Archive for the ‘CFRC’ Category
Looking Forward with Clarity (aka: What’s Next?)
At the Rates Committee meeting held last Friday morning, the small group of us agreed that keeping the group going to act as a kind of watchdog for the CCSD is a good idea. The Rates Committee is currently the only active committee from the larger group, but agreed that the larger group should be called together to address revising the mission of the CFRCCSD. We made no assumption about CFR’s plans for the future and whether or not they would want to be involved in something other than a rates issue.
What we did decide (by general consensus) were these things:
There will be a meeting on October 1, 2008 at Rabobank at 6pm to define the purpose of the group as it goes forward.
As the Rates Committee of CFRCCSD, we didn’t have the authority to change the mandate of the larger group (if it still exists) and a meeting with everyone interested is necessary. We wanted to make sure anyone who is interested has a chance to get involved. The regular evening meeting of the group has been on the first Wednesday evening of each month at Rabobank. A September 3 meeting would would make it impossible to get something in the paper. To give people enough notice so they could plan to attend, we decided the “redefining meeting” will be held on the first Wednesday in October. (October 1, 2008)
There will be an informal meeting on the first Wednesday of September (this week) at Rabobank at 6pm.
The agenda will consist of two topics: Discussion and planning for the October Rabobank meeting (see above) and discussion of what we’d like to see from a candidates’ forum - format, etc. (The Chamber has scheduled one on the 7th of October at the Vets hall.) No decisions about the group, its mission or its future will be made until the October 1 meeting. We will focusing on the future of Cambria at this meeting, so unless I get an request for an addition to the agenda, the Proposition 218 process and outcome will not be a topic of discussion. That would be a topic more appropriately addressed at a meeting of CFR, the group who lead the campaign or the CCSD. (And I hope it will be!)
Please join us at Rabobank this Wednesday evening at 6pm and on October 1, same time and place.
More valuable than a gallon of gas? Say YES! with a small donation today.Tags: 93428, Cambria, CCSD, cfrc
Rates Committee of CFRCCSD will meet Friday - Perhaps for the Last Time
The Rates Committee of Cambrians for a Fiscally Responsible CCSD will meet tomorrow at Moonstone Beach Bar and Grill at 9:30, instead of the usual time - with tourist season in high gear we need to finish the meeting and be on our way before the restaurant opens and starts seating people. As always, the Rates Committee meeting welcomes anyone interested in attending - no special password needed.
Thank you, once again to the MacKinnons for providing such a comfortable place (and what a view!) for our meetings. You should check out their stylish new website. Looking good!
Don’t forget:
The north end of Moonstone Beach Drive is now closed to through traffic because construction has begun on the replacement of the Leffingwell Bridge.
Tags: 93428, Cambria, cfrc, Rates
CFRCCSD Rates Committee Plans to Meet July 25 at 9:30am
The Rates Committee of Cambrians for a Fiscally Responsible CCSD will meet tomorrow at Moonstone Beach Bar and Grill at 9:30-10:45am. With tourist season in high gear we need to finish the meeting and be on our way before the restaurant opens and starts seating people. (Or you can, of course, stay and have lunch if you can get a table.) As always, the Rates Committee meeting welcomes anyone interested in attending - no special password needed.
Thank you, once again to John and Kernn for providing their restaurant for our meetings - so comfortable, and such a view! You should check out their stylish new website. Looking good!
Don’t forget:
The north end of Moonstone Beach Drive is now closed to through traffic because construction has begun on the replacement of the Leffingwell Bridge.
Tags: 93428, Cambria, CCSD, cfrc, Water Rates
CFRCCSD Rates Committee Meets July 18 - 9:30am
The Rates Committee of Cambrians for a Fiscally Responsible CCSD will meet tomorrow at Moonstone Beach Bar and Grill at 9:30, instead of the usual time - with tourist season in high gear we need to finish the meeting and be on our way before the restaurant opens and starts seating people. As always, the Rates Committee meeting welcomes anyone interested in attending - no special password needed.
Thank you, once again to the MacKinnons for providing such a comfortable place (and what a view!) for our meetings. You should check out their stylish new website. Looking good!
