What if there was a Community Town Hall in the City of Santa Cruz? Might such an endeavor help Santa Cruzans learn to support politicians more representative of their better-informed viewpoints? Could we add to the growing national movement to overcome entrenched, well-funded, and prejudiced political organizations? Is it possible that a Community Town Hall could help steward civic engagement to better inform decision making on critical issues?
Outcomes
If such an institution could be formed, how would we measure its value? In the long term, we would want this potentially expensive endeavor to be politically relevant. In the shorter term, participants would need to see it as a good use of their time. We would want the populace to agree that it well represented them in every respect. And, we would want to see increasingly more people being civically engaged, including more voter registration and turnout during elections.
Background
The term “town hall” is well used and has deep roots in US society. Elected officials have used town halls in various ways. Cynically, they are seen as ways of “representatives” seemingly listening to their constituents. But, how frequently do elected officials change anything from such feedback? Especially recently, such meetings have been disrupted by angry people and activists. The internet suggests that town halls are ways that company leadership hears from their employees. Buried deep in the internet searches, you find the term ‘community town hall,’ and even a bit of guidance on running such things.
Generally speaking, community town halls have rules and facilitation that allows respectful civic dialogue, sometimes between the community and their elected officials or other decision makers. I am not aware of any current, regular or even periodic convening of a town hall near Santa Cruz. For years, there was the Penny University but covid and the death of Paul Lee seem to have brought that to a halt. In the deeper past, I have taken part in faux town halls about the future of Cotoni Coast Dairies on two occasions run by two different organizations with no apparent outcomes. Besides those, there have been numerous ‘public input’ meetings but those are completely different.
Methodology
I would like to hear from others, but have a few ideas to share about how I see a Santa Cruz Town Hall being organized. The first imperative would be to form a representative body, engaging social scientists to help design that process. Participants probably ought to have ‘alternates’ to step in when they are unable to participate. Then there is the question of issue-formation: how will the focus of the Town Hall be informed? It seems like issues to be contemplated ought to be relevant and timely. One thing people seem to agree on about town hall methodology is that meetings need professional facilitation. It seems also important that the town hall’s deliberations have some level of buy in from decision makers, but these folk need not be key members of the town hall. Town hall leadership, though, is necessary. Perhaps a leadership committee could be formed. The facilitators and leaders would need to work together to formulate the deliberative processes and rules for the town hall.
Science, Fact, and Expert-based?
It seems important that sound deliberative processes should be science-based, but is that okay? The deliberative processes that I have seen work center on exploring the common curiosity of participants by collaboratively seeking out the best available information. Adults learn best when they feel the information they are hearing is provided by legitimate sources sharing salient information. However, some factions of today’s society have been suggesting that there are flaws in our information gathering system. If that is an issue in our community, we need to learn how to accommodate those concerns.
The Voice And Greater Engagement
How will a town hall have a voice and how will its work translate to the larger community? The role of journalism is one key issue that needs to be resolved. And, there will need to be deliberation of guidance about how to communicate the ideas that emerge from town hall processes.
However it is designed, the town hall needs to have a community engagement strategy. Somehow, a reciprocal flow of information between the town hall and the larger community seems important.
Suggestions? Want to Help?
If the City of Santa Cruz is to have a Town Hall, we need more ideas, commitment, and funding. If you want to contribute those, please let me know. We certainly need suggestions about how to best design this thing. And we need folks who are willing to help lead, facilitate, and convene the group. At first, a team will help as we work out a strategy and gather funding. After the strategy and funding are built, implementation may require more or different people. I’m hoping this idea resonates. Let’s see where it goes.
-this post originally published as part of the amazingly informative BrattonOnline blog – check it out and stay in touch!
Grey Hayes 
Thank you for spearheading a movement to build a Town Hall meeting process for local governance
The process of public participation in local government through town hall meetings has been well and truly worked out in many different venues over the past 250 years in this country. The challenge is to ensure that the “town hall” truly represents the will of the people, not via polls or voting but through direct participation.
As organized now, public participation in local government is inconvenient at best and to a large extent ineffective. Work and family often preclude attendance at government meetings, even if by remote teleconference. Those who do attend and speak out rarely represent more than a constituency of one.
Effective public participation requires the formation and conduct of self-identified federated neighborhood assemblies. These local groups meet between Town Hall meetings to identify neighbored needs and problems and appoint delegates to the Town Hall. Delegates do not make independent decisions; they carry their brief from their parent group, and they report back to their parent assemblies after each Town Hall meeting.
The mills of Town Hall and neighborhood assembly meetings grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine. In order to truly represent the will of the people. the Town hall meeting must be conducted by the formal consensus process (https://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/shortconsensus).
Yes, consensus decision making has a bad rep in this era of instant everything, and therein lies the core of the problem. Effective governance that is truly “of the people, by the people and for the people” requires considered reflection on complex information and opinions, and is poorly served by our current hasty “representative” government.
Consensus decision making in a neighborhood assembly/town hall system is the only proven form of local government that truly represents the needs and desires of its constancy. We don’t need “social scientists” to set this up and run it, we need individuals with experience in consensus decision making, and, most of all, we need an informed populous willing and able to take part in local government at the neighborhood and regional levels.
I’d be happy to explore these ideas with you at your convenience.
Michael Lewis
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