HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-16-24 Public Comment - Z. Osman - UDC Public Engagement Survey_ Public commentFrom:Zehra Osman
To:Agenda
Cc:Agenda
Subject:[EXTERNAL]UDC Public Engagement Survey: Public comment
Date:Sunday, January 14, 2024 10:42:07 PM
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Please submit this to the public comment record on Bozeman’s public engagementprocess/approach for all projects/efforts including the UDC.
Notifications: I've signed up for email notifications on many ongoing city efforts/projects and
related meetings. Unfortunately, these notifications are not consistently sent to my email aspromised. Engage Bozeman is not working as well as you may believe.
Inclusion, Transparency, and Accountability: We hear (after the fact) about meetings held
with certain smaller groups without the knowledge or invitation of the general public. I herebyrequest that the city publicly post a calendar/s showing all past and future meetings including
those with stakeholders, focus groups, and other groups including those that are outside openpublic meeting forums so that the general public can see who is meeting with whom. The city
must provide this type of calendar prior to the meeting date so that the public may know inadvance. With respect to these meetings, the city must include names of all participants and
how this participant list was determined, the meetings objectives, and detailed meetingminutes (rather than summarized sound bites). Yes, this will require more work on the part of
the city and/or consultant, however these requirements are needed for transparency andaccountability.
Inclusion, Forums, and the Record of Public Input: In the limited list of engagement
options in the UDC Public Engagement Survey, I selected forums that allow for open-endedpublic input such as open house and workshops: I hereby request that within this type of open-
ended public input forum/s (such as workshops) a city official be assigned to takenotes/minutes that are subsequently (and in a timely fashion) distributed to the participants for
approval to ensure the minutes accurately represent public input and discussions held at thesemeetings. I am requesting this because currently Engage Bozeman provides over-simplified,
inadequate, and unrepresentative "sound bite summaries" that cherry pick public commentsand misrepresent actual public input. Additionally, once approved these minutes must be made
available/accessible to the general public in a timely fashion well before the subsequentmeeting/forum. These requirements are necessary in order to provide transparency and
accountability.
Schedules and Multiple Concurrent Projects/Efforts: Please provide multiple meetings perundertaking (weekdays during normal business hours, weekday evenings, and Saturdays) so
that all public with all types of work/family schedules can attend. Also, when you conductmultiple projects/efforts at the same time, all with their own individual public input processes,
you are overwhelming and overburdening the public - which leads to less public input. Howcan you expect Bozemanites to keep up? This is wrong and leads to a sense of
disenfranchisement. Additionally, issues/topics come up over and over, which adds to theoverburdening of the public.
Flawed Surveys Currently Used by the City of Bozeman: In the UDC Public Engagement
Survey I did not choose multiple choice answers that included surveys since your surveys arebiased in the following ways: the way they are sampled, worded, designed, the way responses
are tabulated, summarized, and statistically analyzed. For this reason your surveys currentlyyield biased results that only serve to manipulate the public input process to manufacture
consent. City commission and advisory board members are led to believe there is robust publicengagement. This is not the case. It is infuriating that you are using one of these biased
surveys to gather input on how to engage public input when the surveys are one of theproblems. I am happy to provide specific examples in order to help the city understand why
these surveys are problematic.
Next Steps: We all want a public engagement process that brings us together. In order todetermine the best path forward in gathering public input, the city of Bozeman should hold
public forum/s to discuss the best ways to gather input and, if you're going to use a survey,you must allow public input in how that survey will be designed and used in order to avoid
bias, misrepresentation, and the manufacturing of consent described above. Don't worry aboutthe time it will take to do this right - it will be time well spent.
We wish the new commission members and new Mayor/Deputy Mayor the best of luck in
bridging the gap and setting us all on the right path toward working together better.
Sincerely,
Zehra OsmanBozeman Resident
59718