Now that all of the city council candidates seem to have announced should FAN make endorsements for city council elections? If so, what would be the process to do that? Should we hold a candidate forum where we invite council members and candidates to talk to FAN members? Or should we instead send out a questionnaire like a lot of similar organizations do with questions relating to issues that are important to FAN members? And then based on that information allow the membership to vote?
There are so many interested and involved organizations in the city, out of fairness to the candidates time perhaps a questionnaire would be best. We do not necessarily need to take a position on all or any candidates, but in my opinion should reserve the right to do so.
I support the idea of a questionnaire. It allows us to get a more apples-to-apples comparison and see various responses to the same question posed to everyone. Whether in-person or online, should we discuss what are the pressing questions that are important to FAN that we want to put forward in front of the candidates?
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I think if we want to move forward with the questionnaire, then it’d be great to see what people would like to include as the questions. What are the issues that are most important to FAN members right now? I assume there would be questions about CodeNext for sure, but what specifics would people like to ask candidates about?
Maybe we should limit it to a specific number of items, and take a vote on which ones make the cutoff? I would hope the polls on something like that would not need to be open for more than a few days since FAN would not be representing a majority position on an item, just interest.
I don’t think a questionnaire would take the official voting protocol to undertake. If someone wanted to create a first draft of questions though that would be ideal.
A Google Doc would be helpful for collaboration. But collecting suggestions from forum comments would be just as easy.
I’m swamped at work with 15 hour days but we might be able to bang something out together online here or in a Board Meeting in the near future.
Here’s a very lightly formatted Google Doc to get us started. I’d suggest by just throwing out potential questions, then we can work on categorization/arrangement with an actual document afterward. (row 2 is just an example for guidance)
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@jonbrewer, thanks for starting the Google sheet of items for the questionnaire!
I think we need to step back and consider our general approach to a questionnaire. Dozens of organizations distribute these questionnaires to City Council candidates. How can we distinguish our questionnaire?
It may sound a little radical, but I suggest three somewhat open-ended questions that strike at the heart of the FAN vision. I’ve added them to the Google sheet. Candidates should finish the questionnaire thinking, “This is totally different from any of the other questionnaires I’ve completed.”
We can use a Google form to distribute the form online to candidates and use those capabilities to collect the responses automatically in a Google sheet. We can also consider candidate forums on Reddit!
I think we might want to do polling info or aggregation of survey responses rather than issue our own. Or, ask questions and use existing polling and interviews to answer them via the platform
Maybe a hybrid approach?
- In our own questionnaire, ask a small number of questions no one else is asking, preferably grounded in the FAN vision.
- Collect answers to other organizations’ questionnaires.
- Make all answers easily accessible to FAN’s membership.
- Hold candidate forums on Reddit with questions coming from FAN members and the public.
- Poll FAN’s membership on candidate preferences and share the results transparently.
Thoughts?
I’m good with this. Hit different forms of media. I like the idea of Reddit as it will touch a userbase that generally holds similar values to FAN, but aren’t necessarily in the same social circle as many of us. It’ll help sell both FAN and the candidates that answer positively to our questions.
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I would support submitting questions similar to 5,7,8 and 9 - affordability in our neighborhoods and the FAN vision being the primary focus.
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As a Council member, what actions / initiatives will you advocate to help resolve
(1) Affordability
(2) Mobility
(3) Segregation
and how does moving to a more compact and connected Austin support your vision / strategy for addressing each?
Perhaps some variation of the above may somehow cover in a more open ended manner the areas @jonbrewer drafted, do so in a format @rcauvin suggested, and include specific highlights @harren alluded to.
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or, if you want it really simple, and to the point, some variation of:
How does moving to a more compact and connected Austin fit into your vision / strategy for addressing our affordability, mobility, and segregation issues?
I’m on board with the FAN vision questions, and believe the Affordability one can really be a subset of Q#8, and some of the others could be fit in to the Questions Frank Harren pointed out.
We spoke in a recent Board Meeting about keeping the questions limited as a way to differentiate ourselves with the other organizations soliciting answers, and also keep the FAN vision in the forefront.
I’d fully support something with Qs 7, 8, & 9 as a way to punctuate the drivers behind the more targeted policies affecting taxing, transportation & zoning.
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Actually I think I’d like to put a more positive spin on Q#9 & sort-of combine it w/ Q#8.
I like the idea of making the distinction btw N’hood and City issues in Q#7 and would only barely make any changes there:
This would give us room for one more Q if we want to have 3 total, and the specific one about Affordability could then be included. I tried to reword it so that it would also align with the Imagine Austin priority of Household Affordability but could also play into Compact & Connected:
Please keep in mind that these are all fabulous questions, and I hope that each of you can ask the more detailed & policy driven ones directly to Council candidates. We’ve got some of the Reddit AMAs underway, and hope to provide that forum to do so publicly in the near future. Stay tuned here in the atxfriends forums for more details when we get them scheduled.
There are also a bunch of in-person opportunities with other organizations around town. Check out the FAN calendar for those events with Austin Monitor, League of Women Voters & Austin Technology Council.
I’m concerned about using the word “growth” in our questions. It sounds like we’re either in favor of growth or believe it’s an inevitable negative thrust upon us. Our vision statement doesn’t use the word.
FAN’s vision speaks to “welcoming new residents” in our neighborhoods and housing type diversity. The theme is accommodating people in our neighborhoods. I worry that “promoting neighborhood diversity and inclusion” isn’t direct enough in challenging candidates to say what steps they would take to accommodate more and diverse people in high-demand neighborhoods.
The FAN vision also speaks of being “supportive of neighborhood improvement rather than the unsustainable status quo”. I see this point as distinct from accommodating more and diverse housing and people in our neighborhoods. It really strikes at the heart of our philosophy and approach. We don’t see change as a bad thing; we see it as an opportunity. Neighborhood “protection” has, unfortunately, become neighborhood protectionism.
Please do consider improvements to the language, but I hope we don’t lose the spirit and poignancy of the questions rooted in the FAN vision.
Should we have a questions that asks something specific about CodeNext in some way like #12?
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@rcauvin I guess our perspectives are different in that I’m taking the approach of not leading a candidate “to water” with our questions to suss out if they understand our vision, and it seems like you are perhaps challenging them to rise up to it.
I’m used to framing my questions to my co-housing applicants as such, because it’s easy to say one thing when you’re cued to do so. As an interviewer it can be hard to discern if the resulting answer is a quality / belief the person actually holds or is pandering to the base.
If the purpose of the questionnaire is to have a record of their answers as something to them accountable to, then I can understand your approach.
How about I at least change the first one to reference the candidate’s time in office then? So regardless of the diversity in housing changes, it would read something like:
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I think making the questions open ended is a great approach. My concern is about vague, not open-ended, questions.
More importantly, I don’t want to merge distinct concepts from the FAN vision. The issue of neighborhood improvement versus protectionism is distinct from the issue of welcoming an abundance and diversity of people in our high-demand neighborhoods. Trying to combine them into one question loses one, the other, or makes it so vague that it’s doubtful the candidate will address the issues.
But I can certainly see how the word “protectionism” has negative connotations and leads the candidate to describing policies that aren’t protectionist. However, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. An open-ended call for specific policies and actions that a council member would take to improve neighborhoods could be very enlightening. And I think explicitly contrasting improvement with protection(ism) is clearer.