Most public agencies these days, prior to throwing your money into one pet project or another, bray about the importance of "public input" with "stakeholders". What this means is that somebody holds a stake while bureaucrats pound it into your wallet.
"Public input" is something to be carefully managed, in order to achieve the outcome desired by the bureaucrats, and so months of strategy sessions are held prior to implementation of the "public input" cycle. Questions to be used in "surveys" to assess "public input" are carefully phrased in order to direct the rubes to the desired outcome. Following is a typical example of the "public input process":
Once everyone is gathered into the meeting, they often hand out "surveys" with questions grouped under several categories. Rubes answer by indicating importance on a scale of 1 to 5, or perhaps 1 to ten, where higher numbers are indicative of greater support.
Category: "People":
1) How important to you is it for your community to have education and training opportunities?
2) How important to you is it for your community to have transportation options, including walking, biking, transit and driving?
3) How important to you is it for your community to have clean and plentiful water, air, soil, and food?
4) How important to you is it is it that people in your community are able to lead physically and mentally healthy lifestyles?
Next Category: "Places"
1) How important to you is it that infrastructure, housing and transportation investments in your community are coordinated?
2) How important to you is it that ecosystems, working landscapes, parks, and open spaces are preserved in your community?
3) How important to you is it that your community has a range of quality housing choices that meet the needs and preferences of all residents?
4) How important to you is it that natural resources in your community are efficiently used, reused, and conserved?
Next Category: "Prosperity"
1) How important to you is it that your community has a skilled workforce and an adaptable, resilient, and diverse economy?
2) How important to you is it that your community has job opportunities that support a good quality of life and financial stability?
3) How important to you is it that your community's transportation infrastructure can move goods and connect the region to other global destinations?
4) How important to you is it that your community retains its unique character by embracing its multicultural, historical and natural assets?
Now, the rubes are broken into small groups, each steered by a "facilitator" who may ask each rube for a single-word description of what sustainability means to him or her. Generally, they'll have a definition printed up on a dry-erase board, just in case one of the rubes gets the idea of straying off the reservation.
The above is an accurate depiction of the process of "gathering public input". It's part of the Twit 101 curriculum as taught at Portland State University and other development agencies around the country. Rubes are to be drawn into the correct path by constant repetition of the mantra "your community" - when in fact the plan is to wrest control away from the rubes and re-make "their community" to an "acceptable" bureaucratic standard.
An important aspect of this propaganda effort involves failure to define terms. Who could be against educational opportunities, transportation options, or clean water? What, exactly, is a "physically and mentally healthy lifestyle"? Who, exactly, does the "investments" and who "coordinates" them? What is a "working landscape"? Why should you "embrace multiculturalism"?
Gee, that latter has really worked out well in, say, France.
It's worth noting that the Portland-area regional government now known as Metro - which conducts a lot of these guided "public input" meetings for the rubes - featured for many years the tagline, "People. Places. Open Spaces." Look above, and see if any of that strikes you as familiar.
Don't fall for it.