Collaborative Edge

A quarterly newsletter of the Center for Collaborative Policy
Laura Kaplan, Editor

Winter 2003-2004

Success Story | Toolkit |Challenging Issue
Book Review | News | Resources

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The Edge in Brief

Success Story: Sacramento Area Water Forum Wins California Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award 2003.

Arnold Schwarzenegger the actor may have made movies about some particularly non-collaborative approaches to conflict resolution, but Arnold Schwarzenegger the Governor of California recently honored a trail-blazing collaborative effort in the State’s capital region. On December 1, 2003 Governor Schwarzenegger awarded the Sacramento Area Water Forum with a 2003 Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award in the “Environmental-Economic Partnerships” category. Read about the Water Forum, a collaborative partnership with impressive real-world results, by clicking here.

Toolkit: Case Study of Public Participation: South Bay Salt Ponds Restoration Planning.

Question: How do you plan for a 15,000 acre wetlands restoration project in the heart of a major metropolitan region? Answer: Put the public into the heart of the planning process. When completed, the multi-agency South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project along the southern edge of San Francisco Bay will incorporate not only wetlands environmental values, but also public safety, community access, and recreation elements. Read more about public involvement in the largest tidal restoration effort on the West Coast by clicking here.

Challenging Issue: Open Meeting Laws and Consensus-Building (Part II).

What do open meeting laws (also known as sunshine laws) and consensus building have in common? More to the point, where do open meeting laws and consensus building come into conflict? In a report entitled “Too Much Sun?” commissioned by the Center for Collaborative Policy, attorney and researcher Lauri Boxer-Macomber sheds a little light on the question. “Too Much Sun?” describes, in unprecedented detail, the inconveniences and perverse incentives that open meeting laws have presented for public officials and professional mediators seeking to maximize public participation in government decision making. Additionally, the report offers recommendations for overcoming these challenges. In this second installment of the Edge’s feature on open meeting laws, read an overview of Boxer-Macomber’s findings and recommendations by clicking here.

"Lauri Boxer-Macomber does a great job of spelling out the problems created by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) and California's open meeting laws and suggesting various reforms that would help. I agree completely with her recommendations. Now, we just need to prepare a similar report for each state! I'll be sure to add ‘Too Much Sun?’ to my future reading lists."

--Lawrence Susskind
Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning, MIT
Director, MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program
President, Consensus Building Institute

New! Book Review: Participatory Planning for Sustainable Communities: International Experience in Mediation, Negotiation and Engagement in Making Plans.

In this edition of the Edge, Center for Collaborative Policy Research Director Bill Leach reviews a new report recently released by Great Britain’s Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Part field study and part how-to manual, the report assesses new developments in the practice of regional planning around the globe, and makes practical recommendations relevant in England and internationally. Its conclusion: “The time has come to set aside 'public participation' and to embrace 'participatory planning.'” To read on as Bill puts this report into perspective, click here.

News and Events

Find out about upcoming conferences, training, and funding opportunities of interest to the collaborative policy community across the USA and abroad. You’ll also find a brief update about goings on at the Center. Link to the Edge News by clicking here.

Resources

In this section of the Edge, you’ll find links to publications and websites that may be of use to you in planning and conducting your own collaborative efforts: Case study databases, contacts, tools, tips, models, and more.

This Edition’s Featured Resource: Harvard's Art and Science of Community Problem-Solving website. The site provides free downloads of a variety of original strategy tools for problem-solving across the sectors--public, private, and nonprofit/non-governmental.

For more information about this and other sites, visit the Edge Resources section.

Full Text Articles

Success Story:
Sacramento Area Water Forum Wins California Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award 2003
By Sarah Foley and Laura Kaplan

Arnold Schwarzenegger the actor may have made movies about some particularly non-collaborative approaches to conflict resolution, but Arnold Schwarzenegger the Governor of California recently honored a trail-blazing collaborative effort in the State’s capital region. On December 1, 2003 Governor Schwarzenegger awarded the Sacramento Area Water Forum with a 2003 Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award in the “Environmental-Economic Partnerships” category.

