Learning to be better neighbors
Monday, August 03, 2009
Skye Hughes
– Brown looks to Seattle model for decentralized city services –
Councilman Peter Brown thinks Seattle has something to offer Houston: a positive model for interacting with the city’s neighborhoods to the benefit of both the city and the neighborhood.
Brown recently invited Seattle’s director of the Department of Neighborhoods, Stella Chao, to visit the City of Houston. Chao spoke at a variety of meetings with Super Neighborhood Councils and other community representatives about the ways that her department interacts with the city and its citizens.
Kingwood SNC members Bob Rehak and Dick McGucken went to a luncheon downtown on July 21 to hear what Chao had to say.
Brown and his office are focusing on how to empower Houston’s neighborhoods, and they see the Seattle model as one way to do that. He brought Chao here to address this focus and to present how another city handles dealing with distinct neighborhood groups within a larger city framework.
According to Rehak, when Brown visited the Kingwood Super Neighborhood Council in May, Brown said he was in favor of giving a greater role to Super Neighborhood Councils, and perhaps even a budget to address neighborhood priorities.
In Seattle, the Department of Neighborhoods is a liaison department. For neighborhood representatives, it is a door to the city government. For the city, the department is a relationship-builder between city and citizen. One way the city is building these relationships is through its satellite offices, which it calls “mini-city halls.”
Among the strengths of having these mini-city halls is that they provide easy access to city government. This access is particularly easier on low-income residents, who may find it too difficult or too expensive to travel into the heart of downtown.
“Staff at our service centers assist with permitting, neighborhood protection, planning; they accept utility bill payments, voter registration, passport applications, accident reports, and a host of many other services that would normally require one to travel to downtown,” Chao said.
And having local access gives more residents a voice they might not otherwise have. In Seattle, all elections are now using mail-in ballots, but many residents are uncomfortable just mailing them in. A few of the mini-city halls have ballot drop boxes, which have more than proved their worth: in a recent election, 18 percent of all city ballots came through those few drop boxes.
“Houston is a big, spread-out city and trying to run everything from downtown is not effective or efficient for our residents,” Brown said, when asked which of Seattle’s concepts and activities he sees as the most applicable to the City of Houston and, more specifically, the relationship between the city and Kingwood.
“Seattle’s concept of decentralized services – satellite city halls throughout – is what I would like the city of Houston to explore,” said Brown.
He said that bringing city services closer to Houston neighborhoods through one-stop-shopping community service centers, would greatly benefit the city, and more importantly, far-outlying communities like Kingwood.
“I think it’s a good idea to bring government close to the people. Especially in a spread-out city like Houston,” said McGucken. “If major parts of city government could be brought to the people, similar to what Harris county does with their various courthouse annexes, then everyone would benefit.”