Neighborhood Futures Project
Citizen Participation Compact (St. Paul / Minneapolis)
Citizen participation is an important facet of our public life. It nurtures our democratic values, and fosters the opportunity for building community will and initiative. Minneapolis and St. Paul are known nationally for their commitment to civic engagement and citizen participation in community planning. Today we struggle to define how those systems will be sustained, and how to make them more responsive to the diverse needs of our communities. What can be done to strengthen citizen participation in our cities? In 2003, a series of workshops was held to create a citizen participation compact for each city that brought city officials and neighborhood and community leaders together to:
 | Establish principles that assert the goals of the citizen participation system, |
| Define actions that describe how those principles can be accomplished, |
| Identify the roles and responsibilities of each of the partners toward fulfilling those goals, and |
| Suggest ways for holding partners accountable to the principles and actions outlined in the compact. |
The goal was to develop an understanding of how each must contribute in supporting the system of citizen participation, to find ways to broaden involvement by diverse community interests, and to help one another improve our efforts to create a rich and vibrant forum for public engagement.
For further information on the outcomes of the Citizen Participation Compact, contact Gretchen Nicholls at 612.339.3480.
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