We (the students enrolled in my Civic Education class, myself, and the other contributing editors of thepolity.net) hosted a public deliberative forum at Stetson University on April 20, 2010. I plan to share the results and reflections on that event in some detail. First up is the formal press release we issued at the end of the evening:
Forum on the Public’s Role in Planning for Growth and Development
News Release
For Immediate Release
April 20, 2010
On Tuesday evening, April 20, a forum on the public’s role in planning for growth and development was held at Stetson University. Approximately 120 citizens from around Volusia County attended to discuss different approaches to the issue.
The evening kicked off with a keynote address by the Frank Bruno, chair of the Volusia County Council. Most of the evening was devoted to deliberation among the 
participants who were seated in 8 groups, each facilitated by a moderator. The participants looked at four distinctly different but commonly held approaches to defining the public’s role before developing responses of their own.
The summit was sponsored by the Political Science department at Stetson University, with support from the University’s Community-Based Research program. The event was organized and led by political scientist Dr. William J. Ball and the students enrolled in his Civic Engagement course.
“We had a very diverse group here tonight. People came from all over the region and ranged in age from 19 to senior citizens,” notes Dr. Ball, “There was a great mix of community residents, students and academics, business people, community activists, local government officials, and professional planners.”
Although the largest number of participants who identified their home communities were from the DeLand area (49), the rest represented a large number of communities in the central Florida region, including 13 from Daytona Beach, 6 from DeBary, 5 from Deltona, 4 each from New Smyrna Beach and Ormond Beach, 3 each from Orange City and Port Orange, 2 from Lake Helen, and 1 each from Bradenton, Edgewater, Flagler Beach, Lake Mary, Orlando, and St. Petersburg.
As they arrived, participants in the summit were surveyed on their backgrounds and the view on the public’s role. There was quite a range of familiarity with the topic. When asking to respond to the prompt “I consider myself to be knowledgeable about the issues to be discussed at this forum,” 29% indicated that they strongly agree, 43% agree, 22% neither agree nor disagree, 4% disagree, and 1% strongly disagree.
One of the most discussed topics at the forum was Amendment 4 (Hometown Democracy) which will be on the fall Florida ballot. Although there is no reason to believe that the group attending the forum was representative of the voting public, they were surveyed on their view on the amendment in order to assess the diversity of opinions in the room. The results of the survey question were:
“If the fall election was being held today, how would you vote on Florida Amendment 4 (Hometown Democracy)?”
11% I don’t know what the amendment is
7% I know what the amendment is, but I don’t know how I would vote
41% I would vote for the amendment
41 % I would vote against the amendment
After discussing the initial approaches, participants worked in their groups to develop specific responses on which a majority in each group could agree. The most common responses developed include:
- • Question the sustainability of growth. Can we balance private property rights with the public good?
• Create an educated public that can understand the issues and that understands the public’s duties and responsibilities to guide growth and development decisions.
• Offer civic education from grades K-12, and adult education through Citizens Academies.
• Reinforce the responsibility of engaged citizens to engage others.
• Inspire, educate, and encourage the public to think in long-range terms, grounded in community norms and values.
• Create a new, ongoing process for citizens and government to work together. Address the significant level of public distrust of elected officials. Ordinary citizens need to have an equal voice and standing in public meetings including rebuttal time, relative to experts, lawyers, and politicians.
• Extend government outreach by encouraging agencies to expand their notification radius to inform, educate, and consult with citizens. Facilitate local and neighborhood organization and meetings on the issues (e.g., homeowner associations, community meetings).
• Cultivate fair, unbiased, and competent media contributions to communication and education on sustainable growth issues.
During the final phase of the program each participant provided individual comments on the issue.
“Our goal tonight was to bring together citizens of different views to have a direct discussion with each other as a means to finding the common ground among them.” Dr. Ball commented, “The statements they drafted represent the beginning of a process of finding common ground without glossing over the differences among deeply held values. We look forward to staying in touch with people who wish to continue to work in this spirit and to facilitate their civic engagement.”
7 Comments
As a student of Dr. Ball’s civic engagement class, I was able to participate in the first half and first round table discussion on the Florida’s Hometown Democracy, amendment 4. As a citizen, although not originally from Volusia County, I was able to meet other citizens and discuss concerns and views on the amendment 4. The event included citizens from different backgrounds and areas of Volusia County. At the table I sat in, there were several environmentalists, an attorney for land use, the mayor of orange city, and a few citizens that have become interested in local politics as of late and wanted to experience the public forum. Every individual at the table was able to speak their mind and voice their heart on the matters of amendment 4 and their communities.
There were many different views and responses to amendment 4. Most of the citizens at the table were not completely, whole-heartedly in support of amendment 4, which made voters accountable for growth in their communities. They believed that citizens, who did support amendment 4, did so mostly out of frustration with the governmental system, and felt that their local representatives were not hearing them out on local affairs. My table wanted a new way to be formulated, for citizens and government to work together, but that this is simply what everyone hopes for, a new approach for policy-making in communities (creating a new process for citizens and government to come together).