Governor with Stakeholders

The Sacramento Area Water Forum, a six year collaborative planning effort on critical water, environmental, and growth issues, not only produced an agreement, but also created a successor effort that has become a respected regional mechanism to guide the long-term implementation of the agreement. The Water Forum was selected to receive the State’s highest and most prestigious environmental honor, the Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award, in recognition of its focus and positive impact on both the environment and the economy in California.

To understand what makes the Water Forum a success story, it is necessary to look back in time and view the situation prior to its formation. Like many parts of the American West, the Sacramento area was no stranger to conflict over water. By the early 1990s the Sacramento region had suffered 30 years of litigious battle over the American River. Additionally, the last two California droughts brought the region water supply cutbacks and environmental degradation. Compounding these problems was a water table that had been lowered in some areas by as much as 90 feet due to over reliance on groundwater. Moreover, parts of area groundwater basins were contaminated.

Adding to water supply concerns was an increasing awareness of environmental conditions along the Lower American River (LAR). The LAR provides important habitat, water supply, a critical floodway and a regional recreational parkway for the Sacramento area. The American River Parkway records over 5 million visitor-days each year and the LAR supports 43 species of native and nonnative fish, including endangered fall-run Chinook salmon and steelhead.

With water demand growing alongside the human population, and with a concurrent growing concern for the environment, area leaders decided that negotiations involving all sides of the controversy seemed the most promising solution to the area’s water woes. In 1993, the City and County of Sacramento created the Water Forum, a regional collaborative effort facilitated by Susan Sherry of the Center for Collaborative Policy, to find solutions to the water dilemma. The Water Forum successfully joined together water purveyors, environmentalists, agriculturalists, business leaders and the City and County of Sacramento in a monumental agreement to secure the future of the Sacramento region water supply to the year 2030. Participants put aside their traditional demands and instead focused on the underlying interests behind both their own and their adversaries’ concerns. Broad community representation was ensured by the incorporation of groups not traditionally associated with water planning such as the county taxpayers league, a countywide neighborhood association, and the local chapter of the League of Women Voters.

The result, the Water Forum Agreement (WFA), is a package of seven linked elements that has the specific co-equal objectives of 1) providing a reliable water supply for the region’s economic health and planned development to the year 2030, and 2) preserving and enhancing the fishery, wildlife, recreational, and aesthetic values of the lower American River. The elements are:

Increased surface water diversions;
Actions to meet water customers’ needs while reducing diversion impacts in drier years;
Improved pattern of fishery flow releases from Folsom Reservoir, which feeds the lower American River;
LAR Habitat Management Element;
Water conservation;
Groundwater management; and
Water Forum Successor Effort

The Water Forum Successor Effort (now commonly referred to as the Water Forum), funded by a number of water purveyor cost-sharing partners, is charged with overseeing, monitoring and reporting on implementation of the Agreement.

“This is an exceptional honor for the Water Forum,” said Leo Winternitz, Executive Director of the Water Forum. “This award acknowledges the hard work and dedication of the Water Forum members, validates their collaborative approach and recognizes the lasting and positive results gained by all in the greater Sacramento region.”

Signed by 40 stakeholder organizations in April 2000, the Water Forum Agreement has already resulted in successfully implemented programs and projects that will maintain the long-term sustainable yield of the North Area Groundwater Basin, conserve 25 percent of the region’s water use, and protect fish and other public trust assets in the lower American River. Implementation to date includes the following projects that have either been completed or launched as a result of the WFA:

Expansion of two City of Sacramento water treatment plants;
Contract for additional water supplies for Sacramento County;
Water line and treatment plant for the City of Folsom;
Formation of the Sacramento Groundwater Authority, allowing for local management of groundwater resources in the county’s north area;
Development of the River Corridor Management Plan, an inaugural effort along the LAR of responsible agencies to manage resources cooperatively;
Formation of the Central Sacramento County Groundwater Forum to provide an avenue for stakeholders to develop recommendations to protect the health and viability of the central county basin;
Construction of a temperature control device in Folsom Reservoir to preserve cold water for spawning Chinook salmon; and
Development of region-wide water conservation programs that are expected to achieve an eventual 25 percent water savings.

Not just a Hollywood happy ending, the Water Forum is living proof that collaboration done well can really change the human and natural landscape for the better. And, evidently, collaboration can lead to having your photograph taken with the Terminator.

For more information about the Water Forum, visit www.waterforum.org or contact the Center for Collaborative Policy.