Don’t forget:
The north end of Moonstone Beach Drive is now closed to through traffic because construction has begun on the replacement of the Leffingwell Bridge.
Tags: 93428, CCSD, cfrc, water rates
Collaborative Public Involvement - No Boogie Man
Whether or not the current protest is successful, the CCSD must read the writing on the wall: A significant number in this community take do not approve of how CCSD has been doing business. Over and over through the last nine months, Cambrians have suggested a working group to participate in developing the budget and rates or a watchdog council to keep an eye on the CCSD and keep Cambrians informed. The Board has chosen to maintain their distance.
Announcing the First Protest Count
There were a few dozen minutes during the November 2, 2007 meeting where it looked like the Board was going to involve more Cambrians in the rates process. Director Cobin and Director Chaldecott had been discussing a citizen’s committee, as suggested by constituents, should be put together. Director Cobin said,
“We’ve heard very clearly that members of the community would like a chance to review the workings of the CSD. So we’re suggesting that those of you who are interested in forming some kind of a group and being part of that to come forth and let us know and we’ll arrange for that to happen.” (Applause)
Director Sanders made it clear he thought taking a step back would be the best way forward.
It’s too early to figure out what the process should be and that when they come back in December they could thoroughly discuss how they go forward.
Director Cobin stuck to her idea of getting the group together right away and the volley of argument was on. A few back and forth volleys, and then Director Cobin said,
“with the purpose of of keeping this Board as undivided as possible, I withdraw my suggestion.”
Does Director Cobin value the unity of the Board over what the community has asked for? Surely not.
Director Chaldecott made his pitch for the idea, saying “I’m concerned. After the December meeting we’re into the holidays and the New Year… that’s almost a three month period where nothing happens and I’m not sure if that’s productive.”
Director Sanders responded, “My sense is it will take a minimum of 6 months before we’re ready to talk about the rate increase again. Let’s take our time.” He then made a motion that the ad-hoc committee of Directors Cobin and Chaldecott come back to the board at the December meeting after having talked to the community and come up with a mission. That motion was never seconded and was withdrawn.
President Funke-Bilu then put in his five cents.
“I’ve witnessed an incredible process in my communty which I admire and respect and I want to stand back and give the folks the opportunity to do what they told us they think they can do. They’re organized, they seem united, I see successful business people, I see citizens I see residents, I see retired people with expertise. I don’t think we have to absorb them into the process…I think they have educated themselves. I think they want more time. Let them come to us with the recommendations that they feel they are in a position now to demonstrate. (Applause) “My suggestion is, instead of kind of adopting these folks I would welcome any and all suggestions as to the following, because this is what I attempted to do. I would love input from my community as to what kind of rates are necessary to ‘pay the operating expenses of the agency’ I want numbers from the protesters. I’m a 60’s kid, and I love protesters. I think it’s great. But this is what I would like: how to pay the operating expences of the agency, how to provide for repair and depreciateion of works, provide reasonable surplus for improvements, extensions and enlargements, pay the interest on the bonded debt and provide a sinking or other fund to provide for the paying of the principle of such debt that may become due.”
CCSD Math: 4 in favor, one opposed = no action.
Although four of the five members of the board seemed in favor of getting starting right away, in the end Director Sanders stymied any efforts to initiate a genuinely collaborative effort. He said the board should wait in order to “Find a way to get at the true financial condition of the district so at least everybody understands what the rules of the game are before we launch into this collaborative, cooperative arrangement with the community.”
Director Sanders then made an interesting statement…once it was clear there would be no immediate citizen’s committee formation. He said,
“The question is what is the true burden of the water and wastewater enterprises and how much overhead should be allocated to those two funds. My view at this particular point in time is that we’re overburdening the funds and that has a direct bearing on what the rates are going to be. And it’s quite possible that if we allocate costs to the general fund…we’re going to have to make some very tough decisions about what the general fund is going to carry and what its not. And a part of this process has to be the expense side of the equation…I think the community deserves the opportunity to be thoroughly engaged in the budget process that has us going through priorities and taking a hard look at our expenses in terms of what our priorities are. We haven’t done that in terms of the rate issues and I think we need to do that.”
