As they face the challenge of sustaining delivery of vital services with less funds, many city managers are looking at the option of sharing services across jurisdictions. While there are many longstanding examples of cities successfully sharing services such as police, fire and libraries, it’s still a sticky topic. Community members can get nervous about the loss of “local control.” Existing employees and bargaining groups may be suspicious of moves to eliminate city departments.
Five city managers in San Mateo County have been meeting for several years about the topic of sharing services across city lines. They are familiar with the point of view that existing advocates have on this issue (pro and con) – but decided that they wanted to get a better handle on how a broader cross-section of the community understands this issue.
On September 8th and 13th, 100 residents from multiple cities in San Mateo County came together at a local library to learn more about and weigh in on the topic of shared services. Attendees represented a diverse cross-section of the community, and were recruited though a variety of methods. Some were drawn from voter lists; some from citizen academies, and others from multiple networks. The majority were not regular attendees of city council meetings.
Community Dialogue in Daly City library
Rather than a definitive statement about the community’s perspective on shared services, these sessions were designed as an initial exploration of how best to engage the public on this issue. Participation was high: everyone stayed for the full three hours, they were active in the large group and small group dialogue and filled out detailed evaluation forms. The tone of the dialogues was constructive and even hopeful. And the predominant evaluation was very positive. Community members in San Mateo County want to see more of these kinds of forums and more public education on this topic.
“[I learned that] the public has a role in this and others share my views.”
“The issues are complex but there are many good ideas for dealing with them.”
“Regional planning is better than insular planning.”
“Thank you for engaging the community in this process and enabling us to be better informed and better citizens. EVERY community should do this.”
The Common Knowledge Group wants to publicly thank the city managers that led this project: Pat Martel (Daly City), Jim Nantell (Burlingame), Susan Loftus (San Mateo), Clay Holstine (Brisbane) and Bob Bell (Redwood City). Thanks also to the grant from the Peninsula Library System that allowed us to design and facilitate the sessions. Table facilitators were provided by the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center. Visit our publications page to see the full report. Photos from these library dialogues are also posted on a special Flickr page prepared by Greg Keidan.
The participant who said “every community should do this” summed it up perfectly -what better way to foster our democracy than having members of every community participating in the conversations that lead to the decisions that affect our lives. Kudos to the city managers who brought their communities into this process.