Toolkit:
Case Study of Public Participation: South Bay Salt Ponds Restoration Planning
By Tracy Grubbs

Question: How do you plan for a 15,000 acre wetlands restoration project in the heart of a major metropolitan region? Answer: Put the public into the heart of the planning process.

Since June of 2003, the Center for Collaborative Policy has been working with the California Coastal Conservancy, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the CA Department of Fish and Game to develop and implement a public involvement strategy for the 15,100 acre South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Planning Project along the southern edge of San Francisco Bay.

The project is the largest tidal wetlands restoration effort on the West Coast. When complete, the restoration will convert thousands of former industrial salt ponds to a mix of tidal marsh, mudflat and other wetland habitats. The planning process, which will take about four years to complete, is unique in that the final restoration design must also incorporate public access and recreation goals as well as meet the public safety needs of adjacent communities, many of which rely on the existing salt pond levee system for flood protection.

In an effort to better understand the interests of various stakeholders and the landscape of issues and challenges facing the restoration plan, CCP conducted an extensive stakeholder assessment in the summer of 2003. (For more information about the project and assessment, see links below). From insights gained during the assessment interview process, CCP developed a comprehensive public involvement strategy. The hub of the new strategy is a 28-member Stakeholder Forum which has been meeting monthly since December to provide high level input to the Project Management Team on the three major components of the plan: habitat restoration, public access and flood management.

The Stakeholder Forum includes a broad array of interested parties from around the Bay including environmentalists, recreation advocates, business and development interests, local elected officials, and representatives from public works agencies, local school districts and community organizations. Members were selected from a pool of applicants with a demonstrated interest in the restoration plan and a commitment to working collaboratively.

In February, the Stakeholder Forum will begin meeting in small Work Groups to analyze and provide detailed feedback on issues related to planning and implementing the restoration program. The Work Groups are designed to dig more deeply into issues associated with the restoration and to enhance the diversity of participation in the restoration program. In order to ensure that Work Group members are able to address scientific and strategic questions presented by the Project’s design consulting team, a member of the project’s Science Team has been assigned to each Work Group to help answer questions and help sort through data and design alternatives.

In addition to the Stakeholder Forum, CCP is also managing a series of Local Government Forums to keep elected officials and staff apprised of the planning process and an annual public workshop that reaches beyond the Stakeholder Forum to keep the general public involved in the process.

All of these activities are supported by a comprehensive communications strategy managed by CCP and supported by a variety of consultants and NGO partners. The communications strategy includes quarterly electronic newsletters, brochures and power point presentations, a comprehensive project web site, site tours and local and national media outreach.

Reaching Into the Community

As part of their commitment to serving on the Stakeholder Forum, Forum members agreed to solicit feedback from individuals and organizations within and beyond their own constituencies and to work with the CCP to ensure that outreach activities meet the needs of various stakeholder groups. Each member of the Stakeholder Forum has completed a public outreach form indicating the organizations and/or community groups that he or she keeps in touch with on a regular basis and the type of outreach (i.e. phone calls, power point presentations, articles in local newsletters) they will perform. Stakeholder Forum members are also reviewing and adding to the project mailing list to ensure that key individuals receive the project’s electronic newsletter and notices of important meetings. The project mailing list currently contains about 1,500 names and addresses. The Project’s goal is to work with Stakeholder Forum members to deliver information more deeply into the community by making the most of their existing social and professional networks. This approach also helps to identify gaps in community outreach and helps Stakeholder Forum members to play a more active role in public outreach problem solving.

Partnering with NGO’s

The project has developed strategic partnerships with a number of Bay Area nonprofits who have a long history of working on Bay Restoration issues. Some of these partnerships are codified with formal work contracts as is the case with the San Francisco Estuary Institute, which is managing the project’s web site, and the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture, which is providing site tours and managing a small speakers bureau for the project. In other cases, NGO’s like Save the Bay and Friends of the Estuary will be expanding their existing activities to provide more public education and access to the project site. The network of partnerships is being managed by CCP.

Media

CCP has also developed a media strategy and contact list for the project and is working with a local media consultant to maintain regular contact with the local press as the planning process unfolds and to highlight important stories that may be of interest to local feature writers. This local strategy dovetails with a national media strategy designed to highlight important aspects of the restoration that may be of interest to national newspaper, radio, and television reporters.