Director Cobin, realizing she had the support of at least 3 of the directors and thinking Director Sanders now also agreed, tried one last time to get the motion passed. Director Sanders immediately launched into an explanation of how very technical and complex the issues are and that we must agree on the “rules of the game” should be.
I find this very interesting. Here’s what I take away after watching this meeting again: Director Sanders eliminated the possibility of a citizen’s committee getting started before the beginning of 2008, but made sure to position himself as a champion of community collaboration, leaving the words “deserve to be thoroughly engaged in the process” ringing in our ears.
It Takes Two to Tango
There was no substantive discussion of the citizen’s committee at the November regular meeting and the December meeting was cancelled. Meanwhile, the CFRC continued to meet at least 2 hours every week for two and a half more months with the idea that we should be bringing our suggestions about forming a group that would be recognized by the CCSD and be offering President Funke-Bilu the answers to his questions. We were under the impression we were going to be collaborative partners with CCSD.
We planned, debated, voted, prepared and requested a place on the January agenda. At the start of the January meeting, Director Cobin was installed as the board President and the mandate we’d been given seemed to be forgotten. We introduced ourselves and explained how we were organized and what we were working on and how we thought we might collaborate with the CCSD. No action was taken on the part of the Board. So we requested a spot on the agenda of the next meeting (March 6) and were prepared with a resolution for the Board to adopt.
Resolution Regarding CCSD Water and Wastewater Rates Increase.
Whereas,
the Cambrians for Fiscally Responsible CCSD agree that the current shortfalls in
operating costs need to be funded; and
Whereas,
the Cambrians for Fiscally Responsible CCSD agrees there are certain Capital
Improvements Projects needed to ensure health, public safety, and compliance with
state and federal regulations and the appropriate funding mechanism is through
bonds; and
Whereas,
the Cambrians for Fiscally Responsible CCSD believe the community will accept
increased rates to fund the operating shortfall and bond issuance if the CCSD agrees to
a reduction of 10% in the expenditures of the water and wastewater enterprise funds,
as is being proposed at both the state and county levels; and
Whereas,
the Cambrians for Fiscally Responsible CCSD have developed an interim rate proposal
to address these issues based on community input and the facts and figures as
provided by the CCSD;
Therefore,
Be it resolved that this board shall direct CCSD staff to work with CFRC in reviewing
our proposal and yours to come up with rates acceptable to the community to be
presented at an upcoming CCSD meeting.
They accepted our report and listened politely, but declined to take action. The following meeting we were notified that we wouldn’t have a place on the agenda.
Perhaps the Board will try again to support a collaborative process. I doubt the community is willing to change its mind about wanting to be more involved in the process. In fact, many who have been involved since the first protest believe in follow through: You shouldn’t oppose one way of going forward without offering an alternative. The Board’s actions seemed to say they weren’t interested in our alternative, but I can’t be sure, since we’ve not gotten feedback so have to rely on assumptions.
What is the difference between collaborative public involvement and traditional public participation?
All agencies must obey laws that prescribe certain public participation procedures. These requirements give the public the opportunity to get their comments into a written record of decision-making. However, members of the public are often not satisfied with that more formal aspect of public participation. They are not sure what the agency does with their input. They often wonder if agencies are “going through the motions” and not actually considering any ideas that differ from what they already had planned to do.
Some traditional public comment methods—like hearings—are not designed to allow for discussion or explore new ideas. Their purpose is to build a record, and they do that well. The communication they provide is generally one-way, formal, and static (agency to public, then public back to agency) rather than networked, informal, and dynamic (which can lead to creative joint problem-solving). On challenging issues, limiting communication with the public to these formal techniques can deepen misunderstanding and polarize opinion. The public often believes they are most effective when they apply advocacy tactics, such as packing public meetings with members of one interest group, or organizing mass letter writing campaigns. While these tactics may get attention, they do not translate into better decision-making.
A collaborative approach can help to avoid these problems by encouraging strong, creative, high-quality, and responsive lines of communication between agencies and the public.