What I believed to be the most interesting part of the discussion at the public forum, was when the local citizens at the table that I sat in began discussing civic engagement in general: what is really keeping people from more engagement? What do people lack? People perceive they don’t have power, or take America for granted. The opportunities to become involved in local politics exist, but some individuals believed that people don’t want to confront conflicts. Yet, there is still room for growth in civic engagement, and the public forum was a real and true example of that. Citizens ultimately want a sense of community, and that is important to democracy. By bringing individuals together, through meetings such as the public forum, a new wave of civic engagement can unravel. I believed the public forum was a great opportunity for bringing citizens together to try and carve out a common ground of concerns for the amendment 4, and allowing local citizens to decide what is significant for their respective communities. The ability to bring together local governmental officials, activists, environmentalists, attorneys, and ordinary citizens for a deliberation on an amendment that can ultimately have an effect on every citizen of Volusia county showed me how civic engagement is possible, if we are motivated to conduct community meetings like the public forum, for citizens to meet one another and learn about local politics, in hopes of making a difference.
I too am a student not originally from Volusia county an I was able to see some different views on amendment 4 (which was what was discussed for the most part). However, I noticed that almost everyone agreed that the Government shouldn’t have total control. Most people wanted a mix of Government control and control from the people or the people being able to vote on everything. I, however, wanted the option of the property owners to have total control. If you are able to pay for something and you choose to do so then you should be the only one with say over what you paid for. I do believe people should only vote and decide amongst themselves directly over land that is declared public land.
I feel this forums was an excellent idea because I was able to meet people from different backgrounds and watch how people were discussing and debating. I also noticed that some people even because to change their opinions through out the forums.
If these forums are held more often then it most likely lead to more people being politically involved which would help this country out tremendously along side have more civic and political engagement classes being held in all schools not just college and Universities.
The forum was an interesting way overall to get a feel for hands on engagement. What was most disappointing to me was the lack of youth present at the debate. While this may be because the subject matter doesn’t necessarily appeal to non-land owning youth, I expected at least more than were present. While young people are not necessarily buying land now, they may be in the near future as they graduate college and begin a career. A large majority of the people present were beyond the baby-boomer years, a phenomenon that seems common at meetings like these. My the majority of the people at my table were not as concerned about Amendment 4 as they were about the lack of overall civic engagement. Several reported that under 10 people were present at their local city council meetings regularly. Some argued that this is because of the time of the meetings which are held at 7pm, around the time when people are getting off work and are trying to get home, have dinner and unwind. Regardless, it seemed that there was a general air of discontent among the engaged with the status of engagement. Some argued that even if Amendment 4 is passed, it does not necessarily mean that people will be compelled to become engaged. Others argued that “if you build it they will come” and if people feel that they can be effective and make an impact, then they will take the initiative to do so. Overall, there was a general consensus that education is key to improving civic engagement and should be implemented at all levels immediately so that the next generation will be instilled with a sense of civic duty.
As a student of Dr. Ball’s, I have rather enjoyed the forum. The forum was a multifaceted tool to allow multiple parties and multiple differences to be met and allowed to conflict with each other to come up with a compromise. The forum should be a monthly occurrence it is a vital asset for public officials to gauge where their decision making abilities for the community should be at,and it allows the public to generalize and voice their opinion on topics revolving around city, county, and state politics. Hopefully with enough engagement, and enough controversial legislation being considered, we as a people could prove Robert Putnam wrong about the declining Social Capital in the United States, this forum was a start and hopefully it will continue to exist, allowing both sides to continual meet and understand both sides of the considered issue. Public forums help politicians understand where their constituents really stand with an issue, and helps the politician make the right choice for them. Politicians don’t know what the public thinks until the public has spoken of it, it is your civic duty as a citizen to vocalize your issues and concerns to your community to ensure your voice is counted when a decision needs to be weighed.
I’m also a student from Dr. Ball’s class. I really enjoyed participating in this forum and discussing Amendment 4 with people outside Stetson. I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a whole lot of diverse views over the issues discussed with everyone at my table already supporting Amendment 4. However I did get a lot of interesting ideas and feedback from the event. One idea that my table discussed which I thought was interesting was the idea of establishing civic education outside the classroom for young people and those out of school. I too agree that this forum should be held at a monthly basis. Its important for the community to get together and discuss local issues affecting them in a constructive and productive manner. Also the more frequent this forum can be the more diverse the participants can be so that we can get a more ethnically and ideologically diverse group of people talking to each other.
The forum was definitely one of the most interesting events I’ve attended at Stetson. I love how there were people from every background, ethnicity, age, sex, and we were all discussing something that we all had a stake in: our future. I hope that in the future, there will be more deliberative forums. The people seemed to truly enjoy themselves. Citizenship these days seems to have developed into people sitting on their couches, yelling at the tv, being TOLD what to believe. These forums are an attempt to get people thinking for themselves again. Hearing the opinion of several different people at the same time really gives people a better overall understanding of issues. I think that educating the public on what exactly is going on is one of Stetson’s obligations to the community.
As a student of Dr. Ball’s class and a future researcher on the outcomes of this forum, I found it to be most intriguing. Previously, I had never attended a function such as this. This forum allowed me to experience firsthand how deliberation works within a community. I found it interesting just how diverse the ideas were concerning Amendment 4’s Hometown Democracy issue. The general consensus at the table I sat in on gathered that we should place more emphasis on restructuring our government. We generally felt the need to continue to elect officials to make our comprehensive plan change decisions rather than putting it into the publics’ hands. For this reason, we proposed that our elected officials are in office due to the majority of voters within our communities. However, we felt that a change is needed to ensure a less corruptive government is in power. Much too often, officials receiving rather large campaign contributions tend to favor comprehensive land usage plans even if they are not in the best interest of the citizens it will affect. Overall, this was an excellent experience to connect with the citizens of Deland and surrounding communities to share our views on this November’s Amendment 4 issue.
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