Bottom-Up Shorts: How To Build Credibility and Effectivity as an Advocate
Welcome to this episode of Bottom Up Shorts! Today, Norm is joined by Andrew and Anna Carley, the leaders of Strong Towns Grand Rapids, a Local Conversation in Michigan. They discuss the progress they’ve made in advocating for policy changes in their city and how they became one of the go-to groups that city officials turn to when they’re considering policy changes.
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Norm Van Eeden Petersman 0:01
Thanks for tuning in to this. Bottom up short, I'm Norm of strong towns, and I've met 1000s of strong towns members now, and after hearing their stories, I'm inspired to say to others, I've got to tell you about so and so. And the folks I get to tell you about today are Andrew and Anna Carly of Grand Rapids, Michigan, they are the local conversation leaders of strong towns Grand Rapids, and they're doing awesome stuff with fairly simple tools, letters, pens, emails, and yet, they're generating significant changes within their community with that, I hope you enjoy this discussion with Andrew and Anna and continue to take inspiration from what they do in order to allow you to take more care of your place. Anna and Andrew from Grand Rapids, can you tell me about what you're doing in your community? Yep.
Anna Carley 0:49
So right now, what we're doing is focusing on zoning issues within Grand Rapids. That's been topic of conversation for the last probably nine months. Bank Commission has been working on it for two years now, so it's finally getting into the phase of public input. And so we're in the final stretch of that, and that ends in like October, and then we should have a draft going to the City Commission. So that's been the focus of our group lately, is just getting that word out that the public can give input on that and kind of the strong towns messages that need to be played into it while it's getting reviewed.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 1:27
Yeah, that's great, and you've used letter writing campaigns as a key part of that. Can you talk a little bit about
Andrew Carley 1:34
that? So with our letter writing campaigns, we use a lot of current and existing plans and then engage individuals on like the individual level. So we take the plans that we currently have, because our cities have a lot of really good plans, and so being able to understand those plans and use those plans to help shape the city and direct development throughout, through using those plans and then encourage the city to stick those plans has been really, really vital within our letter writing campaigns, and then using, breaking it down to the individual, so not necessarily using like a change.org petition, but getting individuals engaged in the letter writing, letting them send that you from their personal emails, guiding them through the process to know who's representing them, who Do they need to send these emails to, and allowing them to individualize a template that we provide so that way they can have their own voice, telling their city commissioners and planning commissioners of hey, this is what we want, and this is why, and this is why I feel like it's a good choice. It's awesome,
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 2:39
because what we noticed as we were learning about what Grand Rapids was doing is that it was a really clever use of simple resources, like writing a letter, but weighing in on things that are policy oriented, rather than just on a project by project basis. And I find that that's one of the areas that people will become aware Oh, there's a project I either want to see happen in my community, or, more often, I don't want to see happen in my community because it doesn't suit our neighborhood needs, or it doesn't suit what the community actually needs. But in that context, to get to the policy behind it is really critical. How long have you been at this as you relate to the work in Grand Rapids, but also, what are the results so far.
Anna Carley 3:22
So we've been kind of like an org within Grand Rapids, strong towns Grand Rapids, for one to two years, yes, two years now going into the second year here. So the first year, we kind of just met up as a group, kind of discussed what issues were relevant within Grand Rapids and the strong test messages about those issues, and then kind of formed our tenants that we kind of organized under posted on the web page. There's five of them. And so taking those and then applying those to a couple issues that popped up over the last year or so, I think the first big one was the core, well, parking petition or not petition, but like writing letters to the Zoning Commission when that came up for a special land use permit, because what they wanted to use the land for required that, so need to go for approval. So they kind of, that was the first one. And then it's been, you know, we've supported a couple other smaller, affordable housing units gone in, in throughout the neighborhood, so
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 4:30
that that really builds your credibility with people in the community. What are some of the relationships that have emerged as either as a result of writing to them or because you already had a relationship with some of those council members or people receiving the letters. How is that sort of side of things matured?
Andrew Carley 4:49
So since we've sent the letters, we've actually we exceeded our kerw parking letter in support of our mass city or community master plans and some of the zoning reforms that are. Coming out of that. So earlier this year, the city did some kind of minor tweaks to the zoning, just kind of expanding 80 you use, allowing for more diverse and mixed middle housing and different neighborhoods and on different streets. And we got 98 letters to our City Commission and planning commissions in support of those changes. And so with that letter writing campaign, we've kind of become one of the go to organizations that when they look at changing a policy, they ask us about it. We've had calls with the planning department about policy changes that they're looking to make. We've had discussions with our chamber of commerce, which does like I'm pretty involved in, and we've had those conversations and recognize as an organization that cares about the city, wants to do really good and positive things, and the city employees and the business community and residents of Grand Rapids recognize that and are willing to have conversations with us, because they see us as an actual organization. We've built our credibility, and they know that we can get people to rally around something when we want them to rally around it, and that like we're not a threat, we're there to help and support and we want the future to look good for everyone and be supportive for everyone.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 6:25
What's striking about that is one how successful you've or how much success you've had, but also how common it actually is for the community sort of organizations and groups to really look to groups that are becoming active and forming in a place. Certainly, what you describe in terms of being asked to come to the table is something that we've seen in our community, and more and more local conversations are really finding themselves in that place, being able to get a spot at the table where previously it wasn't known that they even existed or that anyone was able to speak up about these types of topics and issues, but I'd love to know in general, like, Who are you that you got involved in this, and what is it about your sort of work that maybe put strong towns under your radar or brought you into this orbit?
