 | Topics: Community Dayton Participation Growing out of the Model Cities program and neighborhood councils of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Priority Boards were established on a city-wide basis in Dayton in 1975. Most of them encompass both low and higher income neighborhoods, and work with the city to improve services, such as garbage collection and housing rehabilitation. Each month, an Administrative Council representing each city agency meets in each Priority Board area not as experts with all the answers, but as staff ready to listen to local citizens and elected board members, who set the agenda. The boards also focus on how to help neighborhood groups generate self help projects beyond what the city can provide. Case study plus. Prepared by Ken Thomson as part of the Citizen Participation Project at the Lincoln Filene Center at Tufts University, funded by the Ford Foundation, 1988. Contents A. Beginnings and Authorization
B. Neighborhood Structures
C. Citywide Structures
D. Outreach to Citizens
E. Major Program Components
F. Overall Perspective of the City on Participation A. Beginnings and Authorization Born: 1971 Place: In the Planned Variations application to the Federal Government as part of the Model Cities Program The original Model Cities program got underway in Dayton in 1967. In 1971 the Planned Variations proposal was approved, and the Priority Boards were formally initiated. In 1975, the City Commission passed an Informal Resolution making the Priority Boards the official voice of Dayton's neighborhoods. This resolution cited the positive experience of neighborhood councils, the Model Cities Planning Council, and the City Wide Priority Board as having "demonstrated the worth and need for citizen participation." The city specifically wanted to authorize these boards as the participation mechanism to comply with federal guidelines for the Community Development Program. Apparently 1975 was the year when Priority Board offices ("site offices") were first established throughout the city. It was also the year that the mail balloting process was first used in two Priority Board areas (see below). By 1980 all six residential Priority Boards used this method of balloting. The recognition of neighborhood group representatives in the Southeast Priority Board required a special resolution of the City Commission on April 16, 1980 which named each organization to be represented). In September, 1982, the Commission formally recognized the Priority Board Structure as an "essential service", and in March, 1986, the CDBG Task Force reaffirmed the Priority Board in the same terms. The Downtown Priority Board, coordinated by the Downtown Dayton Association, was established as a seventh Priority Board. Its director, Harry Imbodden, had already been meeting with the Priority Board Chairpersons Council for several years. Subsequently the Downtown Priority Board Steering Committee was formed. B. Neighborhood Structures 1. Priority Board and Neighborhood Areas Dayton is divided into seven Priority Board areas: six neighborhood Priority Boards and a downtown board represented by the Downtown Dayton Association and a Downtown Priority Board Steering Committee (representing residents of the downtown area). The downtown population is only 1,300, but the remaining Priority Board populations range from 15,000 to 72,000. Each Priority Board area, except downtown, is further divided into a number of neighborhoods, from 7 to 17 within each board area. There were a total of 74 residential neighborhoods before a restructuring in 1987 which brought the number down to 62. Population per neighborhood ranges widely from a low of 11 people to a high of 10,300, although many of the smallest neighborhoods were absorbed into larger ones in the restructuring. The median neighborhood population, based upon the pre-1987 neighborhood lines, is 1,830 people. 2. Election to Priority Boards Elections are held each year, separately from the municipal election (since 1975 they have been held during the month of July; except in the downtown area they are held in April on a biannual basis). The elections are formally run by the Department of Human and Neighborhood Resources. They are structured according to an election plan submitted by the Priority Board each year, but these plans have remained fairly constant for a ten year period. Priority Boards have set terms of office of either two or three years, with correspondingly 1/3 to 1/2 of the seats open for election each year. The number of seats per board ranges from 26 to 45, for a total of 227 seats citywide. Four boards use a precinct basis for election, but with four different plans: with one seat per precinct, two per precinct, one per precinct plus five at-large, and one per two precincts plus ten representatives of neighborhood groups. Two others use "sub-neighborhoods" as the basis for election, and one of these adds ten at-large representatives. Finally the seventh board, downtown, is composed solely of representatives of housing complexes and other organizations (including the local police precinct). All boards rely on the city for a mail ballot process, with the exception of organizational representatives who are chosen annually according to each organization's bylaws, and the downtown residential complexes which send a representative from both the management and from the tenants. When a seat is contested, 30-50% of the time, mail ballots are sent out to every registered voter in that precinct. People have about one week to mail the ballot back in a pre-addressed, stamped envelope. Turnout in contested elections has ranged from 30% to 35% during the last five years, comparable to that of Dayton's municipal elections. In some precincts, turnout has reached 60%. There is reimbursement for expenses from the city to each candidate, but only up to $35 per candidate. In order to get on the ballot, a candidate must be a registered voter and circulate a petition to obtain 25 signatures of registered voters in the area s/he represents. 