By Lisa Whited, Chief Transformation Officer, workplace transformation facilitation, www.workplacetf.com

To all participants of the 1/28/16 meeting about Portland’s comprehensive planning process:

Thank you, again, for participating the evening of 1/28/16 in the discussion about Portland’s comprehensive planning process. We wanted to update you with additional conversations that have happened over the past week.

Members of #PortlandParticipates, which was created out of the Global Shapers Hub, attended Thursday evening’s meeting and have created the following values and purpose statements.

• The purpose of #PortlandParticipates is to establish, foster, and facilitate a partnership between Portland’s residents who wish to share and create opportunities for public input and participation in important decision making for the city.
• #PortlandParticipates is a neutral body of concerned, active people simply acting as a conduit amongst the people and the decision makers.
• We value inclusivity, diligence, swiftness, transparency, and honesty. Our role is to extend opportunities offered for public input for greater inclusion and to create such opportunities when they don’t exist. We are not here to point fingers or make enemies; we are here to support a way forward so that Portland residents know of and participate in opportunities to have their opinions and dreams be part of Portland’s future.
• Our communication channels are neutral in message – calling upon citizens to participate in the opportunities that affect Portland’s present and future.
  If/when we are asked for our opinion on a process, improvement, or opportunity, we are to provide factual, relevant, and clear action, direction, or support that is inclusive, mindful, and open to conversation.
• The #PortlandParticipates group has identified several ways they would like to move forward with the city. To that end, members of the #PortlandParticipates group are hoping to meet with representatives from the City Council and Staff Tuesday (2/9/16), prior to the Tuesday evening Planning Board meeting. This is what the group has identified as eventual goals with this work:

We want a total rewrite of the comprehensive plan that is developed through a robust and inclusive process.

We understand that a total rewrite of the comprehensive plan may need to happen as a parallel event of the current update already underway by the City. We see the current update as a short-term goal and a total rewrite as a long-term goal (within one to two years).

We will achieve this through a partnership between residents, businesses, city staff, and elected officials.

Objective 1: Coalesce a core group that will give the time to identify the way forward and continually identify the necessary expertise and resources to keep moving it forward.

Objective 2: Engage city staff to identify opportunities to get this done.

Objective 3: Engage public support and city council to get necessary approval to get this done.

Objective 4: Design a process to get this done.

Objective 5: Get this done.

Objective 6: Celebrate and admire a comprehensive plan that we (a diverse and broad we) are proud of.

Tactic: Be kind and persistent people.

If you haven’t already, please “like” the #PortlandParticipates Facebook page. (You will find several other links to social media on that FB page that you can follow as well.)

This effort is for our community, by our community and is not an exclusive effort. So, please feel free to share this information with others whom you think would be interested in improving the process for all of us.

Thank you,

Lisa Whited,
Chief Transformation Officer
workplace transformation facilitation
www.workplacetf.com