AUBURN — The city will schedule a series of seven meetings through September and October designed to boost citizen involvement.
City resident Mary Sylvester, a community planner for the University of Southern Maine, has offered to facilitate the meetings free of charge. She told councilors Monday night that the meetings should be open and non-threatening to be effective.
“The purpose is to talk together as people who live together in our community about what we want,” Sylvester told city councilors at Monday’s workshop meeting. “It should perhaps be framed around what we love about this community and what we would like to see improved. But it should always be looking in a facilitated way toward finding common ground. It’s my hunch we have more than you can often hear in the spirited debates that you hear in this room.”
The meetings would be two hours and 30 minutes long — a 30-minute social period, followed by two hours of discussion.
Mayor Jonathan LaBonte said city councilors have talked about hosting a series of meetings before next spring’s budget discussions begin.
“There really has not been a good venue for the community to weigh in with its thoughts, visions, priorities in the council meeting format,” LaBonte said. “So Mary reached out to me to lend her expertise and help.”
City Manager Clinton Deschene said locations are still being considered. The meetings could be hosted by local schools and churches, at the Auburn Public Library, the Danville Grange, the Boys and Girls Club in New Auburn or the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel’s conference rooms.
Sylvester said she hopes the rooms would be set up with chairs in a circle, inviting neighbors to talk.
“In my view, there is nothing stronger in a community than a group of engaged citizens working together,” she said. “What I believe we may have is that there are many small groups that are very engaged in discussions, but they don’t often meet together. So one of my hopes would be these would be broad enough that people that don’t normally talk together would come together.”
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