3. Drawing Neighborhood and Priority Board Boundaries The neighborhood and Priority Board boundaries were drawn by the planning department early in the development of the system. The Priority Board boundaries generally radiate out from the center of the city like spokes on a wheel, most of the districts shaped like a pie wedge, designed to include both lower-income people in the inner city and higher-income people near the city limits. One district, however, represents only the downtown, and another one represents almost exclusively the lowest income neighborhoods in the city. Neighborhood boundaries tend to keep ethnic populations intact. In 1986, under the Neighborhood Opportunities Plan, the director of the planning department redrew and renamed many neighborhoods. This seemed to be done in many places with surprisingly little input from neighborhood organizations. We will need to understand this process more fully. While most boundaries remained little changed, at least a quarter of the neighborhoods were substantially altered, often being combined with other neighborhoods or split into two pieces. 4. CP Administrative Funding Funding from federal community development programs has always been important to the participation program in Dayton. The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program in particular has provided a substantial portion of the Priority Boards' budgets. In 1987, the total budget for the citizen participation system was $1.2 million, with 80% of this coming from CDBG and 20% from the city. All of the participation funds in Dayton are directly administered by the Human and Neighborhood Resources Department, being divided between the central office and the six neighborhood Priority Board offices. Neighbor-hoods also receive substantial project funds and staff assistance through the Planning Department, especially the Neighborhood Opportunities Plan and the Neighborhood Initiative Program. 5. Priority Board Offices and Staff As of 1987, the citizen participation system has 28 staff. Each of the six neighborhood Priority Boards has two or three professionals and one secretary who work out of the Priority Board office. These staff members are selected by the Priority Board itself, from a short list that is provided by the central office after an initial screening process. Each staff member has a neighborhood-oriented performance contract which s/he must fulfill each year. Typical staff arrangement: the coordinator, one community involvement advisor, and one person handling day to day complaints. In a recent controversy, the city's Personnel Board moved to place these staff under Civil Service, a move strongly opposed by the Priority Boards. The Personnel Board did not succeed initially, but final resolution of the issue is still pending. The staff occupy the middle ground between the city and the Priority Boards. Once city administrator, reflecting a general view of city officials, noted that "most of the time the staff sides with the neighborhoods rather than the city." But they are generally seen by neighborhood people as city staff. For example, one Priority Board officer noted that "the city staff does a good job...they get done what we (as Priority Board members) want them to get done". Neighborhood leaders who are not on the Priority Board tend to view the staff even more as an extension of the city rather than of the neighborhoods. 6. Priority Board Activities The Priority Boards act as both "little city halls" for individual complaints from residents, and as focus points for neighborhood input on policy and programs of the city. They meet once or twice a month, well publicized in advance through the newspapers. Some meetings have been carried on public television. While the boards do not have a formal role in the budget process, they all receive a copy of the proposed budget each year, and have input at public hearings on program strategy for the city. The city has met with the boards to receive recommendations about essential services when budget cuts have become necessary. They are also frequent sounding boards for any new policy proposals that a city agency is designing. The largest role of the Priority Boards seem to be on the nitty-gritty of administration. They do a great deal to promote program changes in areas from garbage collection to housing rehabilitation. Many neighborhoods present their case first to the Priority Board in their area before taking it on to the appropriate city agency. Often the Board itself will take their case on for them. The boards also play a major role in communicating issue positions to the public that the city feels are crucial to neighborhood vitality---from tax levies to city employee resident requirements. As one Priority Board member (who has since become a city official) noted: "We are not just little neighborhood committees any more. We have real power in the city. We drastically affected the school levy tax which was pushed by the city [in 1982]. We supported this on the condition that a citizen participation group be set up for the school system. The boards are strong enough that if they would have said 'go to hell' [to the city], it is very likely that people would have defeated the school levy." C. Citywide Structures 1. Priority Board Chairpersons Council One of the few citywide bodies that is fully representative of the Priority Boards is the Chairpersons Council which meets each week. This is much more frequent than similar meetings in our other cities, and seems to have a status that is substantially greater than in our other cities as well. While they have no formal powers on most issues, the Chairpersons Council frequently considers issues of citywide impact and often advocates specific positions before city agencies and occasionally before the City Council. The City Manager is often a participant in these sessions. 