In 2021, the City Council and County Board of Supervisors had joint and individual meetings to review and endorse a Public Participation Outline with four phases.  The key element of Phase 2: What's Possible/What's the Vision is a Collaborative process that integrates the feedback received through community workshops, surveys, scenario planning charrettes, and concurrent revision processes into a comprehensive vision and direction for the revised plan. This step provides an opportunity for building consensus around difficult trade-offs and competing values, and for the community to build a cohesive vision and priorities.

The Flagstaff Regional Plan is a policy guide, serving as the general plan for the City of Flagstaff and an amendment to the Coconino County Comprehensive Plan. The plan covers a range of topics with information on current conditions, our vision for the future, and carefully developed goals and policies to realize the future vision. In 2021, the City Council and Board of Supervisors reviewed and endorsed a Public Participation Plan Outline that established the level of public participation for the process, the guiding principles, and phases and broad strategies to be implemented into the process. At the May 31st work session, City Council will be updated on the progress and implementation of Phase 1: Get Curious and Gain Understanding.  However, the discussion will focus on Phase 2: What's Possible/What's the Vision and in particular the collaborative process that will knit together the community's vision into a scope for writing a meaningful and impactful plan.

Phase 3 is the step at which an advisory committee will be formed by the City Council and Board of Supervisors.  Work will start to define this commission and its makeup in the first part of 2023. For more information on Phases 3 and 4, please review the Public Participation Plan Outline.

Phase 1: Outreach Efforts from August 2021 to April 2022 

In September 2021, the City of Flagstaff launched the Flagstaff Regional Plan 2045 website at www.flagstaff.az.gov/regionalplan2045. 

Between September 2021 and April 2022, the project team coordinated and led 22 Snapshot webinars covering a wide range of topics. Associated with the webinars the team has produced 9 snapshot papers with 10 papers still under development or pending. All snapshots are a draft and may be updated at a future time to reflect new information.  All the recorded webinars are available as a YouTube playlist: https://bit.ly/RegionalSnapshots. 

The Regional Plan Update team has been meeting with Boards, Commissions and Councils throughout the City and County and collecting their feedback on the existing Regional Plan and its revision. This scoping process began in late February and will continue through the end of June. 

With the financial support of the Beautification and Public Art Commission, local artist Sonja London-Hall has been working with the update team to create hands-on engagement kits that are focused on opening conversations and creating an insightful vision within the process.  The Flagstaff Cr(e)rates kits are intended for audiences with no or limited experience discussing community planning. They will be available through schools, the libraries, and community events such as Earth Day and the County Fair. They have been through some basic testing with City and County planning staff and were rolled out at the April 23rd Earth Day event. The curated results will also be used to promote the Regional Plan through a First Friday art walk open house in the late summer/early Fall. 

Phase 1: Outreach Efforts – Summer/Fall 2022 

The project team is reaching out to community organizations to attend their meetings and provide education on the Regional Plan and solicit their participation in the process.  Recently staff has presented to Creative Flagstaff, the Northern Arizona Association of Realtors, and  Flagstaff Business Connections. 

On April 21st, the team launched an online Visioning survey on the Flagstaff Community Forum. The survey can be found only at https://www.opentownhall.com/11851 Note: Board, Council, and Commission members should not participate in this survey to prevent an electronic quorum but may share the link within their social and professional networks.

Staff will be present at community events throughout the summer, including Concerts in the Park, Juneteenth, Tardeada, the Coconino County Fair, etc. There will be an information booth at each event and the ability to interact with art boxes and the visioning survey. 

Phase 2: Workshops and Scenario Planning
Early September 2022 is the expected launch of the first formal public meetings and open houses, led by city and County staff.  The objective of this first round of workshops would be to define the most critical questions the Regional Plan needs to answer, to discuss the community-wide and smaller area visions, and to prioritize community values and assets from the survey results. The community will have the opportunity to meet with their neighbors and provide input.

