Agenda - Council Work Session - 02/19/2013 - Strategic Planning

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Ramsey Final Report Grant No. 05 -1237 City of Ramsey the reason for this lies in the framing of the invitation: you only ask people to do what they are capable of doing. Another concern was that some residents took advantage of the openness of the format to confront staff and council about other issues. Facilitators had to announce ground rules that prohibited such discussions. The OST sessions also had an issue with urging people to keep proper notes that reflected the discussions. This became less of a problem as participants came to understand that the notes functioned as the action documents for the sessions. Michael Herman generously offered to debrief the planning group by phone after each session which greatly helped us to deal with these issues. He assured us that the issues the process had encountered were common with communities learning OST and in fact healthy signs that the process was working. Ramsey's pioneering of OST for community planning has elicited great interest in the area and the city looks forward to being able to help other communities use the process. Quite frankly, the city feels it is the best way for communities to deal with contentious issues because it allows everyone a voice —even to the point of organizing the agenda —and also is designed to move people towards consensus rather than contention.