My last blog attempted to urge Florida governments to accept and embrace the cross collaborative approach. Someone must have read it as I received a follow up email, I believe from John Folk-Williams of Cross Collaborate, reminding me of the great work being done in Florida by the Florida Conflict Resolution Consortium and its Director, Robert Jones.
And, frankly, shame on me… I am very aware of the good work being done by the Consortium and in my blog I should have offered a tip of the hat to their excellent work and leadership in the field of cross collaboration. They are successfully resolving public policy issues on a large scale in areas such as education, transportation, water resources, natural resources, land use and the like.
However, in my defense, as I was writing my blog I was thinking about all of the little matters that clog up local and state governments that should be addressed with a cross-collaborative approach but simply are not. Let’s think small scale for a minute. Let’s think Hatfield and McCoy.
It is the small neighborhood disputes that get the audiences a’rumblin at commission meetings. It is the big box store threatening to move into town that gets tempers flaring and gets local politicians’ phones ringing off the hook. Cross collaborative efforts need not wait for the ticking time bomb such as cross-jurisdictional annexation or water disputes. Even for the smaller issues that may only ruffle the feathers of a few citizens I encourage local and state government to focus more on preventative medicine rather than simply treating the symptoms.
So, mayors, town managers, planning staff and city and county attorney offices, before you hang up that phone after listening to someone rant and rave for what seems like forever, think about what can be done to put out that fire. In today’s newspapers alone I read the following headlines: “Roosters’ early morning calls have suburban Delray residents crowing,” “Palm Beach County schools chief revises disputed academic programs,” It may be time to suggest neighborhood mediation to air the issue out and begin working on a solution that may just solve the problem once and for all.
And for a shining example of cross collaborative efforts from today’s papers: Volusia County Public Works Departments hosts “Workshop to tackle trail plan.” Looks like Volusia County “got the memo!”