On May 23, the City advertised a Request for Statement of Qualifications (RSOQ)  for a firm to provide the technology, knowledge, and public outreach associated with scenario planning. The American Planning Association describes scenario planning as "a process to support decision-making that helps urban and rural planners navigate the uncertainty of the future in the short and long term. A scenario planning process begins by scanning the current reality, projected forecasts, and influential internal and external factors to produce a set of plausible potential futures (i.e., scenarios). It then develops a series of initiatives, projects, and policies (i.e., tactics) that may help support a preferred scenario, a component of a scenario, multiple scenarios, or all scenarios." Staff and the public will be taken through exercises that test the potential of different land-use approaches to population, jobs, transportation, ecology, climate, and water resources.  This work will be coordinated with existing modeling and projections used by the City of Flagstaff Water Services, and Metroplan to ensure that these parallel models are properly calibrated. 

Phase 2: Collaborative Process
Concurrent with scenario planning charettes, the City and County would convene a collaborative group process that would be based on a technique selected by the team chosen in a separate RSOQ. The Public Participation Outline suggests 4 techniques: informal working groups, study circles, citizen assemblies and a citizen panel.  All of these techniques are described in the attached handouts and it is possible that a consultant could come forward with a different proven technique that could be equally effective.   The current budget request for this item is $100,000. Regardless of the technique selected, the defined activities of the Collaborative process in Phase 2 would be:

1. To draft the Community Vision and solicit feedback,
2. To assess the strength and weaknesses of the existing plan,
3. To answer the planning questions identified in early outreach
4. To make recommendations to staff on how to address emerging issues in the plan, and
5. To assist in defining the scope and writing the first draft of the plan
 

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Guidance for Council Discussion
City Council is not being asked to select a technique from the four examples described in the attached handout.  Staff recommends leaving the techniques as examples to encourage consultants who are adept at these techniques to apply but to leave open the opportunity for other techniques to be considered.  In order to help staff prepare an appropriate solicitation for assistance, staff would like feedback on:

• What criteria or skills do you think are important to consider in selecting a consultant to assist with the collaborative process??

• What should the evaluation team consider when evaluating the techniques that potential consultants may propose?

This will be combined with feedback from the Coconino County Board of Supervisors. 
 

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Potential for Compensation of Participants
An emerging trend in large complex planning efforts and projects is the consideration of compensating participants in an effort to encourage participation for hard-to-reach populations.  In Flagstaff, Rapid Assessment Response Evaluations have been conducted by the Southside Community Association and Native Americans for Community Action that paid participants and trusted community members to go out and gather input using standardized techniques. The City of Flagstaff and Coconino County has not provided compensation to participants for public engagement activities previously.  Staff has received feedback that one of the pitfalls of the previous Regional Plan update effort was that a stakeholder group that started as a diverse and representative group became less representative as the project took more time.  Compensation targeted to improve equitable access for interested individuals who represent hard-to-reach segments of our population is one solution that could assist in addressing these concerns. 

City staff has reached out through national networks to understand how this policy is being considered and discussed in other jurisdictions.  Bozeman, MT provided us with a comparison that they completed of policies that have been implemented by public health, education, and other nonprofit and public agencies (see attached Best Practices Crosswalk).  City staff would like direction on whether staff should investigate further and bring back potential methods for incorporating a compensation strategy specifically for this process.  Because staff is seeking direction and has only gathered very preliminary information, no other division (including Legal) has reviewed the possibility of providing participant compensation.  Should Council direct staff to explore this option further, other divisions will be invited to provide input.    
 

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Guidance for Council Discussion
 In order to help staff prepare an appropriate solicitation for assistance, staff would like feedback on:

• Is this a compensation for public participation that the City wants to pursue for the Flagstaff Regional Plan update?? (If no, disregard questions below)

• What should have been considered before bringing back more specific information and options back to Council??
  
  This will be combined with feedback from the Coconino County Board of Supervisors. 

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A special thanks to Dani Hess,Community Engagement Coordinator for Bozeman, MT for providing compensation research.