Purpose
The purpose of this activity is to outline your community engagement process. You will determine ways for community members to share their stories, state their points of view on the community’s vision and the recovery mission, and support buy-in.
Why?
When public engagement is used to gather input from your community and shape recovery plans, policymakers can use these plans to focus on service delivery and problem-solving to address recovery needs. This allows the community to help shape the recovery and lets the recovery managers focus on implementing those actions and effectively using funds to help the community recover.
Through this process, community leaders should start by listening to community members, convene the conversations, and become curious learners. However, to do this well, public agencies need to be open, thoughtful, deliberate, and humble as they design the process. Through effective public engagement, your community delivers transparent decisions that are tied back to community needs and actions. This allows community members to both share their ideas and have a clear understanding of how that information is being used, what’s happening in the recovery process, why it is happening, and when it will happen. The by-product is trust and confidence in your local government. When done well, public engagement can forge a deep and renewed commitment to the community’s recovery mission as it develops new capacities and implements community priorities.
When?
Start community engagement efforts as disaster response operations begin demobilization and continue throughout the recovery process. (Days 1 - Ongoing)
Tips
Consider four components that can shape an effective public engagement process:
- Design a process with the end in mind.
- Select tactics that invite a broad range of stakeholders to participate.
- Frame and reframe issues, questions, and options in a way that the community discussion deals with interests, not positions.
- Communicate to the public how input will inform the decision-making process and how the ongoing implementation results will be communicated.
How does my community do this?
- Develop a public participation and engagement strategy. Make sure you commit to a comprehensive public engagement process and staff and fund it accordingly. Part of this process includes identifying the communications methods and activities you will use to collect information from community stakeholders and developing your guiding questions for the community will help you in that task. Be sure you clearly define the problem or need—Why are we here and what problem do we need to solve? Also, create a system that engages stakeholders—What information do we need from the public to answer questions about how to solve the problem? These steps are essential to begin the process of community healing.
- Engage community stakeholders and recovery staff. Make sure that all community voices are heard, and community stakeholders are continuously informed by the recovery team. Throughout this process, collect data and information available from community stakeholders to ground truth what you think you already may know. Be sure to communicate your community goals at community meetings. Learn more about the community engagement process and how a community can effectively spearhead recovery (Pages 5-11).
Community Call Out: Cedar Rapids, Iowa Building Better and Stronger
On June 13, 2008, the city of Cedar Rapids experienced catastrophic flooding. The 600-foot-wide Cedar River grew to span two miles and covered 1,400 city blocks. Damages totaled $7 billion, and 18,000 residents were displaced. It ranked as the nation’s fifth-worst disaster at the time. The city engaged the public immediately following that flood crest. Within days, elected officials directed staff to engage residents in a conversation to build a vision to prevent future flooding and to frame that conversation around the principle of building a more resilient community. Mayor Kay Halloran proclaimed, “We will become a better and stronger” Cedar Rapids.
More than 2,500 residents and business owners, city staff, technical experts, and state and federal officials contributed to the design of a flood protection plan over the next five months. By November 12, 2008, the city council approved the River Corridor Development Plan (City of Cedar Rapids, 2008). The plan outlines 7.5 miles of floodwalls and levees to protect the city. The community also designated almost 230 acres of green space that gives the river more room to flow and swell. The plan served as the framework for eligibility of recovery services for housing and business assistance. It also defined the area and qualifying criteria for a comprehensive voluntary acquisition program. Moreover, it provided a master plan for utility and roadway improvements.
Under the leadership of elected officials and with the guidance of a citizen steering committee, the Neighborhood Planning Process (NPP) kicked off in January 2009. In eight meetings, over four months, and over 6,000 hours of public participation, the community generated a reinvestment strategy for 1,400 city blocks. More than 166 actions were included in the vision document along with a timetable for implementation. Through the process, the city and its citizens were able to create trust, identify issues of concern, and identify solutions in ways that kept the process focused on the outcomes.