From Nimby ... To No! OR....

How community advocates are wrapping themselves in the sacred cloth of participatory democracy...and how planners could act to address the situation.

At the present time a new wave of planning workshops are sweeping the region in a concentrated effort to enhance 'public participation'. Unfortunately some citizens and special interest groups are intervening in the planning process with the view that new developments are inappropriate, even if these developments are in keeping with the local area plan and the community planning strategy. Examples of intervention which are problematic for the planner and Council alike are vocal participants who try to dominate meetings, citizen petitions opposing development without compromise and the use of the media to discredit planners and district Councillors.

This is not to say that public meetings are not important. My concern is with the misuse of public meetings to present single interest agendas or local agendas that do not recognize all voices or greater community objectives.

At times like these to is worthwhile to revisit what it means to offer customer service to determine if there are better ways to serve both Council and the (often) silent majority. Some of the questions we must ask ourselves are: 1) who are our clients? 2) how well do existing approaches to public meetings serve out clients? and 3) ate there better means to deliver client services?

1) Who are our clients?

Recently, an article was printed in a local newspaper that accused planners of serving only one client- the developer. The article went on to suggest that there should be planners hired to serve the community (which was implicitly suggested as the 'proper' client of planners). The problem with this article and the approach suggested is that it tries to set up an adversarial view that planners serve two clients:. a 'planner' client and a 'community' client. Texts on the subject of planning suggest that planners serve many client groups. In addition to the two groups identified above most planners are fully aware that we also serve a 'political' client (Council) and in many cases an ‘economic' client represented by the administration or sometimes the business community.

In my view, what really is at issue at the present time is not simply who are our clients but more importantly what are our responsibilities to each client group? and how do we set priorities in terms of serving the various and often conflicting interests of the client groups?

To address these questions, I am advancing the following idea for discussion purposes:

When planners are involved in public participation and are seeking to present to Council a representative view of multiple client issues it may be more beneficial to utilize a 'Corporate' view of clients and responsibilities because typically corporate approaches are developed to gather information that is broadbased, representative and linked to long term development scenarios. This suggestion is in keeping with the 'new way of doing business' approach recently adopted.by this and many other municipalities in North America where the use other corporate techniques, such as customer service and project management, have been adopted.

'Clients' in the corporate world are typically defined as four fold: the Board of Directors, shareholders, customersand the public. Responsibilities to clients and to their respective roles with regards to influencing corporate decision making are also clearly defined. On occasion we hear about an Annual meeting where a minority group of shareholders or single interest groups try to shift corporate direction.. These tactics are rarely employed because though they garner headlines they are rarely successful. Corporations, more typically rely on a comprehensive range of information gathering methods to ensure that corporate decision making represents the broad, long term view. The use of focus groups, surveys and opinion polls are known to be more representative and better methods of gathering information upon which corporate decisions are to be based. These methods are employed by corporations because they assure investors of financial stability and they build consumer confidence in management.

A municipal typology of clients based on similar thinking might be set forth as follows: municipal councils function as our board of directors, taxpayers function as our shareholders, service recipients function as our customers and all other citizens are considered to be the public. Responsibilities to these client groups, using the corporate model, would be as follows: addressing Council would be the first priority client group, taxpayers would be a second priority client group, service recipients would be third and the general public would be next.

2) How well do public meetings serve our clients ?

Let's examine this question together:

- How many planners can state that public meetings are a consistently productive means to assess the suitability of a development applications?

- What client group is typically heard/ served at public meetings?

- What corporations do' you know of that rely primarily on public meetings to guide corporate decision making?

Personally, I think municipal councils are poorly served by public meetings (in many cases the regulated form of public input). My opinion is based on the corporate analogy noted above, where a planner's responsibility lies first and foremost .with providing municipal council with information that reflects a broad and representative view of the suitability of a development application. A second responsibility would then be to ensure that shareholders (taxpayers) views are incorporated into Council's planning decisions. Our third responsibility would be to bring the views of citizens directly affected by a development application (customers) to Council. Only when all of these are satisfied would we expend time and staff resources to address our fourth responsibility- to ensure that the general public is heard through public meetings.

