Extension helps bring citizens into city governance decisions

Neighbors are talking to neighbors in Burlington about the effect street construction will have on a residential area. They’re sharing that talk with city government. As a result, citizens are bringing a new perspective to city decision-making.

"Burlington has already had success involving citizen groups in city decision-making," said Paul Coates, Iowa State University Extension’s director of state and local government programs. It’s the kind of success that other communities want to emulate, and they’ll get some help through a new citizen-government initiative.

Citizen Initiated Performance Assessments bring citizen input into city decisions about parks, streets, libraries, police and fire departments and other aspects of public services.

Citizen Initiated Performance Assessments is a joint effort by ISU Extension, the University of Iowa Institute of Public Affairs, the Iowa League of Cities and nine Iowa cities to develop and test a way to organize an information exchange. The three-year program, in its infancy, promises to build a full partnership between citizen teams and city governing bodies, Coates said.

"The council chambers had three citizens in it for the Central and Washington street construction public hearing," said Burlington city manager Bruce Slagle. "One citizen stood up to say 'I applaud you for including us in the decision-making.'"

This issue would have filled the chamber in the past, Slagle said, but now, with citizen opinion considered early on, the city can move on to the next phase of the project.

Tim Zisoff, Indianola’s city manager, is looking forward to community citizen groups providing similar information, specifically about the street department and public library.

"We can learn what citizens want by including them in the planning and assessment discussions," Zisoff said. "We expect the Citizen Initiated Performance Assessments to help us develop a model for this information exchange."

Burlington and eight other cities will explore this process of using citizen input. "Our goal is to have a tested model that can work into other cities’ decision-making processes at the end of three years," Coates said.

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