Howling at the moon is a better use of your time than replying to a City of Calgary survey. Any online reply carrying a whiff of anger or upset is ditched. City council needs the truth about citizens' concerns, but the current engagement process is a farce.
Anyone believing that someone is actually listening to what you say when responding to one of those ubiquitous 'please give us your feedback' requests is soon left standing at the altar of disillusion. They don't want to know what you think. City hall's already done all the thinking required.
Which is why it isn't surprising that an independent probe into Calgary's public engagement process, launched 15 months ago, is acknowledging what most of us knew — you can spend oodles of time and money developing a system to ask for public feedback, but if you don't listen to the results, it becomes nothing more than an elaborate marketing ploy.
In fact, city administrators could have saved $775,000 of taxpayers' money if, instead of hiring consultants at KPMG to tell them what's wrong with the much-ballyhooed public consultation process, they'd simply asked Calgarians. Instead, councillors spent the money on KPMG, as senior manager Jarrod Bayne explained in a polite understatement: 'We had almost four in five Calgarians who responded to our survey telling us they didn't trust the current engagement process. So there's some work to be done there.' No kidding.
This might surprise some newer council members still coming to grips with their civic roles, but most citizens are probably only surprised by those one in five Calgarians who thought the city was doing an OK job in respecting public feedback. The rest of us long ago figured out how the engagement game's played.
Just attend one of those evening meetings in a neighbourhood community centre, where a seemingly earnest city planner patiently asks for citizens' input after rolling out some new council ordinance that has local folk up in arms. Argue, shout and stamp your feet, but understand this is just part of the process — the decision has been made, and all you'll get from such an evening is sore feet.
Or take one of those innumerable online surveys that city administration is so fond of, particularly as it means the various department heads can spend a small fortune on the digital infrastructure and staffing necessary to carry them out. (KPMG tells us Calgary's indeed top-notch in actually providing such tools.) Questions are never open-ended. You won't be asked a simple query such as: 'Do we have too many, enough or too few bike lanes in our city?' Instead, the question will be framed to elicit anything other than a negative response. Regarding this current thorny issue, you'll more likely receive the following question: 'Do you believe Calgary should increase the rate at which it incorporates bike lanes into the transit options available to citizens, or are you content with the current rollout?'
The KPMG report confirms what many already knew: the process is broken. It's time for city council to truly listen to citizens and rebuild trust. Otherwise, public engagement will remain a hollow exercise.