South Bay Salt Pond project links:

Overview project description: http://www.csus.edu/ccp/Salt_Ponds/index.stm

Project web site: www.southbayrestoration.org.

Stakeholder assessment: http://www.southbayrestoration.org/Stakeholder_Assessment.html

Challenging Issue:
Open Meeting Laws and Consensus-Building (Part II)
By Lauri Boxer-Macomber

Editor’s note: What do open meeting laws (also known as sunshine laws) and consensus building have in common? More to the point, where do open meeting laws and consensus building come into conflict? In a report entitled “Too Much Sun?” commissioned by the Center for Collaborative Policy, attorney and researcher Lauri Boxer-Macomber sheds a little light on the question. Boxer-Macomber begins with the premise, “While both open meeting laws and consensus building processes were developed with the laudable intent of enhancing the legitimacy of governmental processes, it has been alleged that open meeting laws pose significant challenges for consensus building bodies.” Drawing upon her case study and legal research, Boxer-Macomber explores the types of challenges that compliance with open meeting laws pose to consensus building and offers recommendations for overcoming these challenges. In this second installment of the Edge’s feature on open meeting laws, read an overview of Boxer-Macomber’s findings and recommendations.

"Lauri Boxer-Macomber does a great job of spelling out the problems created by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) and California's open meeting laws and suggesting various reforms that would help. I agree completely with her recommendations. Now, we just need to prepare a similar report for each state! I'll be sure to add ‘Too Much Sun?’ to my future reading lists."

--Lawrence Susskind
Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning, MIT
Director, MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program
President, Consensus Building Institute

“In ‘Too Much Sun?’ attorney and scholar Lauri Boxer-Macomber describes, in unprecedented detail, the inconveniences and perverse incentives that open meeting laws have presented for public officials and professional mediators seeking to maximize public participation in government decision making.”

--Bill Leach, Research Director, Center for Collaborative Policy
From the Foreword to “Too Much Sun?”

For a full version of Boxer-Macomber’s report, entitled, “Too Much Sun?” go to http://www.csus.edu/ccp/publications/Too_Much_Sun.pdf

To read Part I of the Edge’s series on open meeting laws, including a reference table of the provisions of major federal and California open meeting laws, go to http://www.csus.edu/ccp/newsletter/archives/Aprilindex.stm#toolkit

Overview of “Too Much Sun?”

It is May 20, 2003 and Isabel Eaton is facilitating a consensus building process of a statutorily prescribed advisory body, the North Coast Historical Advisory Body (the NCHAB).* The legislature has mandated that the NCHAB make recommendations by May 31, 2003 on the design of a historical monument to be erected in northern California. All interested stakeholders are represented in the NCHAB and all plenary and subcommittee meetings of the advisory body have been noticed and held open to the public. The last plenary meeting is less than a week away and the NCHAB is in the process of compiling its recommendations into the final report.

Following a distribution of a draft of the report, Isabel learns that members of the Recreation Subcommittee, a subcommittee of the NCHAB, have diverging positions on three particular recommendations related to recreational activities on the land surrounding the monument. Isabel and the other members of the subcommittee want to hold an immediate conference call with one another to see if they can reach an agreement about how to proceed with the recommendations before the final plenary meeting. The attorney for the convening agency advising Isabel on open meeting laws tells her that under California’s open meeting legislation, the immediate conference call is not allowed.

Isabel has several options. First, she can wait until the plenary meeting to work with the members of the recreational subcommittee to reach consensus. Addressing the conflict at the plenary meeting means allocating a significant amount of time in an already full meeting agenda to working through issues that the group has already agreed are best addressed by the Recreation Subcommittee. It also means that members of the Recreation Subcommittee will not be afforded the opportunity to work through their differences in the more intimate subcommittee setting. Isabel could also choose to satisfy the open meeting legislation by noticing the conference call ten days in advance and holding it open to the public. Unfortunately, this option does not help her and the NCHAB to meet their May 31st deadline. She could also choose to meet individually with each of the members of the subcommittee and draft a straw proposal. Yet, doing so is more labor intensive and less financially sound than if Isabel were to meet with the group as a whole. Finally, Isabel could choose to ignore the attorney’s advice. However, if she went ahead and held the conference call, she and the other members of the subcommittee would be violating the law.