What are the potential benefits of a collaborative approach to public involvement?
- Improved decision-making resulting from better knowledge of the whole system to be affected by agency actions;
- Better, more durable outcomes that enjoy more support from community members, leading to easier implementation;
- More efficient and effective use of limited public resources due to better match of agency efforts with public priorities;
- Improved relationships between agencies and members of the public;
- Early warning of potentially costly agency missteps or errors; and
- Ending or averting gridlock or litigation on controversial issues.
Often skepticism or antagonism stems from a fear that an agency will seek only to manipulate community opinions, concerns and judgment into a form of support for predetermined plans and policies. At the same time, public agencies often fear that an involvement process will be subverted by the limited agendas of narrow interest groups and will not reflect the diverse opinions of the general public the agency serves.To deal with past misunderstanding, agencies can build trust through responsiveness to community concern about how and under what conditions information is exchanged. This involvement must be done with sensitivity to the time and resource constraints of both the agency and members of the public.
“The irony of democratic participation over the past 40 years is that while both the public (government) and private (professional/specialists) capacity to assist with and attempt to solve the ills of urban and rural communities has risen, the capacity of the actual community to help itself has declined. Local democratic participation has decreased. Individuals no longer see themselves as part of a community of shared values and norms. Individuals have lost “…the conviction that they can influence the events and circumstances of their lives or the world around them” (Gardner, 1995). Sources of this ironic twist of fate are numerous and complex. Some researchers point to the rising complexity of problems facing urban and rural communities, the increase in specialized knowledge necessary to deal with complex problems, and the inability of redistributive policies to deal with inequality (Sirianni & Friedland, 1995). As Keith, citing Boyte, points out, “…the core norms of the broader American culture conspire to make us into a nation of clients seeking benefits. No longer are we a nation of citizens who see ourselves as doing politics” (Keith, 1996).” Strengthening Community Networks:The Basis for Sustainable Community Renewal Prepared by Brett Lane and Diane Dorfman June 30, 1997
Where can I find additional resources on community collaboration and civic participation ?
- Choose “Public Participation” from the category drop-down in the AboutCambria.com Library.
- Community Consensus Building Practical information for building collaboration and partnerships, locating assets and resources, identifying and engaging stakeholders, developing and completing goals and objectives and achieving success.
- CCP Publications — Reframing Public Participation: Strategies for the 21st Century
Innes, Judith and Booher, David. Planning Theory & Practice, Vol. 5, No. 4, 419–436, December 2004
http://www.csus.edu/ccp/publications.stm - CCP’s Core Services — Collaborative Public Involvement
http://www.csus.edu/ccp/about/core_services.stm - International Association for Public Participation
http://www.iap2.org/ - US Environmental Protection Agency’s gateway website of manuals and tools for public involvement
http://www.epa.gov/publicinvolvement/involvework.htm
More resources to come. It seems like our community and its government have a lot to learn about collaboration and cooperation.
More valuable than a gallon of gas? Say YES! with a small donation today.Tags: 93428, Cambria, civic engagement, collaboration, democracy, public participation
Agenda, Wed May 7, 6:00
Hello CFFR,
A meeting is scheduled for Wed. May 7, at Rabobank, 1070 Main St., 6-8 pm
AGENDA
1. Treasurer’s Report
2. CFFR Oversight Committee reports from Cynthia Hawley and Gary Talley with discussion to follow
3. CCSD Budget/Rate Proposal–initial discussion
I have offered to moderate this meeting–you can reach me at above e-mail address or 924-1404
Let’s have a good turn out! See you there!
Tina Dickason
Draft of Proposed Budget with Rate Increase Available Today
Yesterday, Tammy Rudock met with members of the Cambrians for Fiscally Responsible CCSD and provided a very rough draft of the proposed budget with rate increases. The draft will be part of a more finished packet of information the CCSD will provide at the Rates and Budget Workshop on May 13 (5:30pm at the Vets’ Hall). At a CFRC rates committee meeting this morning, quite a few questions were raised. More will surely be raised as more people have the time to review the drafts. The committee plans to meet again next Friday to address specific concerns, questions and criticisms.
