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“Not only did citizens see their local governments as more relevant; they were also more accessible.  Relevance and accessibility, de Tocqueville argued, translated into active citizen participation — in local government bodies and in numerous voluntary associations — and what political scientists today would call high feelings of personal efficacy.” [from Part One of this blog post]

If Alexis de Tocqueville and his many contemporary followers are correct, a close and engaged citizen-government relationship at the local level fosters a habit of political participation among citizens; and such a habit (or ‘political culture’) is essential for the functioning of democratic governance at all levels of government.  Without citizen participation in multiple public decision-making processes, as opposed to only on election day (if even that!), democracy too easily ‘trickles up and away’ to become an elitist affair of the well-heeled, well-connected and well-placed.

So let me turn to my hometown — DeLand, Florida — as a case study of contemporary North American local-level governance.  What I describe below is a system that only loosely resembles the relevant and accessible “secondary institutions,” and the efficacious participating citizenry, of De Tocqueville’s story of democracy in America.¹

First, it’s hard to avoid the fact that the City of DeLand functions primarily as a deliverer of services.  When you drive into the parking lot of DeLand’s brand new city hall, a bank of parking spaces is labeled “customer parking” — not ‘citizen parking.’  Residents’ most common interaction with the city is when they pay their monthly water bills (with penalties for late payment, including shutting off water if payment is a few days late).  Other basic services, such as sewage, garbage collection, police and fire services, and parks and recreation are primarily paid for in the annual property tax bill.  In recent polls commissioned by the city, DeLand residents expressed their overall satisfaction with the services delivered by the city, even when they don’t necessarily enjoy paying the taxes that make those services possible.  Stetson University Sociologist, John Schorr, who carried out the polls, argues that in DeLand, “democracy at the local level is often seen by city residents as the effective provision of services.  Polls of residents can be a form of democracy since their results are presented to the City Commission in open public meetings.”² Actual citizen participation, however, is not part of the service delivery equation … until service rates need to be increased.  As Mayor Bob Apgar told me, “People participate when they’re mad.”³ So when they do participate, they don’t often do so in a ‘civically-conscious’ manner.  Citizen-customers, according to Mayor Apgar, have a “fast-food mentality” (also described as an “instant-gratification mentality”): they expect a high level of quality of city services, but they’re “ill-informed” about what it takes to actually produce those services even though they’re very aware of the price they pay, and get very impatient and angry when the price increases.  In the current economic crisis, increased property taxes on declining property values have fueled this impatience and anger, and have fed into local manifestations of the anti-tax and anti-‘Big Government’ sentiment seen all over the country.

A second feature of local governance in DeLand is that public administration and public services are provided by an array of overlapping and sometimes conflicting jurisdictions.  It’s not always easy for citizens to know which government entity is responsible for which public issue.  Roughly two of every three people with “DeLand” on their post office address don’t actually live in the City of DeLand, but in the “unincorporated” districts of Volusia County surrounding and interpenetrating the spider-like borders of the city (see map below).  Some of the roads are state roads, others are county roads, and a few are city roads.  Meanwhile, public education has its own school board district and an elected school board (with limited control over revenues, which are decided upon primarily at the state capitol).  Public health has its own hospital district with similar limitations, a branch of the state health department, and several disease-specific and/or means-restricted programs or clinics, both private and public.  There are special redevelopment zones for the downtown area and for the historically African-American Spring Hill neighborhood, each with their own redevelopment agency and budget.  The list goes on.  And while it all may look like a dense web of local institutions, for the ‘average citizen’, it’s not an easy thing to know just where one’s civic duty lies around a given issue; let alone, where to complain when a given service is not up to par.

Third, DeLand has at least sixteen citizen advisory boards, committees and task forces open to voluntary citizen participation. These range from the Tree Advisory Committee, to Planning and Historic Preservation Boards, to a Firefighters Retirement Committee.⁴ While these official secondary institutions represent some eighty-six positions available to citizen-volunteers, according to City Manager, Michael Pleus, “It’s somewhat easy to get involved in city government. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to get citizens to actually participate.”⁵ One reason might be that these councils are consultative rather than deliberative: their recommendations are not binding and can be ignored or overruled by the City Commission and administration.  Another reason may be that DeLand is simply manifesting the more generalized contemporary culture and practice, on the one hand, of “citizens as spectators” or disengaged individuals (i.e. non-citizens) and, on the other hand, of professional public administrators (i.e. ‘apolitical’ service deliverers) who don’t want public participation to ‘get in the way’ of efficiently doing their jobs.

