It's time for you to join the 21st Century

To: The Commissioners of the Northwest Park & Rec District:

Reading from e-mails sent by Alan Friedlob and Kathy Berg, who were unable to attend the meeting on November 17 at Birch Bay Bible Community Church, I argued for the restoration of Bay Horizon Park.

Bay Horizon won six stickers, one behind a trail connecting Birch Bay and Blaine. Another runner-up, a Saltwater Recreation Center at the end of the Semiahmoo Spit, also gained six stickers.

I could certainly be comfortable with those three priorities – which got a total of 19 votes of the 30 people attending the meeting. But my argument is not with the product of the three community meetings that altogether attracted a bare one percent of the District’s population. Rather, my argument is about the process that attracted so few participants. You are going to need many more people to approve of, work for whichever projects you select and, eventually, vote for the next levy.

I know the value of putting paper on the wall and making lists. About 25 years ago, I publicized the work of Michael Doyle and David Strauss, authors of the book that started that stuff, “How to Make Meetings Work.” In return for work trying to get their ideas about the importance of neutral facilitation and other factors for success into magazines, I received training that changed the ways I encouraged clients to relate to editors. For my internship, I facilitated meetings of a group of Berkeley professors attempting to save endangered plant species. But, as you may have sensed last evening, I am not very good at being neutral.

My argument isn’t that the 131 people who attended your three meetings aren’t good people, but that you need to find ways to involve more people in what you are trying to do. Too many people, particularly people who can benefit from Park and Rec, are too busy to attend meetings -- witness that two of your four commissioners were absent last evening.

In short, I think consultant Paul George’s techniques are stuck in the last century, before the Internet and all its permutations.

A lot of 20th Century folks were stunned by how Barack Obama was able to raise more money from more people than any candidate in history. A key step was attracting youth from Face Book. (Obama is going to have Saturday radio broadcasts, like previous presidents, and he’s going to put his talk on Face Book.)

What if you pulled together a variety of robust e-mail lists, such as those maintained by Kathy Berg and the Birch Bay and Blaine Chambers of Commerce to bring people to your web site? You might even put up Face Book-type programs to stimulate more interaction. There are many possibilities.

This isn’t about budget; it’s about smarts.


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