THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502100467
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANCIE LATOUR AND KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 205 lines
Government doesn't know how to listen.
And its failure to hear has spawned citizen disaffection and chronic frustration.
Evidence of the malady is easy to find: Voter participation dropped by nearly a quarter between the early 1960s and 1990. Attendance at public meetings on civic or school affairs has dropped from 22 percent in 1973 to 13 percent in 1993. Polls show that the proportion of people who report having little or no trust in the government in Washington has risen from 30 percent in 1966 to 75 percent in 1992.
What few citizens know is that their leaders also are frustrated by the ways they routinely interact with the public - listening to gadflies at council meetings, defending themselves to civic leagues and bending to the pressures of the politically connected.
That frustration is leading some local officials to search for alternatives to the traditional ``squeaky-wheel'' approach and to explore more meaningful ways of listening to the people they serve.
In the search, administrators are struggling to strike a balance on several philosophical fronts:
Between the desire to overhaul old systems and the comfort of working within them;
Between an old perception of the public as an annoyance and a new view of people as active participants in solutions; and
Between setting the agenda in City Hall and ceding authority to the neighborhoods where the effects are most felt.
``I think what government doesn't do is listen and hear that 90 or 95 percent of the people,'' said Norfolk's chief of police, Melvin C. High. ``We have formal structures that are designed to only hear 5 to 10 percent.
``You have to (have) other kinds of structures to hear that 90 or 95 percent of people, timely, so they don't move out of Norfolk, so they don't move out of Portsmouth, so they do support the schools.''
High, a 26-year police veteran, made his observations to a group of nine Hampton Roads administrators and politicians gathered in December by The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star to discuss their changing roles as public officials.
The transformation may be difficult, but many participants said the consequences of ignoring the problem could be worse. Friction between citizens and administrators inevitably would increase, and cynicism toward the democratic process would only deepen.
Investing in greater public participation could help, the officials said.
For High, the bureaucracy's inability to tap into citizens' more subtle concerns led him to create his own formula for interaction.
``I spend at least two evenings a week walking through different communities in Norfolk to get to know them personally,'' High told the group.
He has done this for more than a year, he said, often walking with beat officers, to ``learn from the front-line troops'' the problems of a neighborhood.
But relating to government this way won't work, officials said, unless citizens believe their input has made some dent in the beliefs and actions of their leaders.
For Andrew M. Friedman, director of the Virginia Beach Department of Housing and Neighborhood Preservation, seeing citizens as more than pieces of paper began when he realized officials can't know everything.
``I may have worked in my field for eight years,'' Friedman told the panel, ``but I don't know everything, and I don't think anyone in government does.''
Before acting on problems or developing new programs, Friedman begins with a simple question: Who would be affected by the problem and by any solution his department might recommend?
Such stakeholders played a key part in combating graffiti in Virginia Beach last fall.
``We invited city agencies, . . . civic leagues that had contacted us on the problem, representatives from the schools, builders associations like the Tidewater Builders Association, and we just started brainstorming,'' Friedman said.
The group's research resulted in a pilot anti-graffiti program. Members of Friedman's staff worked overtime with work-release prisoners to sandblast the graffiti.
Including citizens at the front end of decision-making not only helps local governments target specific problems more effectively, it also guides officials as they shape new visions for their cities.
In Portsmouth, local officials hired Ray Gindroz, a Pittsburgh architect, to ensure public participation in the design of their city's future.
Gindroz, who has helped redesign Norfolk's image over the past nine years, is relying heavily on conversations with Portsmouth residents to create a vision for their neighborhoods and convert that ideal into a blueprint for the city.
The search for public input is continuing in Norfolk, where urban designers talked with East Ocean View residents in a weeklong series of planning sessions in December. Together, they tinkered with miniature models of homes, offices and streets in shaping a plan for their urban renewal.
``What is happening in East Ocean View . . . is outstanding,'' said Ann Washington, Norfolk's voter registrar. ``To look anew at government, at counties, at cities and ask, `Are there new ways to do things?' ''
Finding new ways to connect to citizens could also lead to a fairer system of government, panelists said.
Chesapeake Mayor William E. Ward said that access to government services often isn't as equal as it should be.
``The institutional communities, to a great extent, influence how we decide public policy,'' Ward said. ``The Chamber of Commerce, the builders association, Realtors, the big investors in our communities: We certainly listen to them.''
By reaching into the community, government officials can take an active role in making the system less exclusive, Ward said.
Instead of hearing just from the small number of residents who will come to a community meeting, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach have been conducting citizen satisfaction surveys. The annual surveys have given council members and administrators a new way to track the concerns of a broad base of residents.