A fourth feature of local governance in DeLand is its dismal level of voter turnout in local elections.  According to Mayor Apgar, a “big turnout” is about fifteen percent of registered voters.  In the last local elections (October, 2007) for two city commission seats, less than nine percent (8.76%) of registered voters actually voted.⁶ Local elections are nonpartisan by law.  So there is little incentive for local party organizations to get out the votes, and no ‘party signaling’ to give voters a hint about where candidates might stand on the issues.  As a result, personalities (or the lack thereof) and name recognition drive the process.  After the election, the mayor and city commissioners may be present at public events, like city festivals and the like, but they rarely if ever seek out the opinions of, or try to organize or mobilize — in other words, to actively represent — their constituents in any manner.  Such outreach appears to be limited to the election cycle.

Fifth, organized civil society in and around the City of DeLand consists primarily of social and philanthropical organizations such as the Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs and multiple and assorted churches, business groups like Main Street DeLand and the DeLand Chamber of Commerce, and interest-specific groups like equestrian clubs, sports leagues, and the like.  There are very few neighborhood associations, and the few that do exist are largely inactive beyond one or two leaders (the past and present City Managers identified such “location-specific organizations” in a negative light as contributing to the “fragmentation” of cities where they are active).⁷ Broad-based and long-standing civic-political organizations are few and far between in DeLand. Two local newspapers, The Daytona Beach-based Daytona Beach News-Journal and, more importantly, the DeLand-based West Volusia Beacon provide fairly comprehensive coverage of local issues and serve adequately if not admirably as the ‘fourth branch’ of local government for those who wish to subscribe and read them (primarily, in the words of Beacon owner/editor, Barb Shepard, “upper income, home owning, higher education citizens”).⁸

Finally, outside of service delivery questions, the most important decisions actually made by the City of DeLand (and the County of Volusia), in terms of long-term impact on citizens and community, have to do with land use: most importantly, zoning/rezoning and annexation of ‘unincorporated’ county land into the city … mostly involving petitioners’ desires for higher-density residential and commercial construction.

[T]he 1985 State Growth Management Act (GMA) […] requires every city and county to create a comprehensive growth management plan to guide land-use decisions. The plan provides a legally binding constraint on development decisions because local zoning codes, land development regulations, and permit decisions must conform to the provisions and designations of the plan. Each local community has the opportunity to amend the plan twice per year, and the city or county commission in each community may propose some number of amendments and land-use changes in each cycle.⁹

Land use decisions are not insignificant issues, touching upon everything from economic development (employment opportunities, tax revenues, etc.), to environmental and quality-of-life concerns (habitat loss, school crowding, traffic, sprawl, etc.).  Yet these are precisely the issues for which decisions are primarily made ‘in house,’ well before the public is aware of them and well before citizens are allowed to speak before the city commission at the very end of the process.  In a 2008 interview, then-City Manager, Mike Abels, stated bluntly that by the time citizens get their chance to speak before the city commission on any given issue of importance to them, “the actual decisions have already been made.”¹⁰ This was echoed by Planning Board member, Stephen Tonjes, who argued that if people want to influence land-use processes, they need to “do their homework and find out what the issues are” then “get with the folks who are doing the planning at the front end of the process.”¹¹ That’s not so easy for most of us.  On the other hand, those who petition for land use changes or permits — developers and their lawyers — interact with city staff from day one of the process, essentially framing the issue and pushing, or at least monitoring, the momentum of the process.  By the time the proposal gets to the Planning Board — a panel of volunteer citizens, approved by the city commission and serving at their discretion — the only ‘outsiders’ routinely made aware of the process are property holders with lands contiguous to the proposed project.  Since the Planning Board is only a consultative body, and not one with actual decision-making power, its recommendations can be accepted, ignored or amended by the elected city commissioners, who have the final say.  Precisely because land use issues in Florida have historically favored the petitioning developers (for a whole variety of reasons, including the deep pockets and highly-paid expertise of petitioners, the undeniable appeal of short-to-medium term revenue gains for the city, citizen disinterest and/or lack of knowledge, and the institutional barriers to citizen knowledge and participation in the process as outlined above), Florida is widely known as a developers’ paradise.

