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While a legislature may have to balance funding for education, health care, law enforcement, and other priorities, the public tends to look at initiatives on a case-by-case basis, without considering that choosing one thing may take away funds from something else. For that reason, ballot initiatives often do not yield effective remedies to problems, despite their popular support.
in the wild foothill areas. Others see it as a buffer against further development. Still others want it to be closed to public use so it can be protected habitat for other species. These differences have led to serious difficulties for the Open Space Department.
In order to deal with these conflicts, the department uses a variety of public participation methods: public hearings, an advisory committee, even referenda. These techniques have helped guide policy, although the strong division of opinion has hampered effective public decision-making. After rejecting advice received at public hearings and from an advisory committee, the Open Space Department tried a consensus-process with many (but not all) stakeholder groups to try to agree to a management plan for the city's open areas. At this writing, the group did succeed in reaching a broad-based consensus, but it appears that the Open Space Board of Trustees does not agree with the consensus and may not implement it. If this occurs, years of public participation will have been undertaken in vain.[3]
Even though public participation can slow the decision making process down, it is often legally required, and can avoid costly lawsuits at the other end if unpopular decisions are made without adequate public input.
Another example from Boulder illustrates the dangers of not using public participation. In 1995, a new school board was elected in the Boulder Valley School District. This school board was politically very different from its predecessors. It was a much more conservative board, dedicated to improving the quality of teaching and student achievement. They planned to reverse many earlier decisions of past boards, which were seen to be politically correct, but ineffective when it came to achieving high test scores. Since this board was sure they knew what the problems were with the schools and what needed to be done to fix them, they tried to make as many decisions as quickly as possible, without involving the public any more than was absolutely necessary. They limited the number of speakers who could speak at board meetings, and limited the few who could speak to two minutes each. They voted on measures before they were supposed to, so people who were opposed to what they planned did not have time to respond before the decision was made. The result of this approach is that the community completely reversed itself in two years. The 1995 school board was almost entirely voted out of office in 1997, and a go-slowand-carefully school board was elected in its place.[4]
Hart writes, "Genuine public participation requires social inclusion, personal security, and freedom of speech and assembly. A strong civil society, civic education, and good channels of communication between all levels of society facilitate this process. Only a considerable commitment of time and resources will make genuine public participation possible."[9] When seriously pursued, public participation can be remarkably helpful for democratization. The classic example of this is South Africa: In all, it took seven years, from 1989 to 1996, to achieve the final constitution... Throughout these years, outbreaks of violence threatened the process...From 1994 through 1996 the South African process became a full-scale demonstration of participatory constitution making. Until that time, the public had had no direct role in constitution making. Now their elected representatives in the assembly reached out to educate them and invite their views. The educational effort included a media and advertising campaign using newspapers, radio and television, billboards, and the sides of buses; an assembly newspaper with a circulation of 160,000; cartoons; a web site; and public meetings; together these efforts reached an estimated 73 percent of the population. From 1994 through 1996 the Constitutional Assembly received two million submissions, from individuals and many advocacy groups, professional associations, and other interests...[10] Many argue that this effective use of public participation smoothed South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy. Hart concludes, "At its best, participatory constitutionalism works and counteracts the arguments in support of elite negotiation as the sole effective mode. At its worst, as in Zimbabwe, it provides only another guise for the exercise of raw power."[11]