It'll Never Work–Government-Community Partnerships

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

1:30 PM – 2:15 PM CDT

Location: Channel 3

CM | .75

Moderator and Speaker(s)

Elaine Morales Diaz (she/her/hers)

Director of Partnerships & Policy
Connective
Houston, Texas

Speaker(s)

Leah Chambers, AICP (she/her/hers)

Founder and Principal
Outside Voices
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Toro Barragan (she/her/hers)

Flood Resilience Senior Planner
Harris County
Houston, Texas
Chrishelle Calhoun-Palay

Coalition Director, Houston Organizing Movement for Equity (HOME)
HOME Coalition
Houston, Texas
KW

Kenneth Williams, Speaker (he/him/his)

Chair
Harris County Community Flood Resilience Task Force
Houston, Texas

Governments and policies feel increasingly distant from the people and communities they serve. At the same time, challenges such as climate-change impacts make finding effective policy and planning solutions more urgent.

It’s hard for planners to effectively convey highly complex, technical policy issues to communities. Even if information is well presented, diverse perspectives, polarizing politics, and NIMBYism make consensus-based work incredibly difficult. While agencies might want to authentically engage with communities, complicated structures, conflicting goals, and financial and time commitments make it almost impossible. Nonetheless, governments and planners must start working beyond traditional engagement to build trust and collaboration with communities in new ways and facilitate consensus-based decision making in government-community partnerships.

Presenters explore planners' role in participatory planning processes, explain what was needed to establish an innovative group, and share lessons learned.

NPC Peer Reviewers assigned this presentation a learning level of Foundational. For more on learning-level descriptions, visit our General Information Page.

Learning Objectives:

Examine innovative opportunities to rethink traditional community engagement and equitably engage communities in policy making.
Identify the key components required in a process of assembling a government-community partnership group.
Provide practical solutions to creating inclusive, empowered, consensus-based groups.