Download the draft rates here.
After reading the drafts, come back and add your comments, questions and concerns.
More valuable than a gallon of gas? Say YES! with a small donation today.CCSD Budget and Rates Meeting Schedules
At the April 24, 2008 CCSD Board meeting, a preliminary timeline was discussed for upcoming CCSD Budgets and Utility Rates meetings. Following is the confirmed schedule of meetings as well as dates for other key milestones related to budgets and rates. The budget meetings will include both Operation and Capital Improvement Projects. All the meetings below will be held at the Veterans’ Memorial Building.
5:30 pm, Tuesday, May 13
- Special Meeting/Workshop – Budgets/Rates Proposals
12:30 pm, Thursday, May 22
- Regular Meeting - Budget Hearing and adoption of budgets per resolutions. Direction to staff to proceed with Rates Proposal
Tuesday, May 27
- Mailing - Rates Proposal notices mailed to customers (45 days before hearing)
5:30 pm, Monday, July 14
- Special Meeting - Rates Hearing (Prop 218); Adopt Rates Ordinance
12:30 pm, Thursday, July 24
- Regular Meeting - Second read for Rates Ordinance (Consent item)
Monday, August 25
- Effective date of Rates Ordinance
Monday, September 1
- Rates implementation date (September/October billing period)
For questions related to the above, please contact District Clerk, Kathy Choate at 805-927-6235 or email to kchoate @ cambriacsd.org.
More valuable than a gallon of gas? Say YES! with a small donation today.CFRC Rates Proposal Received by CCSD
The Cambrians for Fiscally Responsible CCSD have presented their expectations about a rate increase to Tammy Rudock and the CCSD Board of Directors. This action follows a unanimous vote to support a proposal by Michael Stoddard that was based on elements in previous proposals, information provided by the Master Plan committee, and discussions at Rates committee and the whole group over the last few months. Below are links to the proposal offered as well as the minutes of the April 16, 2008 meeting.
My hat is off to these folks. The time and energy that has brought us to this point has been unbelievable. The CFRC is scheduled to meet again on May 7, at the Rabobank from 6-8 PM.
April 16, 2008 CFRC Meeting Minutes
23 people attended (5 new people)
Jerry McKinnon opened meeting.
First item for discussion:
Alternate Rates Proposal presented by Michael Stoddard, in addition to other 3 proposals presented at the April 2, 2008 Rabobank meeting
Motion: Jeff Hellman To go forward with a vote to approve a proposal.
Passed unanimously
Motion: Jeff Hellman Accept proposal 4 to be presented to CCSD
Passed Unanimously
Motion: John MacKinnon Present the proposal to Tammy and the directors immediately.
Passed Unanimously
Discussion of how to spread the word about the proposal and action decided upon.
(The four page rates proposal is now available in the AboutCambria.com library.)
Second Discussion Item
Preliminary discussion of two oversight committee proposals – one by Gary Talley and one by Cynthia Hawley. Written proposals briefly discussed.
Not enough interest in forming a committee, so the issues is continued and further discussions will clarify.
Adjourn
More valuable than a gallon of gas? Say YES! with a small donation today.Groups Don’t Have To Be Their Own Worst Enemy
The Cliff’s Notes of this Post:
- Are groups of people as aggregations of individuals or as a cohesive group?
- Of the many ways groups can defeat their purpose, two are more common: Groups tend to devolve toward simple social interaction and away from the goal of the group.
- Groups tend to engage in identification and vilification of external enemies.
- Group structure is necessary to defend the group from itself. Group structure exists to keep a group on target, on track, on message, on charter, whatever.
The best explanation for the ways in which a group becomes its own worst enemy, comes from a book by W.R. Bion called “Experiences in Groups,” written in the middle of the last century.
Bion was a psychologist who was doing group therapy with groups of neurotics. (Drawing parallels between that and Cambrians is left as an exercise for the reader.) The thing that Bion discovered was that the neurotics in his care were, as a group, conspiring to defeat therapy.