From a random sample of 300 residents, city officials learned in this year's survey that citizens still see Chesapeake's drinking water as unsafe.
That surprised the city's public information director, Mark S. Cox, who said the drinking water quality has improved significantly. Now, he said, the city can direct its efforts at getting the word out.
But seeking out stakeholders and conducting surveys takes time; it's much easier for busy officials to do what they've always done.
Most panelists described themselves as workaholics, as barely having time to gobble down lunch at their desks, much less rethink their careers and their mission.
The crawling pace of bureaucracy is also one of the biggest obstacles to change, the panelists said.
``It's hard to get staff to look at things differently because that's the way we've always done it,'' Portsmouth Assistant City Manager Luke McCoy said.
Even when a department head introduces a new idea to include citizens in decision-making, McCoy said, it can take years for staff members to internalize those ideas and implement them.
Compounding that resistance to change is a long-held view of citizens as uninformed gadflies who complain without understanding the many factors officials must juggle when they make decisions.
It has left some government workers struggling over whether to endure or embrace public input.
Often, said Marilee A. Hawkins, director of environmental services for Portsmouth, a few residents flood staff with their individual demands.
``At the City Council meeting there is this incredible sucking sound of energy being drained because of that citizen who wants instant gratification,'' Hawkins said. ``That hurts the process of communities in government. It makes public administrators more wary of opening up and really letting communities define their own issues.''
Though gadflies can be grating and even disrespectful, even the most annoying person is worth listening to, she said.
``I always say to my staff, even if a citizen is what we might think of as a chronic complainer . . . there might still be a grain of truth to what they have to say,'' Hawkins said. ``You cannot ignore that because you're worn down or burned out with the other part of it.''
Getting the points of view of the rest of the public will come by allowing citizens more meaningful input and by asking for their advice instead of waiting for them to come to City Hall to complain, the panelists said.
Friedman said his responsibility is to help turn residents into active stakeholders.
Perhaps that transformation can be explained by the two definitions that Webster's Dictionary lists for gadfly: Friedman hopes officials will move from viewing the average resident as ``someone who annoys others'' to someone who ``arouses them from complacency.''
But inviting the public into government can open floodgates and lead to even more frustration if there are no results.
Once officials start listening, the public expects them to continue.
What happens, the panelists asked, when citizens come to a conclusion on an issue, and city leaders don't like their answer?
``One of the things that you have to do is, when you empower people, you've got to trust their judgment,'' said Matthew James, Portsmouth director of economic development. ``You can't do it halfway. If you're going to tell the community that they can do this, if you empower them, you can't change the rules.''
Some East Ocean View residents were upset that, although they were allowed to participate in the redesign of their neighborhood, they were not given the power to save their homes.
One safeguard against that kind of conflict is for leaders and residents to sit down and set long-term guidelines, James said. If all sides can agree on a common set of goals, it defuses the potential for conflict when specific proposals come along.
Ultimately, government will always exercise the power to set the parameters for decision-making, and even for public participation.
``If we sit here and allow citizens to dismantle government, we will have lost control of what government was intended to be,'' Luke McCoy said.
Making neighborhoods the seat of decision-making could also be bad for citizens, panelists said. It could discourage residents from leaving their immediate surroundings and interacting with others unlike themselves.
``Neighborhood groups . . . are very narrowly defined in society,'' said John J. McGlennon, a government professor at the College of William and Mary. In his neighborhood in James City County, he said, ``we all have the same income level. We all look pretty much alike. We all do the same kinds of things, and we don't have a lot of interaction with other people.''
That concern is already surfacing in Virginia Beach, said Pam Lingle, the city's director of public information. As local officials try to spark more community involvement, they are finding out that individual neighborhoods are sometimes working in different directions.
``You've got those neighborhoods that are starting to get at risk, and then you have the neighborhoods that are extremely upper-middle class,'' Lingle said. ``How do you make an organization so that there's something in it for everybody?''
The burden of answering that question doesn't rest solely with City Hall, panelists agreed: Residents must do their part in breaking down the alienation among neighbors and working to fix problems without the government's help.
``I can come up with a million examples of citizens who have called . . . my office and said, `My neighbor's fence has fallen; it's on my property. What are you going to do about it?' '' Hawkins said. ``Well, go talk to your neighbor and fix the fence.''
With efforts from both sides, local governing could look more like a partnership with citizens than a series of battles against them.
``You might wind up with a more actively involved citizenry again,'' McGlennon said. ``When people experience success, when they see an impact, they stay involved.'' ILLUSTRATION: JOHN EARLE/Staff illustration by CNB