The scenario described above is not uncommon. Public policy consensus building processes, which have been heralded as truly democratic processes promoting citizen involvement in government decision making, are increasingly subject to state and federal open meeting laws. While both open meeting laws and consensus building processes were developed with the laudable intent of enhancing the legitimacy of governmental processes, it has been alleged that open meeting laws pose significant challenges for consensus building bodies.

Through a case study focusing on the impacts of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (the FACA) and California’s Brown and Bagley-Keene Acts on consensus building processes managed by the Center for Collaborative Policy (the CCP), the report explores the interplay between open meeting laws and consensus building processes. The research surfaces several different categories of challenges that open meeting laws present to consensus building processes, and discusses the potential geneses of these challenges. It also offers recommendations for addressing these challenges through education, further research and legislative reform.

Offered here is a very brief summary of the findings and recommendations discussed in the report.

Findings

Challenges presented by open meeting laws fall into three general categories: (1) procedural challenges, which impact the progress of consensus building processes; (2) deliberative challenges, which threaten the high quality of deliberations characteristic of consensus building processes; and (3) fiscal challenges, which result in increased costs for consensus building processes. An example of a procedural challenge may involve a situation where a consensus building body cannot hold a meeting on a given date because it is unable to meet the ten day advance notice and agenda posting requirement prescribed in the Bagley-Keene Act. An example of a deliberative challenge may involve a situation where open meeting laws prevent members of a consensus building body from engaging in dialogue over the internet about topics of concern to the consensus building body—even if the conversation is noticed and completely accessible to the public. Finally, an example of a fiscal challenge might be the increased cost of having a mediator hold the same exact conversation with numerous entities, rather than calling one meeting, so as to not trigger the open meeting law meeting requirements.
The challenges presented by open meeting laws, or perceived to be presented by open meeting laws, can be traced to three geneses: (1) how open meeting legislation is understood by those managing and participating in consensus building processes; (2) how open meeting legislation is interpreted by convening agencies’ legal counsel; and (3) the actual open meeting legislation. There is a wide range in the levels of understanding that mediators, facilitators, participants and advising legal counsels have of open meeting laws and how open meeting laws can be read in the context of consensus building processes. Even when some individuals are aware of ways to read the laws creatively so as to satisfy the laws and the needs of a consensus building body, they are electing to read the laws more conservatively. Finally, there are certain areas where open meeting laws and consensus building processes are at loggerheads, especially when it comes to the need for private conversations.

Recommendations

Close the Educational Gap: Educate mediators and facilitators on open meeting laws and ways to read open meeting laws in the context of consensus building processes. Do this through activities like offering workshops, developing handouts, and creating educational websites about open meeting laws.
Examine Counsel’s Counseling: Conduct further research on how the attorneys who advise on consensus building processes read, interpret and apply open meeting laws. Are the attorneys who are making conservative recommendations, making them because they are not reading the laws carefully and are not aware of the exceptions and opportunities to opt of compliance? Or, in the alternative, are they cognizant of these exceptions and opportunities, but uncomfortable with invoking them for fear of being accused of foul play or impropriety?
Encourage the Evolution of Open Meeting Laws: Explore the possibility of amending the laws to either exempt consensus building processes from the legislation or accommodate the special needs of consensus building processes.

* The names of the facilitators and processes referred to in “Too Much Sun?” have been assigned pseudonyms. In addition, the subject matter and details of the consensus building processes discussed in this report have been altered so as to protect the privacy of the individuals, agencies and organizations involved.

New! Book Review
Participatory Planning for Sustainable Communities:
International Experience in Mediation, Negotiation and Engagement in Making Plans.

Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Queen’s Printer and Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, London

Reviewed by Bill Leach, Research Director, Center for Collaborative Policy

The time has come to set aside “public participation” and to embrace “participatory planning.” This is the conclusion of a new report recently released by Great Britain’s Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Part field study and part how-to manual, the report assesses new developments in the practice of regional planning around the globe, and makes practical recommendations relevant in England and internationally.