The proof: If you add up all the comprehensive plans in our state, you will find that they project housing for more than 100 million people.
Second, what constitutes adequate infrastructure has been a matter of endless debate, and no action. The buzz word is “concurrency.” For most developers, getting the road to the land will do the trick. Lack of schools, gridlock, over-stretched police and fire service, the end of open space — all part and parcel of what most middle class Americans would deem infrastructure deficiencies — have in no way stymied the growth machine.
Third, Floridians, seduced by the vision of “managed growth,” turned their counties and towns over to the “experts”: the lawyers, planners, biologists, engineers, bureaucrats and the whole panoply of “consultants.” These “experts” are just the growth machine in a fancy suit. They have developed a mind-numbing, pseudoscientific techno-babble that the humble opposition can not hope to understand. Too often, the city and county commissioners don’t understand it either. Over and over again, mere mortals are bulldozed by the “experts.”¹²

What I have just described is a system of local governance that only loosely resembles the relevant and accessible “secondary institutions,” and the efficacious participating citizenry, of Alexis de Tocqueville’s story of democracy in America.  At the same time, with some creativity and political will, I believe that concerned citizens and public officials in DeLand could institute changes to make our town more participatory and democratic: suggestions and examples, anyone?

Some Background Information of DeLand, FL:¹³

The City of DeLand is located in Central Florida, about 20 miles inland from Daytona Beach and about 45 miles north of Orlando.  DeLand was founded in 1876 and is the county seat for Volusia County.  It is also the home of Stetson University, Florida’s oldest private university, founded in 1883.

The city’s population stood at 20,904 in the 2000 census, with another

DeLand, Florida

40,000 or so living in the “Metro DeLand” area surrounding the city boundaries.  Since 2000, DeLand has had a population growth of 18.3%.  The population is 69.2% white, 23.2% African-American, and 11.9% Hispanic origin.  The median age is 40.  Household incomes averaged $49,025 in 2009, with a median of $36,515.  Households owning their own homes stood at 57.1% of the total, while renter households constituted 42.9%.   DeLand has a large transient population: lots of recent arrivals and lots of come-and-go departures, including students at Stetson University.  According to the Mayor of DeLand, Bob Apgar, over half the registered voters in DeLand in 2008 were not registered to vote in DeLand just four to five years prior.¹⁴

The City of DeLand is administered under a ‘Strong City Manager’ or ‘Council-Manager’ system, wherein a professionally-qualified city manager is hired by, and serves under the supervision of, a five-member city commission (one of whom serves as the largely-ceremonial mayor).  All are elected ‘at large’ (i.e. no districts) for four-year terms.  The mayor receives an annual salary of $15,106, and each commissioner receives a salary of $10,712.  Commission meetings are held on the 1st and 3rd Monday evenings of each month, and are open to the public.  Agendas are posted on the city’s website a few days prior to each meeting.

Notes:

¹ Secondary institutions, according to de Tocqueville, are those that stand mid-way, so to speak, between the individual citizen and the national government. They include everything from interest groups and professional organizations (civil society) to political parties (political society) to city councils and commissions of local government.

² February 26, 2008 interview.

³ March 11, 2008 interview.  Apgar served eight years as Mayor (2001-2009), and thirteen as Commissioner (1983-1991 and 1996-2001).

⁴ http://www.deland.org/cityhall/Volunteers.htm

⁵ 2/28/08 interview (Pleus was then Assistant City Manager).

⁶ http://www.volusia.org/elections/Press%20Releases%202008/Archive/100907/Official%20DeLand%20SOVC.pdf [accessed: 10/9/09]

⁷ 2/28/08 interview.

⁸ 4/10/08 interview.

⁹ Mark Lubell. “Project Description: Collaborative Research on Institutions and Land-Use Politics,” http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/lubell/Research/NSFGrant2003_Final.pdf [accessed: 10/9/09].

¹⁰ February 28, 2008 interview.  Abels was City Manager of DeLand for nine years before retiring in 2008.

¹¹ 4/1/08 interview.

¹² Lesley Blackner. “Editorial: Take land use back to voters to decelerate growth machine,” Daytona News-Journal Online, http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/opnOPN48053106.htm [accessed: 10/9/09]

¹³ Unless otherwise indicated, information gleaned from the following: http://www.deland.org/; http://www.bestplaces.net/City/DeLand-Florida.aspx; http://www.volusia.org/elections.

¹⁴ March 11, 2008 interview.