citizen academy - two hours to give an overview of planning/development

[Suburb Repairman]

Our City is doing a great new initiative designed to get folks more involved and familiar with all aspects of city government. It is a multiweek course with 20 people signed-up to participate. Our goal is to help educate these citizens about what exactly it is that the city does, with a secondary goal that this would create a pool of people that become interested enough to serve on boards & commissions.

So I need to come up with a great way to tell the story of what our department does in terms of building permitting, code enforcement, long range planning, current planning (site plans, zoning cases, subdivision, etc.). While I'm a skilled presenter, there ain't no way in hell I'm playing the role of preacherman for two hours. I'm really looking for ways to get this group interacting and involved.

I know some of you have done this kind of thing. Any suggestions? The closest I've come is a session I did at the high school for "youth in government." This is a little more of a challenge because it appears all of the attendees have absolutely no knowledge of planning & development.

• Mock Commission meeting - but how to do that when so many are unfamiliar with what we do?
• Break-out sessions - The class breaks up into smaller groups and each are given the same planning-related scenario. They come up with a strategy to respond to the situation which they then share with everyone.
• Site selection scenario - give small groups facts about a site, and ask them to come up with the type of land use that should go there
• Spot the violation - give photographs and ask to identify things they think might be violations. include a picture with absolutely nothing wrong.

Also, I'm not sure where to start on actual presentation materials. I can't see going through the comprehensive plan because that could be a whole day by itself--maybe hitting just the high points of it and the land use map? I'd also love to come up with activities to help people understand how subdivision of land works.

[NHPlanner]

The town I used to work for had a local leadership program, where interested citizens get an overview of the roles and responsibilities of the various town departments. I also gave several presentations to High School Civics classes in the past few years. PM or e-mail me and I can get you some of the info.

[dvdneal]

I don't have any material on hand, but I always like to give people catch 22 scenarios. Make them think about what they value more and in some small way face your decisions.
Something like having everyone list out some goals for the city and then make them put money into those goals and see which ones get left behind.
Or give them a fake site plan for some great new factory that will employ 1000 people, but has some other impacts like traffic and generally ruining a neighborhood.
For easier stuff, have them review a subdivision plat and figure out where the new school/park/fire station/etc. goes and if it should all be part of this subdivision or not. Should this developer be forced to give up land for a new school or should it be the next guy? What's fair to the school/city/developer.

Somewhere you obviously have to go over the boring stuff, but throwing in some nightmare code violations makes that more fun (at least until someone says, "that's my house").

Good luck and have fun with it, you might actually get some good people out of it. It worked for my last city.