A reader writes:
I need to challenge Joe Mathews’ assertion that the design of the average Council Chamber defeats the goal of public engagement in decision making. As a government employee, I have sat through many public hearings and forums specifically designed to solicit public comment on policy issues, and one of the observations I’ve made is that almost all speakers at these events aren’t bothering to speak to the council members or hearing officers – they’re speaking to the audience. Their attention is directed at the crowd, and their words are intended to enflame the crowd to support whatever their message is … which in turn is generally targeted towards the media covering the event rather than the government officials. Unless Mr. Mathews believes that we all live in a Norman Rockwell painting of small-town America, we should be prepared to accept the reality that those who speak at government meetings are those with the courage and the drive to do so, regardless of how the deck chairs behind the dais are arranged.
Another quotes Mathews:
“To unleash the untapped power of council and school board meetings – to make them about creating conversations – we must flip our priorities and redesign the spaces, so that council chambers and boardrooms are foremost places for people to gather and talk.” And the rest of the quoted text is just about the stupidest idea for city council and school board meeting spaces I can imagine. Cross-talk? Coffee and snacks? Booze? Holy crap, nothing would ever get accomplished (as opposed to almost nothing, as it often seems now).
I agree that raising the seating of the board above the floor level of the public is a problem because it makes them look like priests or something, but it’s a fairly inexpensive way to keep them visible. Rather than turn the whole thing into some sort of third space (per Oldenberg or Putnam), why not raise the public seating into a more auditorium-like configuration? We already (metaphorically) look down on our politicians, so why not in reality?
Joe Mathews seems mainly to be concerned that public decision making is petty, boring, and legalistic. No kidding. We’re talking about local politics, and decisions about roads, bus routes, and zoning (and so on, and on, and on, and on) – the important, daily, mundane work of developing and maintaining the (ideally) invisible frameworks through which we live our real, exciting lives getting along with our friends, neighbors, and strangers.
We already have third places where community members can talk about the issues of the day, and the week or month between public meetings is when people can chat up their neighbors and express their opinions to their officials directly: face-to-face, or e-mails, letters, social media, or even the public comment periods of the meetings. Making the meeting space look like a coffee shop isn’t going to eliminate closed sessions, or make it possible for the school board to do anything different about the problem teacher just because some parents are talking about it during the public meeting.
In my job as a planner in a small Midwestern city, I’ve seen well-run meetings, where citizens get engaged when someone does something to make people mad, and I’ve seen them invited to comment during board discussion of the current agenda topic to air the matter. Indeed, in one board, it’s done for every single agenda item. So citizen engagement is possible and desirable in the current, ordinary configuration. However, it’s up to the community to find the way to get that engagement. The configuration of the meeting space can surely make a difference in the feeling of a meeting, but the legal requirements of public notice and equal treatment mean meetings of public officials will never be as chatty as Mathews seems to want.
Another reader:
Although I’ve found the Quakers can be as full of crap and deluded as anybody else, their meeting houses can be a democratic delight – see photos here and here. There is neither dais, nor (in theory) any authority figure.
Another:
If Joe Mathews thinks that American city councils are bad, he should try British ones! Most British councils have rows of chairs for the councillors, facing towards a central dais where the mayor or council chairman sits, with the public seating up in balconies, facing the backs of the councillors. Not only are we not looking at our fellow citizens – we’re not even looking at the politicians themselves, but at their backs.
One more:
I have to call BS on the comparison between City Council and Church, or that City Councils will be more appealing if they looked like Starbucks. City Council officials are facing the crowd because they’re “elected”; they’re not equal to Joe Citizen in the crowd. They hold the responsibility and authority to actually make a decision. That’s why you address them. After all, this is not just a democracy, it’s a representative democracy. Average people in City Council meetings don’t get to talk much, not because it’s laid out like a Church, but simply because there’s only so much time and too many people who all want to ramble on and on about their stupid idea of how to fix everything.
So, how do we let everyone talk without wasting time and still letting good idea rise to the top and reach the council?
We do it online. Set up a web site where good ideas can rise to the top and enforce strict rules to keep the discussion civil. Then bring in those with the best ideas and argument to have a live discussion in the City Council meeting. People don’t go to Starbucks (or other coffee shops) because it has a comfortable layout. They go because there they don’t have to discuss mind-numbing issues and eventually have their voice drowned by the loser who has nothing better to do than be there at 6am to stand at the start of the line and shout at the council for their totalitarian regime.
I’d like to thank the Council and I yield the rest of my time.
The Dish 