2. Capital Projects Task Force and Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Task Force The CDBG Task Force determines all allocations for the program in the city. In theory "more than half" of the members of this group represent citizens. There are sixteen members total. Each of the seven Priority Boards have one seat on the Task Force, as does the chair of the city planning board (considered a citizen member) and eight city officials. In practice, some Priority Board members feel that this group is generally dominated by the city officials present, typically staff members who can work on the issues full time and are paid for being at these meetings. Even those who have felt very happy with the process and its outcomes recognize an effective "city majority" in this body. Others, however, argue that there is usually an attempt to reach consensus, and are not "too many cases of block voting". The individual Priority Boards submit proposals for funding in the same manner that city agencies do. Out of 19 proposals that were recommended for 1983, for example, 17 came from Priority Boards or joint agency/Priority Board proposals. Out of 350 projects submitted to the Task Force in 1982, 94 were adopted. The city manager reviews these proposals, and they are finally approved by the city commission. The CDBG Task Force meets each year from approximately September to January. Ten factors are considered in rating each project. The CDBG task force always holds a hearing, and the City Commission holds two hearings for public comment on the City's CDBG proposed application. A second group, the Capital Projects Task Force, is apparently much less formal, composed primarily of city staff. It reviews the remaining needs, after the CDBG Task Force is finished, and determines what resources can be found from sources other than CDBG to fund additional projects. Sometimes Priority Board projects ask for funds from other sources, but most deal with the CDBG process exclusively. D. Outreach to Citizens 1. Dayton Update The Dayton Update is mailed to every household on a quarterly basis. It began in early 1982. Some Priority Board members feel that this is "not as good" as the individual Priority Board newspapers had been before this time. The Update does have a reasonably comprehensive four-page section on the neighborhoods, however. It focuses on new programs available, on recreational opportunities, and on specific neighborhood news items such as grants, staff, events, and issue victories. 2. Neighborhood Association Mailings Neighborhood association mailings go out on an irregular basis. Most are one page flyers describing recent events and announcing upcoming meetings. Many are mailed out of the Priority Board offices. Some slick neighborhood brochures are also produced by the planning department on a rotating promotion of specific neighborhoods. 3. Performance Reports Performance Reports on city agencies and Priority Boards are part of the regular "management by objectives" process in Dayton. They are particularly important in keeping staff aware of their responsibilities, and in monitoring the progress of each major project. These make their way, in summary form, to the final budget document each year, presented as explanations and justifications for specific items within the program budget. They are supplemented by evaluations from the population survey (see below). Except for their position in the annual budget, however, these reports do not seem to have any significant circulation to neighborhoods or the public at large. 4. Priority Board Newsletters The Priority Boards once had their own newspapers, but these were discontinued when the Dayton Update was started in 1982. 5. Annual Population Survey Unlike most cities of Dayton's size, the city manager's office initiates an annual population survey each year to find out how they're doing. This survey clearly provides detailed and timely feedback to the city about citizen interests, but city officials treat it as a routine process, and not as part of the participation system. Usually contracted out to a local University, the survey asks dozens of questions about citizen satisfaction with specific city services, often focusing on one or two services each year. Highlights from this document are included in the annual budget document. In some cases specific management objectives are stated in terms of citizen response to this survey (e.g. objective: improve citizen satisfaction with park maintenance by 3% in 1986; result: objective not obtained, satisfaction remained the same). 