Community engagement on planning subjects is fraught with the potential for boredom and political conflict. The former mayor of Chattanooga recounts lessons gained while combating those possibilities over a 40-year career.
"As a career public servant who has painfully endured hundreds of government-inspired – and often legally required – public hearings over the past four decades, I can attest that sometimes the ultimate result of all that standing and testifying was that someone in a government office checked a box on a page of a bureaucratic government document," writes Ron Littlefield, former mayor of Chattanooga and a senior fellow with the Governing Institute.
Littlefield provides an account of the experiences in Chattanooga, recalling a prolific series of community engagement processes in the city since 2000, culminating with Thrive 2055. The successes and challenges of past community engagement efforts are especially relevant in Chattanooga today—the region has attracted $4 billion in new business investments in the past month.
Littlefield concludes by listing four takeaways from his 40 years of experience in participating in community engagement processes.
FULL STORY: 4 Important Lessons from 40 Years of Civic Engagement
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