Neighborhood organizations have an increased role to play in Santa Monica.

City issues that periodically overwhelm the City Council process must be given thoughtful hearing first at the neighborhood level, where discussion and consensus can be achieved on a more local scale.

Disappointment and disruption at a December City Council meeting demonstrated the breakdown of old ways of hearing the myriad issues that compete for limited Council time.

Delay and postponement of scheduled discussions have become necessary Council norms. Members of the public often must return several times to be heard at last.

Our Santa Monica tradition of welcomed input and freewheeling discussion is threatened by its own success.

THE CHALLENGE OF SCALE

It's become common for issues to draw forty or more, sometimes over a hundred, speakers.

The glut of insistent speakers at Council meetings can only get worse. Upcoming major land use items will bring even bigger crowds.

The litmus test of perceived persuasiveness seems to be magnitude of turnout, rather than uniqueness or substantiveness of testimony content.

I love public process. I want to see every resident who cares, heard.

How do we safeguard public process and encourage the public voice, without gridlocking Council meetings with passionately unresolved issues?

"The holistic approach is to involve more people from the beginning, so the base of support for ideas and projects is broader," says Councilmember Mike Feinstein.

"This suggests reinstating support for neighborhood organizing and outreach, creating a greater voice for residents in the origins of planning."

STREAMLINING

Simply streamlining the Council's agenda helps, and is a task with which City staff, our Mayor and Mayor pro tempore struggle at every meeting. Unfortunately, priorities are not easy to determine, as issues and their timeliness are constantly changing.

"Managing an agenda is akin to herding grasshoppers," Assistant City Manager Susan McCarthy told me.

More frequent Council meetings would overtax staff and be an unfair burden on our woefully underpaid Councilmembers, who serve for token pay of $50 a month and must still support themselves and their families.

Some Councilmembers are suggesting an earlier start to meetings, with "closed session" deliberations completed before the public convocation and a shorter mid-meeting break. This might provide an extra hour per meeting for testimony and discussion, but will even that be enough?

CONCISE AND CONNECTED

While Santa Monica provides a clear process whereby issues are addressed by Commissions before coming to Council, the final Council hearings are all too often a rerun of earlier testimony.

Encouraging Council testimony to address only issues and aspects that have changed since earlier hearings might reduce the length of Council meetings, and actually focus the final discussions on the critical elements previous meetings were unable to resolve.

THE WRITTEN WORD

I wonder if we could also promote more widespread use of thoughtful written testimony on community issues.

Currently, letters to Council and other deliberative bodies cannot easily be read by other members of the community, and lack the satisfying impact of standing at a podium in public with radio and TV coverage.

Residents come to Council meetings not only to speak to "City Hall," but to be heard by their neighbors.

All written testimony on Council and Commission issues could be published either on paper or on the City's World Wide Web site, where it would be readable, electronically searchable by topic or keyword, and open to responses in support or refutation.

Testimony could be collected day and night, in advance of Council meetings, freeing valuable Council "face" time for discussion and resolution.

LOOK TO THE FUTURE

Council agenda pressure can be reduced by providing alternate community sounding boards.

As a member of the Telecommunications Working Group and its subcommittee on delivery of government services, I appreciate the promise of "electronic democracy" which new technology is making possible.

The City's Telecommunications Master Plan will create community roundtables online, with free access to all residents, owners, employees and students, from home computers, libraries, schools, and other public places.

These participatory conferencing areas will allow community consensus to coalesce (or not!) before issues physically come to Council. Don't worry, "point and click" interfaces make using this technology easy!

DO IT YOURSELF

Meanwhile, the most immediately successful solution will probably be voluntary restraint.

Several long hearings recently have been repetitious as much as revelatory.

Can we who love our City's openness to public process love it enough not to abuse it?

Again, Assistant City Manager McCarthy: "We are always open to suggestions. Try not to make it an agenda item."

FINDING YOUR VOICE

One great way to be heard in the City process is to become active in your local neighborhood group!

You can reach the Wilshire/Montana Neighborhood Coalition, Mid-City Neighbors, Friends of Sunset Park or the Ocean Park Community Organization at 450-5578.

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