EXHIBIT 3-A
MONTEREY PENINSULA WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT
PUBLIC OUTREACH PLAN
Discussion Draft—October 23, 2007
Introduction
and Overview
The District’s 2007 Strategic Plan included several objectives aimed at fulfilling the Board’s three-year strategic goal of establishing respectful and effective relationships with California American Water, the general public, Seaside Basin Watermaster, and the eight land use jurisdictions within the District. Strategic objective No. 3 called for the Public Outreach Committee and staff to develop a “Public Outreach Plan” for the Board’s consideration, which would guide the District’s future efforts aimed at educating the public on District activities and regulation changes. District officials and staff engage in numerous methods to create two-way communication opportunities with the community, such as a well-publicized, annual open house; speaking to service organizations and other community groups; establishing standing citizens advisory committees such as the Carmel River Advisory Committee, and ad hoc committees on selected policy issues; and the statutorily required Annual Report, which is created and mailed to all residents and businesses. However, the District lacked a comprehensive plan to organize, prioritize and assign resources to our public communication efforts, including a systematic approach to interacting with federal and state legislators on policy and financial matters of key importance, which was the purpose of the Board’s strategic objective.
The Board assigned the responsibility of developing a proposed Public Outreach Plan to its Public Outreach/Communications Committee (Chair Michelle Knight, Director Alvin Edwards, Director Kristi Markey) and the General Manager. In 2005 the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) produced an excellent handbook to guide water districts in ways and means to better communicate with the customers and communities they serve, i.e. Open and Accessible: A Public Water Agency Guide to Communication and Transparency. Section II of this handbook is entitled “Establish Community Outreach.” The Committee and staff consulted this ACWA handbook on effective public communications techniques for ideas that the District could consider to improve or expand on its existing public information outreach efforts. The Committee conducted its own analysis, and solicited suggestions from interested citizens, regarding existing practices that should be continued, and potential new ways to communicate with the community and customers. This Public Outreach Plan, which describes the various components of the District’s public outreach program, is the result of the Committee’s and staff effort. The District Board approved the Plan on ________, 2007.
Strategic
Issues Outreach
Distribution of periodic newsletters is the traditional method that public agencies use to communicate with their constituents on adoption of key policy changes, project accomplishments, and general information items. However, direct-mailing a newsletter to each District postal address is expensive, consumes enormous staff time to prepare, is not published often enough to solicit input prior to a key policy change, and often goes unread along with advertisements and other third class mail. The District’s goal is to inform citizens and businesses of pending policy issues, and recently adopted regulations, which could directly affect them. Thus, it’s important to streamline and focus the messages that the District needs to create, and target their distribution to key areas or sectors in the community. For example, if the District is considering a major policy change on conducting landscape irrigation audits required under its Expanded Conservation/Standby Rationing regulation, a specific flyer would be created for direct mailing to nurseries, gardening firms, irrigation contractors, golf course owners, and other affected businesses to solicit their input. A modified version of this flyer would be mailed to those entities summarizing the regulatory change. The flyer also would be distributed in subsequent community conservation events such as the Annual Waterwise Landscape Symposium, using this example. In order to effectively communicate with target audiences, each strategic issues flyer should be: visually interesting (i.e. uses simple graphics and photos), brief and bullet pointed, and written in plain-English. When concept ordinances are proposed, the affected Board committee and staff are charged with the responsibility of identifying for Board consideration instances in which strategic issues flyers should be used. The Fiscal Impact section of the accompanying agenda report for an ordinance should include an expense and labor cost estimate associated with production of the flyer in the Fiscal Impact section of the accompanying agenda report, and the responsibility to create each flyer.
School, Community
and Special Event Participation
Over the years the District has responded to many requests to provide educational presentations and participate in community events on water conservation, resource management and other related topics. For example, aided by its active membership in the Water Awareness Committee of Monterey County, Inc. (WACMC), District staff members visit classrooms to deliver demonstrations involving MPWMD conservation devices, and distribute WACMC educational materials designed specifically for each grade level, including activity books, curricula, work plans, magnets, stickers, and three-dimensional interactive displays for watershed and groundwater. The District also participates annually in the County Fair with conservation displays and permitting information, as well as other special events throughout the year. This Public Outreach Plan calls for the District to continue to be responsive to these classroom appearances and event participation requests.