The report describes participatory planning as being “rooted in the recognition that society is pluralist and there are legitimate conflicts of interest that have to be addressed by the application of consensus-building methods. Participatory planning is culturally aware and sensitive to differences in power, and seeks to ensure that these do not pre-determine outcomes. The different parties exchange information to explore areas of common ground and compromise and to find ways of reducing the extent and intensity of disagreements.” Old-fashioned public participation, by contrast, is a top-down process in which “the flow of information is mainly from the planners to the public, who are given opportunities to comment.”

The empirical grist for the analysis has two sources. First is a batch of questionnaires completed by 35 individuals with first-hand knowledge of participatory planning experiments in 13 countries. Second is a set of five case study vignettes from the UK, USA, and South Africa, assembled by an international team of university-based researchers in each country. Thus, one of the most striking aspects of the report is its international perspective, which should be especially refreshing for readers in the U.S. who are accustomed to seeing participatory planning portrayed as an American phenomenon. To the contrary, this report suggests that collaborative planning has a firm foothold on five continents.

The report’s greatest weakness is that it occasionally betrays its origins as a commissioned publication written by a team of researchers on a fixed budget and tight deadline. For example, the “how-to” half of the report often assumes the mechanical, heavily bulleted, cut-and-paste feel of a consulting document. Despite these limitations, however, the report constitutes a valuable addition to two related government manuals released this year: Getting in Step: Engaging and Involving Stakeholders in Your Watershed, produced by Tetra Tech, Inc. for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Community Engagement In The NSW Planning System, produced by Elton Consulting for the Department of Planning, New South Wales, Australia.

This flurry of government manuals authored by consulting firms suggests several other international trends: a willingness of government agencies to pay for research and expert advice on participatory techniques; a recognition by those agencies that they currently lack sufficient skills to conduct such training in-house; and a resignation to the fact that graduate schools of planning and policy analysis are not yet teaching such skills to their graduates. If the authors of these manuals succeed in their mission, participatory planning will not be an esoteric skill for very long.

Full report available on the web for download from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

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News and Information
If you have a news item related to public policy collaboration that you’d like to see published in the Edge, please email the editor.

Upcoming Courses, Events, Funding Opportunities

Click for events taking place in:

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JUNE 2004

JULY 2004

Center for Collaborative Policy Update

Water Forum Wins Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award. CCP is proud of the accomplishments of the Sacramento Area Water Forum, a collaborative regional stakeholder effort facilitated by CCP’s Executive Director Susan Sherry from the convening stage through reaching agreement, and by CCP mediator Jeff Loux in the implementation phase. For more information about the Water Forum’s recent honor, see this month’s Success Story.

Seminar on Intractable Conflicts. Dr. Barbara Gray will present a seminar hosted by the Center for Collaborative Policy at California State University, Sacramento on March 19th, 1:30PM - 3:30PM. Her topic will be "Understanding and Overcoming Frame-Based Barriers to Intractable Conflict." She will report on the results of a Hewlett Foundation sponsored investigation of eight intractable environmental conflicts. The research identifies a variety of frames that parties in these conflicts used to make sense of the issues and shows how certain frames help to perpetuate these conflicts. She will also propose frame-based interventions for introducing civil dialogue into such situations. Those interested in attending RSVP to Teresa Pal (916.445.2079 or tpal@ccp.csus.edu) no later than March 4 for additional seminar information.

Dr.Gray is Professor of Organizational Behavior and Director of the Center for Research in Conflict and Negotiation in the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Gray's research covers the following areas: negotiations, organizational change, ntergroup conflict, diversity, and multiparty alliances. Her interest and practice have included facilitation, mediation and design of methods for promoting the resolution of interpersonal, intergroup and multiparty conflict. She is the author of three books and over sixty articles.

Resources

Featured Resource: The Art and Science of Community Problem-Solving website. Xavier de Souza Briggs, a public policy faculty member at Harvard University, has just launched www.community-problem-solving.net. The site provides free downloads of a variety of original strategy tools for problem-solving across the sectors--public, private, and nonprofit/non-governmental. The tools address the challenges of organizing stakeholders, building alliances that work and getting out of ones that don't, designing and managing participation in planning, coming to agreement, and more. The site also offers links to effective practice in many program areas (housing, education, environment, public safety, health, etc.), a learning community for peer exchange, and a creator's log (weblog) to narrate the site and communicate with users as the Project evolves. Chris Gates, President of the National Civic League says, "As leaders in government, business, and the nonprofit sector look to re-define community building and democracy for a new age, there is a shortage of roadmaps for getting the job done. These tools are must-have's for the catalytic leadership we really need. Based on Xav Briggs' well regarded classes and training programs at Harvard, the tools offer straight talk on the power and potential of problem-solving at the local level."

