The goal is a highway bypass around northwest suburban Richmond that everybody can accept–from public officials to environmentalists to downtown merchants. The challenge is to come up with a plan that doesn’t kill the central business district.
That is the task facing some 50 people who will gather this fall in a local hall, break into four or five discussion groups and grind out a consensus on one of the village’s most contentious issues.
The exercise may seem far removed from the bigger issues facing the Chicago region. But it will be a small-scale rehearsal for a more ambitious effort next spring, when the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission–taking a leadership role unprecedented in its 43-year history–convenes a symposium of residents from across the region.
The effort could lead to “citizens roundtables,” meeting regularly and giving ordinary folks the kind of voice and clout now enjoyed by political insiders, Fortune 500 executives and special interest groups.
Thousands of participants from the city and suburbs would gather in a dozen or more assembly halls across the area for a “regional electronic town meeting.”
Using small-group facilitators, keypad voting devices and telecommunications links to tie the venues together, the “visioning” session would work on a regional comprehensive plan dealing with such issues as the imbalance between urban populations and suburban jobs, a shortage of affordable housing and worsening traffic congestion.
Ronald L. Thomas, executive director of NIPC, even sees an opportunity to create a regional cultural resources plan. With so many institutions for the visual arts, dance and music, he said, “Maybe we should set up a scenic road designation that connects them all together.”
The 10- and 20-year horizons of past government studies are nothing compared to what Thomas wants: a plan to guide public policymakers in the Chicago region through the year 2050.
In Richmond, Village President Kevin Brusek just wants NIPC to help him resolve a problem that has vexed the community for at least the last five years.
Northbound traffic out of the Chicago area heading for Lake Geneva and other vacation spots and concert grounds in southern Wisconsin now throttles down to just two lanes of U.S. Highway 12 through Richmond, a community of 1,000 in northeast McHenry County.
“Our goal is to get the traffic rerouted, to get a bypass built around Richmond,” Brusek said, but to do so in such a way “that when it happens, the (downtown) businesses don’t go to hell.”
Besides the bypass’ impact on local merchants, the forum also would look at the new road’s impact on sensitive wetlands north of town, and how it would tie in with the U.S. 12 freeway across the Wisconsin state line.
Before joining NIPC at the beginning of the year, Thomas helped stage a “citizens summit” in Washington, D.C., in November. That effort brought together nearly 3,000 residents at a cost of about $750,000.
The one-day summit and a follow-up meeting produced a series of “action plans” that Washington officials referred to in drawing up their fiscal 2001 budget.
The plans contained dozens of recommendations, from adding more police officers to street patrols to creating an “Adopt a Block” program for residents and renovating recreation centers in the district.
Thomas and NIPC want to expand the process for a metropolitan area of nearly 8 million. To launch the effort, the commission is seeking a $600,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The town meeting and the follow-up drafting of the comprehensive plan could cost $5 million to $7 million over the next three years, Thomas estimated. Funding is likely to be a mix of public and private money from government sources, civic organizations and foundations.
Preparations would begin in earnest in October with a one-day “regional leadership assembly” of 150 to 200 community leaders. Their assignment would be to set the agenda for the town meeting.
“We are using an old idea–the town-hall meeting–and taking it to scale for large cities, regions, the nation,” said Joe Goldman, a Northbrook resident and former manager of the Neighborhood Action office of Washington Mayor Anthony A. Williams.
Goldman worked with Thomas on the Washington, D.C., citizens summit and will join NIPC later this year to head the town meeting project.
Modern technologies “are allowing us to engage citizens in a way that wasn’t possible in the past,” Goldman said. “People want to participate in governance–they want to take part in shaping the future of their communities … but we need to provide them with a way that they can do so meaningfully.”
Peter Skosey, a vice president of the Metropolitan Planning Council in Chicago, welcomed the town meeting idea, but questioned whether agenda-setting for so broad an area–six counties and 270 cities and villages–can have as great an impact on public policymaking as a forum limited to a single municipality, like Richmond or Washington.
“It’s trickier for anybody to do something on a regional basis because there are a number of jurisdictions,” Skosey said.