In order to enhance and facilitate display of District graphical materials at community and special events, the Plan also anticipates budgeting, procurement and maintenance of a professionally-fabricated, transportable booth for use by all District divisions. The booth will be free-standing with tri-fold panels to maximize its utility; be covered in a material suitable for Velcro-backed graphics; and have a header with the District’s full name and logo; and semi-permanent (but easily replaceable) photo images to visually represent the District’s three-part mission statement that also would be integrated into the booth header. Although not part of this Plan, the booth would have additional value in displaying graphical materials at professional conferences in which District professional staff often deliver technical papers on various projects and studies.
Community
Presentations
In response to periodic requests, District staff prepares PowerPoint slides, graphical displays and other materials that are used in making presentations to environmental, business, civic, service and other community-based organizations, on topics that cover the full range of conservation, water resource/fisheries management, and water supply planning functions that the District performs. This Plan calls for continuing to be responsive to those requests, and to directly communicate the District’s availability and interest through a periodic letter from the General Manager sent to community-based organizations. According to the ACWA handbook, the key to an effective presentation delivery is in selecting and training individuals to make community presentations. Thus, this Plan contemplates budgeting every other year to engage a local public relations professional to assist in training all Directors and key staff to ensure a consistently high level of presentation skills and knowledge of subject matter to be delivered.
District Open House Event
The Board initiated an “open house” of the District office as one of its objectives in the 2004 strategic plan. Based on its initial success, this annual event is an opportunity for all interested citizens, business representatives and other government organizations to learn about the District’s key programs and projects through graphic and equipment displays, tours, demonstrations, and one-on-one contact with Directors and staff. The open house is organized by a team of staff from all divisions. The event is publicized by direct mail and e-mailing an invitation to all known Monterey Peninsula region business, civic, environment, government, education and other community organizations, and individuals on the District’s master mailing list; notification to all media outlets with a request for placement of an announcement in their community “bulletin board” and event calendar sections; posting to the county-wide, on-line community announcements website called Community Links; and to those community groups that have agreed to distribute the announcement to all persons on their organizations’ respective “list serve” e-mail notification system. There is not a set time of the year during which the open house is held, but the goal is to avoid the holiday and summer seasons. This Plan calls for continuing to hold an annual District open house event as described above, and to budget the cost of refreshments and other minor expenses incurred.
Community Advisory Groups
The ACWA handbook reflects the District’s long-standing practice of inviting affected organizations and interested individuals to serve on standing or limited-duration advisory committees to the Board regarding key policy issues and programs. The Board recognizes that use of advisory committees creates the opportunity to obtain creative and thoughtful input from citizens on difficult policy choices facing the District’s decision-makers. It also often leads to a better understanding and appreciation of the challenges facing the Board on the part of citizens participating in advisory committees. At present the only District standing community advisory committee is the Carmel River Advisory Committee. The Board creates special purpose, or ad hoc citizen advisory committees on long-term water supply solutions and other key policy issues that have significant and wide-ranging potential community impact, or that warrant special study and input from directly affected groups. The Board provides all community advisory committees a “charge” or statement of purpose and expected outcome; structure and process guidelines; and generally constitutes its advisory committees through the direct-appointment procedure. This Plan calls for continuing to utilize community advisory committees for the purposes and in the manner described above.
Communicating with the Public
The Board
philosophy is to maximize opportunities for direct communication with its
citizens. A key method for doing so was
the creation in 2006 of a permanent Board meeting room in the District office
that has the latest digital video and sound system equipment, software and
communication links to enable live cable-casting and web-streaming of regular
Board meetings. The District contracts
with
Legislative Outreach
The District Board and staff have been consistently responsive to all requests for technical information or policy input by congressional representatives and state legislators. District-initiated comments on federal and state legislation have been infrequent, and submitted on an ad hoc basis depending on the nature and degree of potential impact or benefit to our integrated water resource management authority and responsibility. In keeping with the Board’s strategic goal of enhancing revenue from external sources, and in order to improve the District’s effectiveness in influencing legislation important to our mission and function, this Plan contemplates Board taking a proactive role in legislative priority-setting and advocacy. Specifically, each January the Board would develop and approve its legislative objectives and priorities for the upcoming federal and state legislative sessions, based on input from staff and solicited from the community. A new ad hoc Board Legislative Outreach committee is created for the purpose of reviewing and providing input on specific federal and state bills directly relevant to the Board’s priority objectives. The committee will also meet at least twice during each legislative session with our federal and state legislators to discuss District legislative priorities and related pending bills. Finally, the committee is to make a report on its activities to the Board at the end of the federal and state legislative sessions.
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