6. Neighborhood and Priority Board Surveys Surveys are occasionally conducted by individual neighborhoods and Priority Boards, often stimulated by some specific issue or proposal. Most are relatively informal, but some are very detailed and specific. A recent survey by the Deweese-Ridgecrest Civic Association, for example, asked for a priority rating by citizens on dozens of projects the group had undertaken. The results were successfully used both to shape organizational priorities and to persuade city officials to take action in the neighborhood. E. Major Program Components 1. Priority Board Needs Statement Neighborhood needs forms are distributed by the Priority Boards to the neighborhoods once a year. They are then returned to the Boards themselves, which then make up a Needs Statement to go to the city manager in August of that year. Priority Boards document their needs through a number of means including public surveys, hearings, open Priority Board meetings, committee and neighborhood group meetings, and administrative council complaint records. It is not clear how often the Priority Board staff actually write up these proposals, and how many are written up directly by the neighborhoods. These proposals are targetted to the appropriate city departments, which are supposed to address them in the following year's "work programs, objectives, and budgets". The presentation of the needs statements is apparently not done in any priority order. Included in each needs report is a list of capital project requests. These are in priority order within each Priority Board area. Since 1987, the Department of Human and Neighborhood Resources has produced a computerized listing of needs by neighborhood, and a computerized listing of departmental responses. It is too early yet to determine how helpful these will be in tracking the impact of the Priority Board requests. 2. Administrative Council Established in 1975, the Administrative Council is a significant Dayton participation innovation. A Council meets monthly in each Priority Board area. In every Council session, a representative from each major city agency (and occasionally county and regional agencies) is available to take requests and respond to neighborhood problems and concerns. This process provides a regular opportunity for Priority Board members and other citizens to address specific service problems they may be having. In practice, the Council conveys a sense of direct responsiveness of agencies to citizens. The physical setting makes it clear that it is the Priority Board, not the agency staff, who are running the process (a rare occurrence in most mixed groups of citizens and professionals). The agency representatives appear before the meetings not as experts who have the answers, but as staff ready to listen to Priority Board members. They do not usually come with prepared statements or reports, but are expected to respond to questions, complaints, or thank-yous from the Priority Board during the time in the meeting designated for that purpose. The issues tend to focus on individual cases that need to be resolved rather than on broad policy issues. And each case is followed up at the next meeting to ensure that appropriate action was taken. The process has by now become quite routine, and seems to serve its purpose extremely well. 3. Neighborhood Opportunities Plan This program was initiated by the planing department director in 1986. It has a one million dollar budget in for each of 1986, 1987, and 1988, all from the General Fund. In addition, the plan guides other departmental spending and over $6 million is sought from private sources, mostly for housing and business development. In 1987 it included 32 projects in 10 project areas, covering such projects as: - Boundary realignment and neighborhood gateways.
- Tree maintenance; coordinated yard, street, and alley projects; and park and common space planning and relocation.
- Comprehensive land use planning, demolition of structures, and vacant lot maintenance (with youth jobs project, below)
- Housing design and development (grants to Neighborhood Development Corporations), neighborhood marketing, and landlord training.
- Business and institution development projects, loans, workshops.
- Crime watches, security plans, street youth workers, and neighborhood mediation.
- Neighborhood initiatives, welcoming, neighborhood artists, leadership training, and the festival of neighborhoods (8 neighborhood groups received direct funding under the neighborhoods initiatives grants in 1986. Apparently, some $2 million has been given in such grants (NIP grants) since 1978.
4. Self-Help Neighborhood Grants Program This effort is part of the Neighbor-to-Neighbor Program sponsored by the First National Bank and the Junior League (information is to neighborhoods is provided at First National Bank offices. By the fall of 1983, 6 neighborhood organizations had received grants of up to $2000 apiece. In 1986, 10 neighborhoods received grants from Dayton Foundation money apparently matched with city funds. 5. Neighborhood Conservation Program A major effort run out of the Division of Inspectional Services by a former neighborhood activist. The goal is to use the housing enforcement code (plus residential zoning and environmental codes) to meet neighbor-hood objectives. Apparently under its new director, the program has become very aggressive in bringing deteriorating housing up to code. 6. Leadership Training - Neighborhood Leadership Institute. This annual program began in early 1983 with 25 residents in the first program. It consists of a series of ten workshops scheduled in evenings and weekends on topics from city history and discussion of issues to effective neighborhood management and leadership roles. Residents get a certificate of completion for the course. In 1984 the program was coordinated by a Priority Board staff person. It is cosponsored by the Priority Boards and Bank One.
