPs”) (also called citizen assemblies or deliberative democracy). LSPs are an emerging engagement tool used to develop and implement public policy. These panels consist of a random, representative sample of residents chosen through a lottery system. Once assembled, the panel members are educated on the issue at hand and given the opportunity to deliberate and make recommendations to elected officials.
LSPs combine the principles of scientific polling with enhanced community engagement. In its simplest form, an LSP uses scientific sampling to identify a pool of potential participants that represents residents across a specific set of predetermined demographic characteristics. Once the pool is identified, people within the pool are invited to participate in the engagement process using a variety of outreach techniques. The engagement panel is officially established once the desired number of participants reflecting the specified demographic profile agree to serve.
LSPs can be used for any engagement effort from one-time, hyper-specific projects to complex projects like developing comprehensive plans. It can even be used to ensure diverse membership on planning commissions, boards of adjustment, and more. Establishing an LSP is just the first step. To maximize the potential of LSPs, some cities pay participants a stipend to encourage consistent participation, along with providing childcare and transportation. While participation by any resident cannot be guaranteed, stipends, childcare and transportation are the three major barriers limiting resident participation, particularly with respect to historically marginalized communities. Eugene, Oregon recently used this approach for its Missing Middle Housing regulatory reform effort (click here for additional information about this engagement effort) Petaluma, California used a similar model to gather input about the future use of a large parcel near its downtown formerly used infrequently as a fairground. Toronto used an LSP to develop its Metrolix Regional Transportation Plan.
One of the key benefits of LSPs is how they offer broader, more diverse resident representation in the decision-making process. Traditional methods of public engagement, such as public input sessions, town halls and online surveys attract only a small, self-selected group of residents that likely fail to reflect the broader views of the community. LSPs, on the other hand, ensure that a representative sample of the community is involved in the process. This leads to more inclusive and equitable decision-making process.
LSPs also allow for in-depth deliberation and discussion. Panel members learn about the issue from multiple perspectives, ask questions, and engage in dialogue with one another, in addition to professional staff and consultants. This allows residents to learn more about the problem or issue at hand, consider different perspectives, solutions and trade-offs, and then make informed recommendations. This is a departure from the typical engagement process where residents are asked to respond to a plan or draft proposal prepared in advance by consultants. In other words, LSPs shift the engagement paradigm from “us versus them” to “us versus the problem.”
LSPs are not intended to replace the traditional self-selecting engagement tools used by most cities. Instead, LSPs provide additional engagement data that adds perspective to the traditional self-selecting engagement efforts.
As Raleigh continues to reimagine its community engagement process, LSPs should be added to the mix.
For more details about LSPs, consider these additional resources:
Public Management Review: Political innovation as ideal and strategy: the case of aleatoric democracy in the City of Utrecht
The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement (Buy it on Amazon)
When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Buy it on Amazon)
Citizens’ Assemblies: Democracy that Works
Stanford: Could deliberative democracy depolarize America? Stanford scholars think so
Vanderbilt University: Deliberative Democracy: A Classical Antidote to Democracy’s Modern Ills
OECD Project on Representative Deliberative Processes