How charrettes avoid the Loop of Doom
Eugene's citizen involvement processes are an essential step to ensuring that we grow in a thoughtful way. However, too often our processes go off the rails-- after almost five years of work, the South Willamette Special Area Zone is on hold without a clear path forward (yet.) This process paralysis "serves the veto seekers and frustrates everybody else." We need to work on finding new ways forward that both allow us to achieve common ground while also allowing us to get things done.
“If it address meaningful community needs, the process of planning and implementing plans is inevitably political. And politics, depending as it does on getting most folks to at least allow stuff to happen by default — by, for instance, not caring enough to participate in the political process — is vulnerable to vetoes by those who take the trouble to show up.”