There was no overt communication or coordination. But he could see that whenever he would try to do anything that was meant to have an effect, the group would somehow quash it. And he was driving himself crazy, in the colloquial sense of the term, trying to figure out whether or not he should be looking at the situation as: Are these individuals taking action on their own? Or is this a coordinated group?
He could never resolve the question, and so he decided that the unresolvability of the question was the answer. To the question: Do you view groups of people as aggregations of individuals or as a cohesive group, his answer was: “Hopelessly committed to both.” He said that humans are fundamentally individual, and also fundamentally social. Every one of us has a kind of rational decision-making mind where we can assess what’s going on and make decisions and act on them. And we are all also able to enter viscerally into emotional bonds with other groups of people that transcend the intellectual aspects of the individual.
In fact, Bion was so convinced that this was the right answer that the image he put on the front cover of his book was a Necker cube, one of those cubes that you can look at and make resolve in one of two ways, but you can never see both views of the cube at the same time. So groups can be analyzed both as collections of individuals and having this kind of emotive group experience.
This effect is so steady it’s sometimes called the paradox of groups. It’s obvious that there are no groups without members. But what’s less obvious is that there are no members without a group. Because what would you be a member of?
So there’s this very complicated moment of a group coming together, where enough individuals, for whatever reason, sort of agree that something worthwhile is happening, and the decision they make at that moment is: This is good and must be protected. And at that moment, even if it’s subconscious, you start getting group effects.
Now, Bion decided that what he was watching with the neurotics was the group defending itself against his attempts to make the group do what they said they were supposed to do. The group was convened to get better; this group of people was in therapy to get better. But they were defeating that. And he said, there are some very specific patterns that they’re entering into to defeat the ostensible purpose of the group meeting together.
One basic pattern Bion recognized was that groups can always devolve away from the sophisticated purpose and towards a more basic purpose. How many times have you been to a meeting that started late - even though everyone was already in the room (or nearby). The tendency to socialize through sharing personal stories and laughter is strong and can defeat the purpose of a group.
The second basic pattern that Bion detailed: The identification and vilification of external enemies. This is a very common pattern. If you cared about the cause there was a big list of jobs to do. But you could always instead get a conversation going about a particular board member or expenditure. And people would start bleeding from their ears, they would get so mad.
If you want to make it better, there’s a list of things to do. It’s Cambria, right? Just fix it. “No, no, no respect for us, grrrrr …”, the froth would start coming out. The external enemy — nothing causes a group to galvanize like an external enemy.
So even if someone isn’t really your enemy, identifying them as an enemy can cause a pleasant sense of group cohesion. And groups often gravitate towards members who are the most paranoid and make them leaders, because those are the people who are best at identifying external enemies.
Bion has identified this possibility of groups sandbagging their sophisticated goals with these basic urges. And what he finally came to, in analyzing this tension, is that group structure is necessary. Robert’s Rules of Order are necessary. Constitutions are necessary. Norms, rituals, laws, the whole list of ways that we say, out of the universe of possible behaviors, we’re going to draw a relatively small circle around the acceptable ones.
He said the group structure is necessary to defend the group from itself. Group structure exists to keep a group on target, on track, on message, on charter, whatever. To keep a group focused on its own sophisticated goals and to keep a group from sliding into these basic patterns. Group structure defends the group from the action of its own members.
In the Seventies - a BBS called Communitree launched, one of the very early dial-up BBSes. This was launched when people didn’t own computers, institutions owned computers.
Communitree was founded on the principles of open access and free dialogue. “Communitree” — the name just says “California in the Seventies.” And the notion was, effectively, throw off structure and new and beautiful patterns will arise.
And, indeed, as anyone who has put discussion software into groups that were previously disconnected has seen, that does happen. Incredible things happen. Over and over again, you see all this incredible upwelling of people who suddenly are connected in ways they weren’t before.
And then, as time sets in, difficulties emerge. In this case, one of the difficulties was occasioned by the fact that one of the institutions that got hold of some modems was a high school. And who, in 1978, was hanging out in the room with the computer and the modems in it, but the boys of that high school. And the boys weren’t terribly interested in sophisticated adult conversation. They were interested in fart jokes. They were interested in salacious talk. They were interested in running amok and posting four-letter words and nyah-nyah-nyah, all over the bulletin board.
