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City Circles
The astonishing level of time and commitment by those organizing the City Circle
meetings has been quite visible in the first round of meetings, held primarily during
the week of February 5 (Risk Management will meet February 14). We're still waiting
to get back final participation lists from most circles, but it looks like participant
numbers will be in the vicinity of 350. Reports from almost all circles have been
excellent, with particular kudos going to the facilitators and recorders.
The tremendous amount of work Holly Van Houten put into planning the meeting formats
has paid off with very enthusiastic reviews.
All coordinators have been successful in recruiting key community "stake-holders":
participants from government, the business community, academia, and the environmental
advocacy community.
There are still gaps in representation from all the city's ethnic communities,
and Laura Pappas, coordinator of the Environmental Justice Circle, may be calling
other coordinators with suggestions for last-minute additions.
There will be a meeting on
Wednesday, February 28
6:00 p.m. of all coordinators
(and any steering committee members who aren't coordinators) to thank them for
their superb work, and to cover issues such as topics of overlap between groups,
and questions that arose during the first City Circle meetings. Isabel Wade has graciously
offered to host this meeting at her house:
783 Buena Vista West San Francisco
(accessible by all the Haight Street buses, the 43 Masonic, and the 33 Ashbury)
Regular steering committee meetings will continue on 1st and 3rd Tuesdays, with
the next one on the 20th.
Adding Participants
Most Circles reported that there were several key people who had been missed in
the original recruiting, or who wanted to participate but couldn't attend the first
meeting. While it is still the general intention not to bring newcomers in once the
process has started, for key people, coordinators should use their discretion about
adding additional participants. They should make sure before the second meeting that
newcomers are brought up to date on the process and what occurred at the first meeting,
so that the time of the other participants won't be used for catch-up. Newcomers
should also be made aware that goals can be added if there were significant omissions
in the first session, but we don't want to spend the group's time rehashing things
that had already been decided upon.
We will draw the line at meeting two. The process will be too far along, and working
relationships among participants too established, for people to successfully join
after the second meeting.
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