Consult me, consult me not

That was a really nifty Canada Day, wasn’t it?

I had a bit of a hard time trying to put my finger on what made it so, until I heard a CBC radio host congratulating the civic spiritedness of the people of Ottawa for “coming out” to watch the local events. Hold it a minute: you mean people are to be applauded for just showing up for a free event paid for by the federal government? That’s the difference. Here in Wellington, we don’t just ‘show up’ for events. We create them, we participate in them, we raise the funds for them. Don’t tell me that people from Wellington aren’t much more engaged in their community than people from Ottawa.

Now it might seem a little perplexing that having just tipped my hat to our wonderful spirit of community engagement, I acknowledge you can go to one of these ‘community consultation’ meetings and wonder what you were missing on TV that kept almost everyone home, the attendance being so thin.

Part of the problem is the sheer number of them. In a recent edition of a Pictonbased newspaper, I counted at least six invitations to attend public consults. If you wanted to do so, you could attend the presentation of the final heritage conservation district plan (matter of fact, you still can: it’s on July 11, at 9:30 a.m., at Shire Hall). Or you could have attended the Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital Foundation open public information meeting on its fundraising initiatives. Then again, you might have decided you would get more out of the opportunity to comment on the North Beach Provinical Park preliminary management plan. Or you could have opted for the H.J. McFarland Memorial Home age-in-place master plan. Or the community meeting to discuss the East Lake Plan. There was the Ostrander Point Wind Energy Park community liaison committtee meeting. Or the community conversation sessions undertaken by the County Community Foundation and United Way of Quinte. That’s quite a list—almost enough to turn you into a full time consultee, if you so chose.

And maybe that’s a bit of a problem. There are so many community consults that the consultation process can easily become a perfunctory, check-off item on the way to getting the job done, rather than an open ended session process that leads who knows where because you never know who is going to say just what. If I were dispensing the advice, I’d say skip the public consultation on the Demorestville Master Traffic Control Plan or the Picton Main Street Fish Management Strategy: there’s not much to be gained, and by joining in the public consult game you may just end up diluting the waters.

So what makes a successful community consult? I am tempted to say that it lies in that magical phrase “refreshments provided,” although refreshments can induce somnolence, so that they are sometimes a tactical diversion used by the input gatherer to dull the senses of the audience. When in doubt, however, I’ll take the refreshments.

One key factor is to ensure that expectations are lined up. The recent session on the famous Lane Creek diversion project was billed a “public information meeting,” and that it was. The information about the decisions taken was all set out on posterboards and County staff were there to explain everything. But people had some big and straightforward questions, which might been better addressed had they been met head-on and in an open forum. Why is three-quarters of a million dollars needed to fix and reroute something (an underground culvert) when we have to take your word for it that it’s almost broken? How do we know that fish will swim happily upstream in a redirected creek with some sharp right-angled turns? How do we know that you won’t come back next year and tear up Main Street for a different reason? There is something about the open public meeting and the acknowledgement that you are there to learn about community concerns that lends itself to the resolution of suspicion.

Another key factor is to ensure that real options are put on the table. The famous technique of putting out two false options (blow up Iran, let Iran blow us up) and one real one (put economic pressure on Iran) can easily be detected at an unhappy public consult meeting. So too is the homogenization effect. At a recent consult I attended, in a tightly structured discussion we were asked to vote for the top community concerns, which ended in our choosing something innocuous like ‘good health services and a strong economy’, whereas the more nuanced priorities that might have emerged if people had just sat quietly and listened to one another were lost.

To put it quite simply, to have a good public consult, you have to genuinely want and welcome public input. The recent exhange of missives in this paper about the so-called ‘we know what’s best for you’ attitude of the Quinte Health Care Board shows how quickly hard feelings can develop if this want is perceived to be lacking. So I say good luck to the Prince Edward County Community Development Commission as it sets up Community Focus Groups to meet in Bloomfield, Hillier and Wellington on July 15, July 18 (afternoon) and 18 (evening) respectively to discuss the “strategic priorities of the County in the coming years.” Registration is required, and details can be found at the County’s website. But be warned: I see no reference to refreshments.

And another thing. Don’t hold a community consult near Canada Day. At least around Wellington. People are just too busy.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca