The wrong place with the right sign

My medium-sized city is planning an expansion of a popular park. Over the years we have added baseball diamonds, a new playground and half a basketball court. And we've debated a swimming pool for more than two decades. (Evidently these things cost money or something.)

Our most recent go-round we did all the usual things a city does when they do public outreach: a project website, some charrettes, a pop-up at the farmers market, an online survey and inclusion in staff reports at town meetings. We also hung some banners on the fence that currently blocks off where the park would expand. The banners encourage people to participate in the planning process and help determine the future of the park.

And this is the problem.

That area is not IN the park that's currently being used. The banner is looking over a herd of sheep that graze on the plot of land that the city has purchased. The only people who will see the banner - and wonder how the park can be improved and expanded - are either those who have an odd curiosity about empty plots of land or they are sheepherders.

The popular new dog run that was built inside the park had no information on it, even though park users go there multiple times each week. None of the baseball diamonds - and there are five of them in the complex, plastered with all sorts of signs- have any mention of the new project. The bathrooms, the playground, the picnic areas: none.

All of the places where people congregate who would have an opinion and some ideas on how to improve the park didn't have the information about the new project. In short, we didn't get in front of the current customers, and we didn't get them excited about a new offering.

This reminds me of what Charles Marohn meant when he wrote that "most public engagement is worthless."

If we want to get people involved and we want to provide ways for them to participate, we should go where they are, and we should observe what they are doing and what we can do to improve it.

Do the dog people need more space? What about more paths for the elderly people who take their morning walks, Spanish music playing from their phones? Should we put up signs to let parents and students know that there is a pathway to the school through the park? Would kids use a skatepark or should we add more BBQ grills? And yes, do we need a pool, and can we afford it?

We might not know. But the sheep sure do know what's going on. They've been staring at that banner for over a year now.