Website: Citizen Science Toolbox. http://www.coastal.crc.org.au/toolbox/alpha-list.asp
Includes 63 detailed descriptions of process tools such brainstorming, citizen juries, design charettes, and deliberative opinion polls, with references. Also offers guiding principles and a few case studies.

Gateway website on co-intelligence. http://www.co-intelligence.org/links.html. The Co-Intelligence Institute’s links page that leads to collections of tools for co-intelligence, which they define as “intelligence that's grounded in wholeness, interconnectedness, and creativity.” Leads to links on civic engagement, public participation, deliberative democracy, and more.

Gateway website of manuals and tools for public involvement. Compiled by the US Environmental Protection Agency. www.epa.gov/publicinvolvement/involvework.htm

Website with meeting advice, tips, tools. http://www.3m.com/meetingnetwork/

Website: “Mind Tools.” Includes tools and advice for time management, stress management, project planning, decision-making, and managing complexity. http://www.mindtools.com/

Report on involving leaders of color in policy development. The report, “Leadership for Policy Change” from Policy Link describes the barriers to participation of leaders of color in local and national public policy development and the strategies that can be used to remove the barriers so that leaders can use their expertise and experience to benefit low-income communities of color. http://www.policylink.org/pdfs/LeadershipForPolicyChange.pdf

Report and how-to manual on participatory planning around the globe. See this month’s book review for a review of the report, “Participatory Planning for Sustainable Communities: International Experience in Mediation, Negotiation and Engagement in Making Plans.” Available for download from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Downloadable manual: “Getting in Step: Engaging and Involving Stakeholders in Your Watershed.” Produced by Tetra Tech for the US Environmental Protection Agency. Available for download from the EPA website.

Downloadable manual on community engagement. Written by a consulting firm for a government agency in New South Wales. Winner of the Planning Institute of Australia's 2003 New South Wales Award for Excellence in Planning in the Community Based Planning Field. http://www.iplan.nsw.gov.au/engagement/index.jsp

Downloadable manual, “The Makings of a Good Meeting.” Written by facilitator and trainer Kevin Wolf. Offers information on facilitation, meeting planning, consensus decision-making, and more. http://www.wolfandassociates.com/facilitation/manual.htm

Monograph, “Empowering Regions: Strategies and Tools for Community Decision-Making.” From the Alliance for Regional Stewardship. http://www.regionalstewardship.org/Documents/Monograph2.pdf

Manual, “How to Design a Public Participation Program.” Designed for the US Department of Energy, but much of the material is transferable to other settings. http://web.em.doe.gov/ftplink/public/doeguide.pdf

Report on cost effectiveness of environmental conflict resolution. http://www.ecr.gov/pdf/ecr_cost_effect.pdf Overview of multiple studies, compiled by the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution.

Publication: EPA's “Community Culture and the Environment - A guide to understanding a sense of place.” Follow this link to order a copy of EPA's Reference Book "Community Culture and the Environment - A Guide to Understanding a Sense of Place." Publication is free.

Downloadable manual: “Communicator’s Guide.” Includes advice on communicating with the media, creating user-friendly web pages, risk communication, public speaking, and more. http://www.usda.gov/news/pubs/fcn/table.htm

Publication on merging scientific knowledge with community knowledge. http://www.policyconsensus.org/pubs/nppc_pubs/Building_trust.pdf. "Building Trust: When Knowledge from ‘Here’ Meets Knowledge from ‘Away’" describes twenty things you can do to help environmental stakeholder groups talk more effectively about science, culture, professional knowledge, and community wisdom. From the National Policy Consensus Center.

Downloadable guide to environmental non-profit / industry partnerships. Provides decision-makers in business and environmental nonprofits with tools required to launch or improve effective partnerships. Designed as a compendium of best practices and key learnings. Click here for the GreenBiz website.

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