- by Jon Farmer

As we prepare for the municipal election, this is an ideal time to think about the relationship that we expect between City Hall and the community at large. If we expect residents to be active partners with the City in addressing community challenges then we need to make sure that residents have a meaningful role and voice in City discussions and decision making processes. There are tools that can help us to think about how involved residents are currently and what we can aspire to for resident involvement.

In 1969, American scholar Sherry R. Arnstein published a tool now known as Arnstein’s Ladder of citizen participation which has ten steps broken down into three categories. The lowest levels of participation are ‘nonparticipation’ where the goal of participation is to convince the citizens that the proposed plan is the best. The middle levels of engagement are ‘tokenism’ where the government informs the citizens what will happen or create the appearance of public consultation by hand picking specific people for committees. The highest levels of engagement are ‘citizen power’ where decision making power is shared by citizens, citizens hold the majority of seats on committees, or where citizens have direct control to allocate public resources.

I doubt that everyone in Owen Sound will agree on where the current City Council has operated on the ladder of citizen participation. I do expect that most people would agree that there is room for improvement.

There are many opportunities for us to increase citizen participation and feedback in decision making for the City of Owen Sound. The recent launch of the City’s web portal is one example that can be found at https://ourcity.owensound.ca/. Unfortunately, online portals are not universally accessible or particularly transparent.

Fortunately, there are more tools at our disposal if we choose to use them.

 Among the many options to improve public engagement the city could also host consultations in person at city facilities, offer biannual brainstorming days, students could be invited to tour City Hall and submit their ideas and desires,  run a contest for students in civics classes to pitch proposals, create a youth cabinet, use participatory budgeting, remove the cap on the number of citizens on each committee, and citizen groups could be actively invited to form standing committees on particular issues. Owen Sound could even request that the province lower the voting age to 16 so that we can create a culture of voting and civic engagement earlier in people’s lives.

These tools are being used or proposed in other communities. They are also available to Owen Sound if we want them but right now there are limited ways for the public to ask for these kinds of changes or programs.

Council has perennial conversations about why it is difficult to recruit citizens for city committees. City Hall could engage with the public to find out how to better engage with the public. To my knowledge they haven’t reached out more widely to ask what would make those committees accessible to more people.  For insgtance, should the City change the time of meetings, offer childcare to allow parents to participate, provide taxi vouchers for folks who rely on the busses which stop running before most committee meetings are done, or allow food and drink at the meetings which currently take place either mid-afternoon or at 5:30pm? Maybe these are great ideas. Maybe they are terrible. We won't know until we ask. By simply asking and listening, our City will be climbing Arnstein's Ladder. 

City Council will only pursue changes to the public engagement process if the individuals around the horseshoe believe that greater levels of public engagement are both necessary and beneficial to our community. As residents think about the future we want for our City and as we  prepare to choose the council who will set the course for the next four years, we can make public participation an election issue. We don’t have to assume that  public input only happens during elections. Together we can even elect people who will champion more regular opportunities for community feedback in the day to day operations of City Hall.

Jon Farmer is candidate for councillor in Owen Sound.