The CCR Staff and Board of Trustees have set our goals for 2010.  One major goal is to better engage our members.  We plan on re-engaging you through quarterly membership meetings, more frequent newsletters and asking for your ideas on how we make CCR better.  A more active membership and organization will help us on our project work like the City of Cincinnati Budget, Agenda 360, and Local Government Collaboration.

 

 

CCR believes that technology can be used to enhance face-to-face interaction.  Online surveys, the CCR webpage and now the CCR Facebook page can help us stay connected.  Please share your ideas for CCR through this membership survey and become a Facebook fan of CCR!

 

Stay tuned for more expanded engagement opportunities!

CCR is leading the charge to form a broad, diverse coalition of citizen groups that will partner with the City to bring deliberative, actionable citizen input to the 2011-12 biennial budget debate.  For too long, citizens' role in the budget process has been limited to formal hearings which are held only when most budget details have already been worked out by City Council-and even then, formal hearings limit actual citizen "input" to two lonely minutes.  With a huge budget deficit looming, the citizen voice will be essential to making cuts in services that we all can agree on and live with.  More importantly, without true citizen engagement around the budget, the public consensus necessary for major civic transformation will be difficult to achieve.

An essential part of this process, however, will be challenging citizens with real deliberation-weighing priorities and making tough choices.  We can't have everything, and City Council members, the Mayor, and the City Manager shouldn't be the only ones facing this challenge.  So in this "deliberative" process, questions will be posed in small groups, allowing citizens to speak, be heard, and collectively arrive at compromise. 

But for citizen deliberation to be truly valuable-for this to become the citizens' budget-every voice must be at the table.  Consequently, CCR is building a diverse coalition of sponsoring organizations and citizen networks.  We have already engaged several organizations in the process, including (among others) the League of Women Voters, Cincinnatus Association, A.I.R. Inc., Invest in Neighborhoods, and Santa Maria.  Many other civic organizations are being contacted, and we have also prioritized the African American, West Side, Appalachian, and Hispanic communities, having engaged several key leaders to build contacts with key citizen networks.

To be more than just talk, citizen input must also have a place to land. Therefore, the coalition is partnering with the City Administration and City Council to design and implement the process. We have already engaged the City Budget Director and City Manager, who are committed to bringing this project to the attention of City Council’s Finance Committee.

Practically speaking, our goal is to work with Council and the Administration to generate deliberative citizen input that will help shape the “policy budget” (a set of fundamental priorities to guide the Administration in drafting the budget) that is usually give by City Council to the Administration in early June. During the 1970’s and ‘80s, this process intimately involved citizens, but lately has consisted of a wish list from Council that provides little strategic guidance for the City Manager.

Our goal is to work with Council members to frame challenging questions for which they want answers from citizens. By letting Council members form the questions, they will be much more likely to value and incorporate citizen feedback into the policy budget. Further, by having an independent coalition organize and facilitate the process, partisan politics won’t have a chance to influence the citizen dialog.

Of course more deliberative citizen input will be necessary in the Fall when the City Manager presents his draft budget. However, if we achieve success including the full range of citizen voices in the policy budget process, we stand a good chance of making the final budget debate thoughtful rather than antagonistic.

 Dan Joyner recently joined the CCR Board.  Dan is a Change Management Consultant and Facilitator with over 34 year's experience in criminal justice administration, management, community development, education and training. He served for 12 years as Chief Probation Officer for the Hamilton County Juvenile Court.  Dan also served 10 years as an adjunct facilitator, for the Hamilton County Human Resource Training Division.  As an adjunct professor of Special Education at Xavier University, he designed a course and trained special education teachers and school administrators on How to Assess Student Social Skills and Manage Classroom Behavior.

 

For nearly 15 years Dan provided innovative leadership with the City of Cincinnati's Roselawn Community Council where he helped significantly increase citizen engagement and led a collaborative effort to create a School Based Social Service Initiative and Community Youth and Family Program. This program received recognition through a national education journal and the federal community oriented policing C.O.P.S program.

 

Dan's commitment to community work is related to the number of gifts, in his life. He grew up in Cincinnati with three sisters, is the proud father of two super daughters, and has two beautiful granddaughters.  Dan has a Masters in Criminal Justice from, Xavier University. He is active in A Small Group and resides in East Walnut Hills.

In these times of financial challenges for many of our local governments, the potential savings from shared services makes it a hot topic.

 

Join the Hamilton County Government Reform Task Force by Feb. 8th Greater Cincinnati Municipalities form health savings pool 

Butler County Government in Need of an Overhaul  

Cuyahoga Becomes Ohio's Second Charter County 

Woman's City Club National Speaker Forum featuring Katty Kay - March 11th - 751-0100

Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati - Gallery Salveo opening - Feb. 18 @ 5:00