Update — Fall 2007

Moving Forward

As Common Sense California (CSC) continues to move forward, encouraging citizen engagement in their own governance, we have made important strategic and tactical decisions regarding action plans for the coming year.

During a weekend retreat in mid-October in Los Angeles, the Board agreed that CSC will focus its citizen involvement efforts in two different areas over the next 12 months: city/regional and K-12 issues. What changes by this decision, given earlier vision discussions, is a moving of our concentration away from State-level issues - at least in this timeframe.

The reasons for this strategic move are two-fold. First, as CSC has looked for engagement opportunities across the state, the vast majority have fallen in this two spheres. From a possible project working with a County School Board in Northern California, to land use/planning challenge in the LA River Basin, CSC is in discussions with several municipalities and non-government organizations that want to find better ways to involve their citizens in an important policy-making process.

Second, organizations have recently come online with a particular focus on Sacramento. They appear to be very well-equipped - both financially and personnel-wise - to devote significant resources toward state-level issues like electoral reform. We are in contact with these folks as well as state decision-makers, and will continue to speak out for those issues on which we believe the "citizen's voice" needs to be better considered, but the amount of city/region and K-12 opportunities demands our more immediate attention.

As Board Member (and head of the California Business Roundtable), Bill Hauck declared at the retreat: "We need some wins." I couldn't agree more. To get these victories, the Board has also made the tactical decision to create two "Task Forces" - one each for our two focus areas. Each Task Force will have two co-chairs: one Board representative, along with an "outside" representative. The city/region and K-12 Task Force chairs will then go about building their teams - assumed to be between 5-7 leaders in their respective fields. The Task Forces will serve as both evaluation committees for possible projects and consultants to those communities who want to involve their citizens more directly.

Finally, the Board is also in the process of finalizing its fundraising strategy for the next 6-12 months. We know that one level we will be resourcing is the individual donor. We are in happy receipt of a $25K challenge grant from Ned Crosby and Pat Benn - longtime supporters of this field and interested in the possibilities her in California. The Board has taken the step to match more than a quarter of this amount. If you share our passion for seeing this state’s citizens become more involved in their own governance, we hope you will consider this challenge grant as a great opportunity to support this effort. Tax deductible contributions can be made to “Common Sense California” at our office address here in Malibu.”