Drawing from the 'client' and 'service' relationships outlined above, we may be providing inadequate professional planning advice to Council, the municipal body charged with makingdecisions which affect the entire municipal population. Put quite simply, public meetings often fail to gather the meaningful information we need to present to Council to inform municipal decisions. To address this situation', planners need to reconsider how we could improve the planning process, and particularly the information gathering process, to provide decision makers with a broader and more representative view of the suitability of a development applications.

3) A Strategic Approach to Information Gathering:

Let's consider a final question:

If you could use additional tools to assess the suitability of development applications, what would these be?

Returning to the corporate analogy, we need to examine what types of decisions corporations make and what information gathering techniques can be employed to best inform each typeof decision. For example, for decisions that have significant financial implications, corporations hold shareholder votes. In a municipal context this may mean that where a development application has significant financial implications to the municipality, taxpayer plebiscites should form part of the planning process. A second corporate example relates to decisions that affect the level of service provided to customers. In corporations there is extensive use of techniques, to poll the reaction of customers such as telephone surveys. In a municipa lcontext where a development application will have a direct impact on neighborhood land uses, telephone surveys and opinion polls should form part of the planning process. Finally, where a change in corporate policy will affect the general public, corporations use information campaigns that employ advertising and media announcements. In a municipal context, where a development application have general land use implications we also should employ public information campaigns.

Why should corporate techniques be employed?

There are a number of reasons. First, we need to consider corporate techniques for information gathering because the 'public meetings' component of the public participation process only serves one client and not our primary, secondary and tertiary client responsibilities. Second, the use of a single tool to gather information is not an adequate means of providing our clients with appropriate information in a timely and cost effective manner. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the use of public meetings to influence decision making by this regional municipality has de-contextualized land use planning to the point where neighborhood meetings are being used to try to influence regional economic, social and political decisions. Populist planning advocates are using meetings to present their personal views as being representative of the views of the general public. In fact, planners who use alternate techniques are finding out that these views typically represent only a very small proportion of the population and not the broader community views that Council needs to hear to make effective decisions.

The practice of holding public meetings, as the sole information gathering method on broad public planning issues, can be easily manipulated by those seeking to present personal opinions as public opinion. This practice has great potential to provide misleading information to Council and (through the media) to the general public. This practice also has the potential to discount the comprehensive, long term implications inherent in many development proposals, such as: the impact of a development on the municipal tax base, the ability of the municipality to market itself as a place that supports development and perhaps- most importantly, the opportunity of the municipality to achieve the long term goals set forth in the local and regional plans. The situation is becoming increasingly problematic in the Halifax Regional Municipality where the rallying cry of "poor planning" is now being mis-appropriated by a few to the detriment of many. It is time to challenge this situation. Planners and municipalities need to revisit the time-honoured view of what constitutes public participation, particularly where public meetings are mandated by provincial statutes as the sole 'public' means of informing corporate decisions. The exclusive use of public meetings must be challenged in this day and age when financial and human resources are limited. Municipalities need to find better methods to gather information, perhaps by adopting a corporate approach to client definition and responsibilities.

Planners have a critical role to play at this time. It is our role to bring this situation to the attention of municipal and provincial authorities to ensure that our clients (the many, not the few) are well served by our professional planning advice. Do we have access to the information gathering tools needed by municipalities to best assess the suitability of development applications? I don't think so. Planners, as a body of professional informationproviders, need to give serious consideration to this situation before it spins out of hand. Here is an alternate rallying cry: let's ask municipal and provincial authorities for the appropriate tools to be able to do our job to the best of our ability.

Daniel Norris is the Regional Heritage Coordinator for HRM. The statements in this article are the opinions of the author only, not those of the Halifax Regional Municipality.

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