Early Lessons Learned from the Current
Engagement Activities in SW Santa Rosa
Successful community
engagement requires a supportive government partner and a strong community
organizations working together to meet community needs. The current work in SW Santa Rosa
demonstrates a need to improve in both of these areas.
A key measure of the success
of city government’s support for community engagement will be staff’s ability
to plan outreach efforts that work to build community engagement and
capacity. This will require that
both the city and county’s planning and operational activities are conducted in
collaboration with the community’s own actions as well as planning initiatives
of other governmental and civic agencies.
Santa Rosa Together’s experience over the past three months, talking with
City staff responsible for project activities, convinces us that most are aware
that community engagement is becoming an increasingly important component of
their work. However, they lack
access to information about current and upcoming opportunities for cross-collaboration
and, as a result, numerous overlapping meetings (*see list of current
activities below) for community input have been planned without adequate
consideration for the community’s ability to participate.
As an example of the need
for better collaboration, consider the long-anticipated Stony Point Widening
and Reconstruction Project. A
decade in the making, undertaking a two-year major transportation disruption,
with a management contractor recently selected whose bid contains a Community
Outreach Plan and subcontractor. Public Works Management liaison staff were
easily convinced to explore the possibility of collaboration with the current
City-initiated Roseland Area Projects Steering Committee and the
County-initiated Roseland Village Neighborhood Center Steering Committee for
this outreach. But this planning
and collaboration are happening because community members brought the staff
together. No system exists within
the City to identify and promote community planning collaboration opportunities
at the staff level.
We believe that the
responsibility for providing the information on community activities that city
departments will need to improve collaboration and support community engagement
will be a responsibility of the new Director of Community Engagement. But, until this new Director is in
place, we encourage the City Manager to find a way to ensure that the work in
SW Santa Rosa is planned and coordinated to meet community needs. This will help to deepen community
understanding of the city’s activities, maximize volunteer energy and
effectiveness, and improve outcomes. It will also go a long way to avoiding citizen
burn out and confusion that can result when multiple community input
initiatives seek out citizen feedback and advice.
The second, and equally important, key
to success of the city government’s support for community engagement is the
recognition of the importance of helping to build strong community organizations
that have the ability to partner with their government and lead efforts to
address community concerns. The
lack of a strong community organization in SW Rosa that can unite the community
and represent community concerns is a key to both the city’s and the community’s
success. The outreach work and
focus on SW Santa Rosa that current city projects are undertaking present a
great opportunity to help community members form the organization that they
will need to strengthen their community.
But, to date, none of the city and county projects have made support for
the formation of a community organization a goal for their work. Adopting this goal would change the way
work is done so that it consciously works to bring residents together and
builds their capacity to take the lead in their community. The current work has created separate
community advisory groups for each project and has planned conflicting meetings
that divide rather than give community members a chance to come together and
work towards building an organization that can unite the community. We strongly encourage the city and
county to make the goal of building a community organization a part of all work
in SW Santa Rosa.
In summary,
currently community engagement activities in SW Santa Rosa are being conducted
by four City departments and one County department: community development,
public works, transit, and police. We recommend that until you have a Community Engagement
Manager in place that you find a way to ensure that the city and county work in
SW Santa Rosa is better coordinated and planned so that it supports community
engagement and community organization.
*We list here all the
community inputs are being sought in SW SR:
Roseland Village
Neighborhood Center
Roseland Creek Community
Park
Stony Point Rd Widening and
Reconstruction (between Sebastopol Rd and Hearn Ave)
Roseland Area Projects
Steering Committee
Reimaging CityBus
