Full Report - Knight Program in Community Building

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HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS 11Because facilitators and mediators pay explicit attention to developing groundrules, including a decision rule, consensus-building processes are usually tied veryclosely to a legally required decision-making process. In addition, because consensus-buildingincludes a step in which the group defines the problem or task, thegroup defines the product. The product of a consensus-building process is often astatement of agreement by all of the stakeholders. Frequently, this statement providesrecommendations to the body with legal decision-making authority. Finally, mediatorsand facilitators are trained to “test” an agreement, to make sure that all of the partieshave thought through the implications of the recommendation and that the agreementwill be resilient. These three factors mean that consensus-building processeswork to package an agreement that all parties will actively support.In a charrette, the product of the process is usually defined by the sponsor andthe designers through the RFP and contracting process. The sponsor may or maynot be explicit about how the charrette fits into a larger decision-making process.Even when the sponsor is explicit with the designers about how the charrette fitsinto the larger decision-making process, that connection is not always emphasizedwith the public. Commonly, the products of the charrette comprise plans or regulationsthat the designers recommend that a legal body, usually the City Council,adopt. There is substantial stakeholder input through meetings and pin-up sessionsheld throughout the charrette, but there is not usually an explicit attempt to reachconsensus among all of the stakeholders. Because of the short time frame, the productis not always completely finished when the charrette ends. All of these factorstogether contribute to charrettes creating products (plans and regulations) that donot get implemented.Lesson: Be clear about how the charrette fits into the larger decision-makingsystem. Be clear with members of the public about what their role is. Pay explicitattention to “packaging an agreement” that satisfies most parties. Question peoplewhen they agree with you. Tie up the loose ends.Step 3: ImplementationThe third major phase of consensus-building is implementation. People involvedin consensus-building include implementation as a phase of the consensus-buildingprocess (and not something else altogether) for two primary reasons. First, legislativebodies cannot legally give away their authority to make decisions. That is why theproduct of a consensus-building process is usually a set of recommendations to alegal body. In early public policy dispute resolution experiments, people sometimesdevoted extensive amounts of time and resources to processes that led nowhere,because the legal authority ignored the collaborative group’s recommendation.
HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS 12Experiences of that kind led to the realization that anyone who cared about a projecthad to follow it through implementation. At the same time, mediators saw thatpeople who agreed to a course of action sometimes had to re-negotiate their agreements,either because flaws in the agreement became apparent during implementation,or because the circumstances changed.Tasks common to the implementation phase of consensus-building include:• Document the process• Publicize the agreement• Influence legal decision-making• Take action• Monitor actions• Re-negotiateDocumenting the process is taken very seriously in public policy dispute resolutionfor several reasons. To keep the size of a group manageable, participants in thecollaborative process are often representing entire interest groups. Those representativesmust be able to keep their group apprised of the negotiations. Public policydispute resolution takes time, sometimes years, and individuals who join the groupin the middle of the process must understand what came before. Perhaps mostimportantly, documenting the process adds to the transparency, and thus legitimacy,of the process with legislators and the general public. This transparency and legitimacymake it more likely that the group’s recommendations will be adopted.Charrettes typically have extraordinary stakeholder input. The uniqueness andspectacle of the event generate extensive media attention and public participation.The breadth of topics covered and the number of citizens participating is impressive.However, this input is rarely documented in a methodical way. People who are inthe room see that their comments led to changes in the drawings, but everyoneelse—the rest of the public and many of the decision-makers—have no idea howpublic comment affected the plan. People who did not participate can always claimthat their concerns were not addressed, because there is no record of what concernswere addressed.Lesson: Document the stakeholder input. Make notes from stakeholder meetings,and make those notes available in the charrette report or on a project web site.Demonstrate how public comment influenced the products.
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