No public engagement yet on new public engagement strategy
Playbook on how to get feedback being refreshed after 16 years
After 16 years, HRM has refreshed its playbook on public engagement — without engaging the public.
On Tuesday, staff presented to Halifax regional council the results of several months of researching and updating the municipality’s strategy for public engagement — where residents weigh in on planning, developments and other decisions of council. This is usually done through surveys, public hearings and information sessions.
The strategy hasn’t been updated since 2008.
“I am concerned that we did all of this without any community consultation,” said Coun. Patty Cuttell (Spryfield - Sambro Loop - Prospect Road).
“We did this based on an internal working group with internal departments and we’re looking to approve this now and, only after it’s approved, go out to the public for validation of what’s already here.”
Cuttell said one of the values of the strategy is to build trust and respect and engage proactively before big decisions are made.
“It seems ironic in some ways.”
BEST FIRST STEP
Bretton Murphy, managing director of corporate communications, said that was thought about early in the process and decided the best first step would be to get evidence-based information and develop a strategy with industry standards before validating it with the community.
He said they will be making improvements to the strategy based on public feedback.
Cathie O’toole, chief administrative officer, said they applied feedback from previous sessions on projects like the Cogswell district about how HRM runs engagement sessions and used that in the formation of the strategy, as well as feedback from the annual residents survey.
She said residents shouldn’t have the impression staff have not used public feedback for this.
She noted HRM has won awards for engagement and the budget planning process is one of the most open in the country. She said council should be proud of what has been accomplished, and the updated playbook “is just the next step.”
Murphy said public feedback on the updated playbook would be happening over the next “number of months.”
Coun. Tim Outhit (Bedford - Wentworth) said the big test for this strategy will be that feedback and he suggested staff communicate clearly how specifically engagement will look differently going forward.
He said if councillors need to read it three times to understand it, “then Joe Public won’t get it.”
“Let’s just really hit people about why we did this . . . and then get that feedback,” Outhit said.
Councillors also questioned that the evaluation of the effectiveness of public engagement will be done internally and not from an outside objective source. Murphy said the evaluators will be “experts in their field.”
There was a question about reaching people with languages other than English, and O’toole replied that there is a multilingual strategy underway.
When asked if staff will be revamping the Shape Your City web page, HRM’S web portal for public engagement, Murphy said there will be a procurement process starting in August to replace the digital community engagement platform as the contract with the current provider is nearly finished.
SOME ELEMENTS FROM THE NEW PLAYBOOK
Giving residents ample notice of upcoming engagement sessions is one of the major pillars of the revamped playbook for HRM staff. Another is a tailored approach to engagements.
Staff are advised to thoroughly assess the need for and purpose of the engagement, identify who is affected, design a tailored engagement plan, identify barriers for participation and then review, analyze and report on the feedback before evaluating how the engagement worked.
The five guiding principles are:
■ transparency
■ accessibility and inclusion
■ building trust and respect
■ timely and clear communication
■ continuous learning to improve