Close to Home: Public wants and deserves a culture of transparency in Santa Rosa

The Mayor’s Open Government Task Force was formed in April with the goal of providing recommendations to the Santa Rosa City Council for improving openness and transparency in city government.

For nearly nine months, the task force engaged in community meetings and public forums, during which time residents and businesses expressed their lost faith in local government and their growing frustration with the apparent disconnect between city officials and the community.

Residents want their voices to be heard, acknowledged and valued in the city’s decision making processes. And, although Santa Rosa has an elected City Council, the community expects to participate in the process behind policy recommendations to the council. The community wants, and deserves, a seat at the table.

The opportunity to create a more effective interaction, a more robust conversation and a stronger trust between our residents and our government is before us. The council’s willingness to embrace this opportunity will depend, in large part, upon the goals it adopts in February.

As members of the task force, we believe it is imperative that the council adopt open government as one of its goals. In addition, the council must tackle the deeper, more systemic issues that now impede our community’s engagement in local government. Improving access to local government will require not only better defined policies but also a strong commitment to facilitating and encouraging productive engagement.

The task force developed recommendations designed both to establish policy and to foster community engagement. The community engagement recommendations focus on changing the culture within our local government to improve access, two-way communication and creativity in problem-solving. To succeed, we must create a culture that engages our residents by asking, “How may we help you?”

The policy recommendations focus on developing and implementing specific policies to improve transparency and open government, above and beyond the state’s existing requirements.

For example, the task force recommends establishing a formal appeals process for citizens to pursue when their requests for access to public records are denied.

While this appeals process would be enacted as an official city policy, its genesis is aimed at fostering open communication and responsiveness to our community.

Focusing on both policy and community engagement will be critical if the city is to truly embrace openness and transparency. With this in mind, the task force identified the following objectives for immediate action by the council:

Hire a communications director to champion transparency within Santa Rosa’s 1,200-person municipal organization and to develop and facilitate the organizational tools, processes and structure necessary to promote effective and robust public engagement strategies.

Adopt a sunshine ordinance based on task force recommendations.

Create a city mission statement that embraces community engagement.

These initial steps will demonstrate the council’s commitment to transparency and will be instrumental in advancing the goal of open government.

City residents must make a similar commitment to actively promote openness and demand transparency from their elected officials; open government cannot succeed without a corresponding increase in an engaged citizenry.

If Santa Rosans want a more responsive and better functioning government, the time to act is now. Residents can productively engage by reading the Task Force report (available at srcity.org/opengovernment), by calling or emailing the City Council members to express a community interest in this topic and by attending the City Council goal-setting meeting in February.

Changing our city’s culture and strengthening trust between Santa Rosans and Santa Rosa government will require a comprehensive strategy that invites everyone to participate and holds city officials accountable. The task force has opened the door to transparency. Don’t miss this opportunity to help move our community forward.

Ashle Crocker and Peter Stanley are members of the Santa Rosa Planning Commission and members of the Mayor’s Open Government Task Force.