And the adults who had set up Communitree were horrified, and overrun by these students. The place that was founded on open access had too much open access, too much openness. They couldn’t defend themselves against their own users. The place that was founded on free speech had too much freedom. They had no way of saying “No, that’s not the kind of free speech we meant.”
But that was a requirement. In order to defend themselves against being overrun, that was something that they needed to have that they didn’t have, and as a result, they simply shut the site down.
What matters is, a group designed this and then was unable, in the context they’d set up, partly a technical and partly a social context, to save it from this attack from within. And attack from within is what matters. Communitree wasn’t shut down by people trying to crash or syn-flood the server. It was shut down by people logging in and posting, which is what the system was designed to allow. Some of the users wanted the system to continue to exist and to provide a forum for discussion. And other of the users, the high school boys, either didn’t care or were actively inimical. And the system provided no way for the former group to defend itself from the latter.
In the political realm, we would call these kinds of crises a constitutional crisis. It’s what happens when the tension between the individual and the group, and the rights and responsibilities of individuals and groups, gets so serious that something has to be done.
And the worst crisis is the first crisis, because it’s not just “We need to have some rules.” It’s also “We need to have some rules for making some rules.” And this is what we see over and over again in large and long-lived social systems. Constitutions are a necessary component of large, long-lived, heterogenous groups.
As a group commits to its existence as a group, and begins to think that the group is good or important, the chance that they will begin to call for additional structure, in order to defend themselves from themselves, gets very, very high.
One thing you need to accept: The core group has rights that trump individual rights in some situations. This pulls against the libertarian view that’s quite common, and it absolutely pulls against the one person/one vote notion. But you can see examples of how bad an idea voting is when voting rights are afforded anyone who shows up.
In the early Nineties, a proposal went out to create a Usenet news group for discussing Tibetan culture, called soc.culture.tibet. And it was voted down, in large part because a number of Chinese students who had Internet access voted it down, on the logic that Tibet wasn’t a country; it was a region of China. And in their view, since Tibet wasn’t a country, there oughtn’t be any place to discuss its culture, because that was oxymoronic.
Now, everyone could see that this was the wrong answer. The people who wanted a place to discuss Tibetan culture should have it. That was the core group. But because the one person/one vote model on Usenet said “Anyone who’s on Usenet gets to vote on any group,” sufficiently contentious groups could simply be voted away.
Imagine today if, in Cambria, people had to be polled before any group could be created. The people who want to have those discussions are the people who matter. And absolute citizenship, with the idea that if you can show up, you are a citizen, is a harmful pattern, because it is the tyranny of the majority.
In all successful communities, a core group arises that cares about and gardens effectively. Gardens the environment, to keep it growing, to keep it healthy.
So the core group needs ways to defend itself — both in getting started and because of the effects I talked about earlier — the core group needs to defend itself so that it can stay on its sophisticated goals and away from its basic instincts.
The Wikipedia has a system that works, with a volunteer fire department, a group of people who care to an unusual degree about the success of the Wikipedia. And they have enough leverage, because of the way wikis work, they can always roll back graffiti and so forth, that that thing has stayed up despite repeated attacks. So leveraging the core group is a really powerful system.
One more thing you must accept: All groups of any integrity have a constitution. The constitution is always partly formal and partly informal. At the very least, the formal part is included in By-Laws and other organizing documents.
The informal part is the sense of “how we do it around here.” And no matter what is included in the formal part, there will always be an informal part as well. You can’t separate the two. The informal part develops over time and is a combination of the formal and the social norms of the community outside the group.
Collective action, coordination, organization, cooperative intelligence - the list of terms and jargon is endless. Whatever you call it, coming together to affect change in acts or policy is a complex undertaking that requires at least some attention be spent on creating and maintaining the structure and tools that keep the group from becoming its own worst enemy.
Adapted from “A Group is its own worst enemy” - by Clay Shirky June 2003
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