Heartbroken About NRZ

By Tim O’Brien

I have always believed in community organizing, local activism, local representation and in people working together for their common good.

That is why I want to share how deeply heartbroken I feel right now about the North-Oak NRZ.

People who know me well as a person, know my values and have worked alongside me know why I would be so heartbroken about what we are seeing in motion right now.

As those who were there when the North-Oak Neighborhood Revitalization Zone was born can recall, I was there, too. I was a young city alderman, then, but I did not just breeze in and out occasionally as a politician. I was a regular participant in the meetings when members of the community, mostly residents, but other stakeholders, too, dreamt about a better future for the city’s poorest neighborhood.

We labored for months, putting together a plan for what we thought could be achieved and what we hoped the city and other institutions and organizations might commit to advance the goals we set for economic development, housing, public safety and neighborhood quality of life. It was not a perfect plan, but it was a compromise and the result of earnest and honest work by a core of committed, everyday people.

Since then, the NRZ has remained active. Different leaders have brought different things to leadership in the neighborhood through the NRZ, but have repeatedly gotten elected leaders to focus on issues important to the North-Oak community. They have not always made city leaders happy, but, then, as neighborhood leaders, that was not their job.

But, turning back to the birth of the North-Oak NRZ, it was interesting to have the chance to re-read the North-Oak NRZ bylaws from 1998. I was struck, in particular, the part that talked about consensus decision-making. Those bylaws said that decisions, “to the maximum extent practicable, be by consensus of all persons present.” Lest there be any doubt what that meant, it defined “consensus” as, “unanimous agreement among all participants.”

Those bylaws said that, “Discussion shall be directed to building common ground and developing proposals upon which all Stakeholders and groupings of Stakeholders can find agreement.” It said that contested votes should be avoided, and that, even if consensus could not be achieved, a decision could not be made without a three-fourths vote.

One last point that I will make is from a part of that same passage on consensus decision making that might be worth dusting off, which says that, “meetings may make use of a facilitator or mediator to help promote the consensus building process.” That would have to be, of course, someone who everyone in the NRZ can consider an honest-broker, but maybe that can be a part of the path ahead for a forward-thinking neighborhood association that is needed now more than ever.