Making change in your school, neighborhood or county can be hard.
Local governments are obtuse. Politicians use funny words like quorum, acronyms like MOU and hold hours-long meetings at weird times. It can be difficult to understand how or where local decisions are made, who makes them or why a system exists in the first place.
That’s why the Waco Bridge is launching a guide series called How Waco Works.
We’ll be exploring the basic functions of county, city and school district governments, as well as election, property tax appraisals and planning and zoning. We’ll also tackle things like Tax Increment Finance Zones, which don’t sound especially scintillating, but explain how Waco is paying for the most expensive development project in city history. We also want your help.
This list is a work in progress, and guide suggestions are welcome at [email protected].
Before we get into the specifics, we spoke with some Waco-area residents with little-to-no experience with local government who have managed to make their voices heard on issues important to them. In many cases, they overcame a steep learning curve to get there.
Here are four tips from your neighbors on how they went about making change.
Build a team
Ross resident Sara Mynarcik is now a lead organizer among opponents of the Lacy Lakeview data center project, a plan to turn 520 acres of farmland near Elm Mott into a $10 billion “data district.”
Mynarcik had only attended one city council meeting in her life until news of the project reached her and her neighbors last November.
“It was a case of having to learn from scratch about what all this is … It was like jumping into the deep end,” Mynarcik said. “The first time you go out (to speak at a local government meeting), it’s very intimidating. It’s very frightening.”
Soon more neighbors joined the nascent opposition group, including residents from Lacy Lakeview, Waco and outside McLennan County. The 10 most committed volunteers formed an action committee and brought with them specific skills, from web design to moderating strategy meetings, that allowed them to sustain and expand their efforts.
“I cannot say enough good things about the action committee,” Mynarcik said. “It’s like each one of us has our own little unique part, and we communicate with each other.”
That coordinated action made Lacy Lakeview’s data center a topic of consideration among every Republican candidate for Texas Senate District 22, which includes the Waco area. And while Lacy Lakeview officials are still pursuing the project to boost the small city’s property tax base, those officials have also begun to respond to opponents’ concerns.
Get under the hood
McLennan Community College professor and Waco NAACP President Peaches Henry said a lack of knowledge about government processes is the biggest barrier to citizen involvement.
“Those processes, when you don’t know or understand them, can be intimidating, and that sense of intimidation can be a barrier,” Henry said in an interview with the Bridge last week.
That knowledge isn’t always abstract, Henry added. It can be as practical as knowing where to find a Waco City Council agenda before a meeting, which tells residents what decisions the city will consider that week, or knowing that elected officials are more responsive to voters who contact them directly.
Nearly all city and county government bodies have a time for public comments built into their meetings.
“If a citizen knows how to navigate the process of communicating with an elected official, then that citizen is the one who will get results,” Henry said. ”Officials respond to those citizens who speak to them … and voters, who can put them in their jobs and take them out of their jobs.”
‘Being the squeaky wheel is crucial’
Waco’s Dean Highland Neighborhood Association has experienced both the frustrations and payoffs of sustained engagement with city staff and council members.
A five-year battle by Dean Highlanders to get a stop sign at the intersection of Maple Avenue and 31st Street produced no stop sign, despite an exhausting process of speed studies, debates over traffic code and emails with city officials, said neighborhood association President Scott Michael.
However, the same dogged persistence on a larger neighborhood priority — a city park on the demolished Hillcrest hospital campus — now appears fruitful after a recent Waco City Council decision to facilitate purchase of the property.
Both campaigns taught Michael a lesson about spurring city action: Persistence is a precondition for a successful outcome, yet does not guarantee one, he told the Bridge last week.
“When you do get involved, it’s like ‘Man, this (process) is big and includes a lot of people and a lot of steps,’ but I think at the end of the day if it’s important enough, you have to keep going,” Michael said.
The time commitment to learn government processes and see the fruits of participating in them can feel like a full-time job, he added.
Michael recommended residents get to know the city council members in their district, partner with them and let them “navigate a system which you don’t know.”
Waco Council Member Darius Ewing, who represents the Dean Highland neighborhood, said he was involved in the aborted push for a stop sign, as well as the continued effort for a park on the Hillcrest property.
Knowing the contact information of your representative and “being the squeaky wheel is crucial,” Ewing said, though he acknowledged how frustrating it can be when those efforts are not rewarded. “(Dean Highland residents) checked every box on the correct way to engage on the (stop sign), and we could just not get it done for them.”
Find an advocate on the inside, build a coalition outside
Community organizer Lee Scheffe of Grassroots Waco, a nonprofit community development group, echoed Michael’s advice to find a sympathetic partner within local government.
“The key is not necessarily knowing all of the different layers of city government beforehand, but in finding advocates within the institution who can help do that navigation and (push) things forward for you,” Scheffe told the Bridge.
He said a coalition of organizations, not just residents, “is really important to keep up that level of energy and persistence that’s required to navigate all of the very complex bureaucracy of municipal government.”
Scheffe held up the 25th Street Corridor Plan as an example of long-term, coalitional work.
In that case, Grassroots worked with Hispanic business owners on 25th Street to overcome language barriers and integrate community feedback into the design process, Scheffe said.
The resulting plan reflected a collaboration between neighborhood residents, city staff, council members and nonprofit organizers.
“I think another reason why that’s a powerful story to tell is because it’s been a project that is years in the making and is still in the process of being formed and pushed through,” Scheffe said. “What has continued progress has been the relationship building.”
