Hampton's attempt to
"reinvent" local government in the mid-1980s was driven by a
combination of fiscal constraints facing the community and a growing
sense of detachment, dissatisfaction, and distrust of local government
by Hampton citizens. During a series of community “town meetings” on
a draft Comprehensive Plan update, citizens made it very clear that the
planning staff was “out of touch” with the views of its citizens,
especially on transportation and open space issues.
Former City Manager Bob
O'Neill, Assistant City Manager Mike Monteith, and former Planning
Director Joan Kennedy initiated conversations to explore how we might
alter our approach and view this apparent negative situation as an
opportunity. They decided to try some innovative methods of
participatory planning and collaborative problem solving, a shift from
“top-down” to “bottoms-up” policy formulation. Community leaders
and the City Council were approached with the idea of placing the
responsibility of formulating the city's new Comprehensive Plan with a
group of eighteen community stakeholders, one of which would be local
government. If successful, this experiment would serve as a model for
more far reaching change in the relationship between local government
and grass roots community organizations.
After eighteen months of
intense work, the stakeholder group presented a consensus update to the
city's Comprehensive Plan to both the Planning Commission and City
Council. In excess of 90% of its recommendations were adopted by the
City Council, including recommendations to address the transportation
and open space issues that had created such controversy two years
earlier.
Hampton’s current
neighborhood planning process was a direct outgrowth of that
Comprehensive Plan update. Citizens remarked that as good as the new
Comprehensive Plan was, the “one size fits all" philosophy
didn’t respect the unique and diverse range of neighborhoods that make
up Hampton. This rather simple recognition provided the framework for
future development of Hampton’s overall neighborhood initiative.
By 1993, the “first
generation” neighborhood plans had been completed using a 7-14 member
stakeholder group, supported by staff and other resources. Each
neighborhood committee identified issues, conducted research, and
formulated draft strategies, and then held 3-5 community
"checkpoint" meetings to assess their work. The entire
planning process, from start to finish, spanned a period of between six
and eighteen months depending on the breadth and complexity of issues.
Soon
the demand for neighborhood planning exceeded local government
resources: even if Hampton had the resources to facilitate a
neighborhood planning effort, few resources existed to help the
community implement the plan once it was complete. To address these
challenges the City created the Neighborhood Office in 1993, which it
charged with coordinating the neighborhood planning initiative and
increasing the capacity of both local government and the community to
engage in collaborative partnerships.
To date, ten neighborhood or
small area plans have been completed and are in various stages of
being implemented and managed. Two additional neighborhood plans are
now underway. Each of these plans is formally adopted by the Hampton
City Council and is incorporated into City policy documents, like the
Comprehensive Plan. Neighborhood planning principles, in a variety of
more streamlined formats, are being employed to address a wide variety
of neighborhood based issues.
As the evolution continues,
where do we find ourselves today? The most important observation is to
recognize that “neighborhood planning” in Hampton is by now a
misnomer: instead community groups are part of an initiative that
offers a wide array of choices for shaping their future. Local
government now deploys neighborhood planning teams, neighborhood
implementation teams, youth planners, and an experimental area-wide
service delivery team as resources to assist the community in creating
their vision of what constitutes a “healthy neighborhood.”
What is unique about the
Hampton experience is the pervasiveness and depth of the
“collaborative culture” that now exists in local government
organizations and across the community. The real challenge and
expectation is to find a way to craft a true community consensus that
serves as the framework for community policy.
Contact:
Terry P. O’Neill
Director of Planning
City of Hampton