- Neighborhood Leadership Conference: CityLinks, an annual weekend event sponsored by the University of Dayton and the Neighborhood Leadership Institute, is designed to cover major issues for making Dayton neighborhoods work.
7. Historic Districts The six historic districts and the neighborhood organizations at their center have a special housing role in Dayton. They have made a clear difference in their neighborhoods with extensive restoration and much less destruction of housing than has occurred in many parts of the city. Recent house tours given by the districts have attracted as many as 4700 people. The districts seem to play a major role in helping keep people interested in the inner city, and preventing the depopulation that has been occurring in so many Dayton neighborhoods. The neighborhood organizations representing these districts often seem to have significantly more clout with many city agencies than other neighborhoods associations in the city.8. Dayton Education Council A major task force operated during 1983 as part of a deal for Priority Board support of a School Tax Levy. The levy passed, the first one that did since 1971, and the schools developed a system of Community Education Councils as part of their agreement for increased participation. Half of each school council is composed of parents, and the other half composed of community people, teachers, and administrators. Two representatives from each council go to regional meetings, one at each of the four high schools, and two representatives from each regional council go to the monthly meetings of the Dayton Education Council. The Dayton Education council also includes representatives from a range of other community organizations ranging from the Dayton Area Realtors to the Dayton Urban League. There has not been a close working relationship between the Council and the Board of Education, however. The Board has rarely sought advice, and the Council in its first years spent a great deal of time trying to figure out its role. It has worked with the superintendent of schools on several occasions on school reconstruction and improvement plans. But several council members felt that there remains a lack of support for the councils, from either the public or the school system. There has been very little communication between the Councils and the Priority Boards. 9. Dayton Volunteers! The Dayton Volunteers! program, begun in 1984, is now within the Neighborhood Affairs division. It attempts to coordinate and track volunteer placement for the city. In 1986, they logged over 77,544 hours of service which volunteers gave to the city. A monthly volunteer newsletter now goes to all volunteers in the program, and items are placed in a monthly Volunteering column in the city's main daily newspaper. This office also runs the Dayton City Commission Community Service Awards for those providing exemplary volunteer services to the City of Dayton. 10. Other Projects and Events - One neighborhood development program provides summer jobs for youth. There is one supervisor for the program from each Priority Board area. The jobs focus primarily on neighborhood clean-up of alleys and vacant lots. Typically 100-150 youth participate each summer.
- Numerous neighborhood events are encouraged and supported by the city. These include all types of fairs, open houses, clean-up campaigns, and special celebrations. They have even included an annual "inner-city ball" each winter, sponsored by a coalition of neighborhood groups. Under one program to "market and promote the unique advantages of life and home ownership in the City of Dayton", the city reports that 39 neighborhood events were conducted in 1986.
- Special blue-ribbon commissions still exist in the city. In 1986, a commission on the Police Department issued its generally favorable report. Of 17 members, it included only 3 Priority Board members, 1 NAACP member, and 3 churches. The rest were police-related groups, government, or business representatives.
F. Overall Perspective of the City on Participation First and foremost, Dayton sees the Priority Board system as a two-way communications medium between citizens and the city. There is a clear sense that the system can help citizens influence and control government policies and actions. City administrators argue that participation in decisionmaking is necessary "to encourage a sense of control and self-determination within the community. Citizens should participate directly in the shaping of governmental policies and other actions which affect their lives." But the system is designed specifically for the city to reach citizens as well. Planning and strategy documents state that while Priority Boards have "provided government with representative indications of the needs and priorities of neighborhoods as well as assessments of City service effectiveness", it is also true that "City government in turn utilized Priority Boards to channel information to neighborhoods about government actions". Both ways of using the system are quite evident in the day-to-day operation of the system, and both directions of communication seem to have a substantial impact. Two other features of the system are seen as central to its structure and operation: - the ability of neighborhoods, which have the greatest stake, to enhance the "quality of neighborhood life" and "ensure the vitality of the area in which they live"; and
- the ability of neighborhoods to generate self-help projects beyond what the city itself can do. These concepts are the basis for the wide range of city efforts to promote strong neighborhood organizations and a strong sense of neighborhood identity. In many ways the efforts of these neighborhood groups are seen as running parallel to, but not in lock step with, the operations of the Priority Boards.
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