Update — Winter 2007-2008

It has been a productive 3 months since the last update on several fronts, as we continue to authenticate the Mission Statement the Board approved at the December meeting: “to strengthen civic engagement in order to solve public problems and strengthen citizen participation in and ownership of state and local government.”

Current Project

Threshold 2008 – San Mateo County

We are just hours away from the launching of Threshold 2008, an extremely important citizen engagement event in the Bay Area. Our first $25,000.00 “Catalyst Grant” has been used to develop the campaign website (http://www.threshold2008.org) and will also be employed in their ongoing communications program. Both Steve and I have been in contact with Threshold’s director, Greg Greenway, as well as their selected practitioners, Viewpoint Learning, and the Center for Deliberative Democracy.

CSC served as a “matchmaker” for this effort through our February 2007 conference which introduced the group’s leaders to Dr. Jim Fishkin at Stanford. We have also served as a financial supporter through our grant, and have consulted on some parts of the project, including the referral of candidates for facilitator positions in the weekend’s Deliberative Poll. We will continue to stay in touch with Greg and his team as the project moves through the Online Dialogue and Community Conversation stages in the spring and early summer.

Building Relationships with Communities
and Finding Projects

Creating the City/Region Task Force:

Following the approval of Ed Everett and Bev Perry as City/Region Task Force Co-chairs, we went about finding members with significant connections to the civic and municipal communities around the state. The final 9-person list (not counting Co-chairs) was approved by the Executive Committee in February and includes six City Managers from Poway up to the Bay Area, an Assistant City Manager, and two regional governance leaders (Terry Amsler from Institute of Local Government and Rick Bishop from the Western Riverside Council of Governments). We have scheduled our first Task Force meeting for the end of March and look forward to generating citizen engagement projects, which we will be proud to support.

Promoting Legitimate Citizen Engagement

Articles/Op-Eds

Since our December Board Meeting, both David Davenport and I have managed to publish 2 pieces each on citizen engagement. David had essays printed in Hoover Digest (January) and San Francisco Chronicle (1/6/08) and I had pieces in Santa Barbara’s Noozhawk (2/23/08) and the Ventura County Star (2/28/08). All essays are available through the Resources page of our website.

Speaking Engagements:

Ed Everett and I have been asked to lead and facilitate ABAG’s (Association of Bay Area Government) March meeting on the subject of “Citizen Engagement.” The half-day seminar, scheduled for March 27th in Oakland, is due to have 80-90 attendees who work in the municipal governments of that region in various capacities.