Anna Carley 7:12
I didn't really, wasn't really in the orbit three years ago, Andrew was the one who really is kind of more of a city nerd here, and likes to look into how things and work and how the built environment works, so he kind of has that long background on that. But as far as getting pulled into it over the years, I think just the people that are involved in it are very engaged, and they care a lot about the issues. And so it's really kind of, you know, invigorating when everyone in the room is very excited about the issue, very passionate about the issue, and wants to drive some sort of change around it. So yeah,
Andrew Carley 7:55
and I grew up listening to, like, 99% invisible and podcasts kind of like that, that are all about the built environment and how we interact and explore with the built environment. Right out of high school, I moved to New York City to go to college. So I spent my first year of college out in New York City. I lived in New York for about a whole year. Really loved living in the city, exploring the city. I biked everywhere. I took public transportation, then I moved back to Grand Rapids and maintained my enjoyment for the city. I'm a total nerd when it comes down to, like, city building video games. So like, I play those, like urban planning video games. I studied urban a little bit of urban planning. My degree is in aviation airport design. So by degree, I'm educated to design airports and how people interact with inside of airports. And so I have a little bit of knowledge. I have a little bit of background. And then when I started running into strong towns and running into other people in Grand Rapids that are interested in building like an urbanism movement and a strong towns movement within Grand Rapids, I really latched on to it, and since then, Anna and I and the other leadership crew within Grand Rapids here have really created something special that gets people really excited.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 9:18
Oh, that's fantastic. And it's striking that you have that mix of some experience, but in some professional sort of training in it, but also just the raw energy of someone that cares about this and wants their place to be improved in terms of Grand Rapids. And then, maybe more broadly, what are some things that you wish would like to see people in Grand Rapids do to support your efforts? And then also, how would you say that others can support this type of activity in their community?
Anna Carley 9:46
So I think something we want to see more of in Grand Rapids is, terms of getting more people involved, is, you know, sometimes the advocacy work, it's not glitzy, it's not glamorous. It's sending in a bunch of emails a week. To the City Commission, and it's just set it aside, you know, half hour, end of a day or something, go through, um, read some of the different city commission plan commission, those sort of, I would say, boring meetings that people wouldn't really pay attention to. But, you know, go ahead and read those. And then, you know, through that lens of the strong times views or whatever, send an email on an issue that you might have an opinion about. So
Andrew Carley 10:29
Grand Rapids itself is a really great city. We have a lot of we're very forward thinking. We have a lot of really good plans. City employees really want to do better than what they can do right now. And a lot of times that just kind of gets hung up in the day to day bureaucracy of operations. And so, like, I would like to see more people getting involved into their city. Part of the reason why we run operations, the way we run them, is so that way we are able to get more people engaged. We're asking people. We're promoting different neighborhood associations, whether they're on our site or not. We tell people to go, because that is the closest step that you can do to being civically engaged in your neighborhood, is your neighborhood association. And then from there, we promote, we had like the different commissions and the boards we their meetings are on our calendar, publicly on our calendar, so people who follow our calendar know when these boards and commission meetings are. The city of Grand Rapids does a really good job of publicly posting and recording all of their board meetings, and so you can go back and watch them. You can also write letters. We keep we have a letter writing guide of where to send your letter to, whether that's one commission or another commission. So that way people can be engaged and they can grow and develop that civic engagement. And so fostering that civic engagement is one thing. Well, it's not glamorous and it's not really pretty, and it's a lot of work, and you grow way slower than you would be by like, throwing benches out, which is something we're eventually going to do, but being able to get people who are engaged and then tell have them tell other people how to be engaged. You know, bring a friend to a commission meeting. It's boring sometimes, but sometimes they're really entertaining, like just building a slow movement of engaged citizens, I think is one thing that I'd like to see more of, and will really help grow local conversations
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 12:41
into the future. Yeah, with our group, we created a public hearing bingo card that people could use during the public hearing in part to sort of keep awake but also be alert to every time that somebody would bring up, what about traffic, or what about parking, or what about, you know, historical character, or any of the other sort of objections that were very, very commonplace but trotted out against every project, including a lot of affordable housing projects in our community. And the opportunity was there to be like, Oh, I got one, and I we, you know, we kept ourselves in check. We did abide by decorum. But it does speak to, I think, removing some of the friction and some of the tension that one feels when you look at this looming you know, you know request for submissions or an opportunity to write, but who am I writing to? And I love that you've taken those steps to make that just a little bit easier. As we close, what's something that gives you hope?
Andrew Carley 13:34
I am always looking forward to the future. There's a like in Grand Rapids. And just in all of these communities that local conversations are in, there's a lot of really cool stuff. Some of the local conversations have more challenges than we do. We are blessed to be in Grand Rapids. We have a city that's their city, organization and governance is very favorable to what we're doing. We have a lot of plans that are already moving the needle in the right direction. We've been able to gain really strong bonds with civic leaders and city employees, not just like the manager of the department, but we're like just the assistant city engineer or the the just a traffic engineer, just a bog standard person that's putting in making sure the stop signs are there. We've had conversations and been able to build strong bonds with them, and it's just it's so much positivity oozes every time that we have conversations with the people that we're conversating with, and that's one thing that definitely keeps us going, and it's definitely something that I look forward to doing, because it's just, it's positivity in every step, even if it's we have a little more friction getting there, but it's still a positive step, and that's like you said, keeps us looking towards the future.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 14:58
I love. That, and both of you, as well as the strong towns Grand Rapids team, are really sharing the fruits of your learning with other local conversation leaders. And I'm so glad that you've also taken the moment to share your story and inspire us on bottom up shorts as well with that. Thank you so much. Take care and take care of your places.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
Strong Towns Grand Rapids (site).
Want to hear more from the Carleys? Hop on the Spring Local Motive Tour, where they’ll share their tactics for regional organizing and letter-writing campaigns.
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