Advisory Committees make London a Great City!
by Dr. Gabor Sass (former member, vice-chair and chair of Environmental and Ecological Planning Advisory Committee [EEPAC] and former member of Advisory Committee on the Environment [ACE]
Pollinator Pathways Project!, Friends of Urban Agriculture London!, Resilient City London!, What do these names have in common? They are a few of London’s finest community organizations that were born out of the work of a City of London Advisory Committee (AC). Specifically, these 3 came out of the highly productive Advisory Committee on the Environment (ACE). However, ACs are not just a spawning ground of great community organizations, they are, as I will argue here, a main reason why we have a great city. They not only complement the work of city staff and council, they empower residents, and they forge civic leaders. In short ACs make cities great!
Advisory Committees complement the work of city staff and council. How do they do that? On the one hand, they respond to requests by civic administration and on the other they bring their own ideas to the table on how to improve life in the city. When I served on EEPAC, we would regularly receive Environmental Impact Studies of proposed developments which we were asked to review. Other times, we responded to concerns brought forward by members of the public by forwarding our recommendations to civic administration if we thought changes in policies or other guiding documents could address those concerns.
Are ACs able to provide quality work or are they just adding extra noise to Council reports? If anyone has ever attended an advisory committee meeting, the members present are stacked with some of the brightest minds our city has produced in the relevant fields. While serving on EEPAC, the committee always had a handful of PhDs, MSCs, and other highly trained professionals in the general field of environmental sciences. Their knowledge and experience need to be viewed as a tremendous asset that makes the work of civic administration even better. There are not too many organizations out there where highly capable people are lining up at the door to volunteer their time for years on end!
Advisory Committees empower residents. The work of ACs is not just in regard to civic administration but also about interfacing with the residents. ACs fulfil the vital role of connector, connecting what’s happening at City Hall to what’s happening on the street so to speak. They can welcome the public to their committee meetings, but they can also go into the community to disseminate information and/or gather residents’ input about a topic. In short, they can empower residents to get involved. The story of the three organizations I started this post with speak to the ability of ACs to empower the residents of London. I was fortunate to be on ACE when these organizations were initially imagined. How did they all start? Taking Pollinator Pathways Project (P3) as an example, it was the public that came to the committee and shared their concern about the decline of pollinator health. The committee responded by initiating policy recommendations to city staff (which were later implemented in the form of new Official Plan policies), then by organizing a public conference and finally, members of the committee along with members of the public created the P3 organization. Similar outcomes were achieved for urban agriculture and resilient cities.
And the public came out in droves to the conferences ACE co-organized with London Public Library. There was so much excitement; attendees were pumped; they were empowered! Besides Friends of Urban Agriculture London, Urban Roots London was another organization that was hatched at the urban agriculture conference organized by ACE in 2017.
Advisory Committees forge civic leaders. I will make a bet that if we scratch the surface, I mean the backs of any civic leader in London, we will find some connection to an advisory committee lurking somewhere in their past. When I started attending EEPAC meetings back in 2006, I was shy, very reluctant to speak up in front of the committee. I also knew nothing of how city hall worked. However, year after year, I learned so much and my confidence grew. Later in 2014, I not only signed up to serve on another committee (ACE) but I started becoming active in my community, helping to create community food forests, a community garden and Kensington Village Association. I realized that this was my true calling, working with others in London to restore our broken connections with nature and with each other. I will continue to do this work and since I teach at Western, at the start of every course I teach, I encourage all of my students to sign up to volunteer at an AC since we will desperately need their future leadership as part of the next generation of civic leaders.
In conclusion, Advisory Committees make cities great. They really do. In this post I offered some of my firsthand experience with London’s ACs. However, I know of similar experiences of my colleagues and friends in similar roles. London should be very proud of its ACs, they really do so much work and contribute so much to the life of our city. In fact, other cities are turning to London to learn from the great advisory, peer-review and steering committees we have. The City of Toronto is basing their brand-new advisory and peer-review structure focused on climate change issues on what they have learnt partly from our city’s advisory and peer-review committees. London’s ACs need to be celebrated and kept going. They make London a great city, working-well, empowered and ready to serve!