Derby, Kansas, with a population just shy of 25,000, shares the work underway to redefine their city and the challenges they have engaging their citizenry without the technologies to do so...and what it's like to be unsure where to start.
In this podcast we have a frank discussion with Scott Knebel, City Planner for Derby, Kansas and Assistant City Planner, Everett Haynes, about the roadblocks to innovation in small local governments, something which should resonate with governments of all sizes. Read More.
More info:
Featured government: City of Derby, Kansas
Episode guests:
Scott Knebel, City Planner
Everett Haynes, Assistant City Planner
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
Lindsay: (00:05)
Welcome to the Govlaunch podcast. Govlaunch is the Wiki for local government innovation and on this podcast, we're sharing the stories of local government innovators and their efforts to build smarter governments. I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano, co-founder of Govlaunch and your host.
In this episode, I'm talking with Scott Knebel and Everett Haynes, city planners for the small city of Derby, Kansas. We'll dive into some larger projects underway, including their vision for the future of Derby. We'll also be talking about something close to home for a lot of local governments, including lessons learned from COVID-19 and its impact on more traditional strategies for engagement.
With times changing Scott and his team in Derby are rethinking citizen engagement and how they'll connect with residents on planning matters and beyond in the future. So let's hear more from Scott and Everett and Derby.
Thank you both for joining me today. To start, can you each introduce yourselves and share a bit about your role?
Scott: (01:11)
Ok, well I’m Scott Knebel, I'm city planner for the city of Derby, uh, and I'm responsible for overseeing the planning activities in Derby.
Everett: (01:22)
I'm Everett Haynes. And I'm the assistant city planner, and I am charged with reviewing permits development plans on planning cases and assisting the public with inquiries and planning processes.
Lindsay: (01:33)
With both of you in city planning, you have a few big projects that are really now coming along more formally as of the summer. I want to start with your larger project, which is based on the future vision for the city. Scott, can you briefly explain the goals of Vision Derby 2040 comprehensive plan and what has inspired this large-scale project?
Scott: (01:54)
Okay, certainly so Vision Derby 2040 really is a look at what is the next 20 years of Derby likely to be. And it really recognizes that there are pretty significant changes coming our way, Derby, uh, has been developed in a very, uh, typical way of, uh, suburban communities all across the United States. That relatively large lot, single family bedroom community style development, commercial development, along major highways and major road corridors, consistent with big boxes, and drive through restaurants and strip malls and those sorts of things. We did a very deep dive and really realized that that's likely not going to be the only future for Derby. We really need to offer the ability to do things like mixed use development. We need to offer more types of housing choices other than essentially the single family home and the garden apartments that we offer now and need to look at our, uh, existing, uh, not really downtown because Derby doesn't really have a traditional downtown, but our urban core and figure out a way to offer people an urban living option.
Lindsay: (03:18)
What are some benefits you see from these more comprehensive plans?
Scott: (03:23)
Well, I think the primary benefit of a comprehensive plan is that it does look at, you know, all aspects of community development, not just the typical planning and zoning, but looks at, uh, things that, uh, that build a community, which in a lot of respects focuses on transportation, uh, and the systems that, uh, it didn't use to kind of like what I like to call stitch the community together, connect a place that you live with the place that you work with, the place that you play, uh, and give you multiple options on how to get from one to the other. Because quite frankly, a Derby system, uh, and its plans in the past uh, primarily focused on, uh, the automobile and getting from one place to another. While we do have a pretty robust system of, uh, recreational trails and have made some pretty significant progress as it relates to the sidewalks, we really don't have significant plans on other types of, uh, transportation, bicycles, micro mobility, and those sorts of things.
Lindsay: (04:36)
Conversely, are there any potential drawbacks you see from these vision-based plans? In your case you have a plan that's projecting future goals out 20 years from now.
Scott: (04:46)
Certainly. Yeah. The real drawback to long range planning is assuming that you got it right, you know, in terms of your 20 year projection, when you did it 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, and continuing to, uh, implement the plan, without taking what our plan recommends and, uh, an annual look at, you know, what did, what did you say was going to happen or what really did happen and adjusting, uh, your, uh, approach in your, in your tools based on, uh, changes that you perhaps didn't anticipate. Cause there will be some, I mean, there's absolutely no way that you're going to do a 20 year projection and get it entirely right.
Lindsay: (05:36)
Right. Well, especially with technology moving so fast, we're looking at things like augmented or virtual reality, and that's something that 20 years ago we would never consider. And we're now seeing local governments across the world leveraging some of these cutting edge technologies. I would agree with you. It's good to have a strategic outlook for, you know, five, 10, 20 years if possible especially because so many decisions local governments are making now will affect your city 20 years down the road, especially when we're considering things like the environment. But approaching those with a little bit of an open mind and saying, we have to be flexible and open to some of these new technologies that are coming out, that could be really be game changers. AR is a little bit advanced, but you think about micro mobility, even something like electric scooters being around the cities, that was something that 20 years ago nobody was considering. You have a separate plan fully dedicated to making Derby more walkable. You have an extensive recreational walking and biking trail, as you mentioned in Derby already. But I want to ask Everett since you've been involved with these projects from the ideation stage, can you share what inspired this project and how long the plan has been in the works?
Everett: (06:50)
So this plant has been in the works since 2017, when the city received a grant from a local MPO to find a walkable place to study. So as you mentioned, overall, Derby has a wonderful existing network of pedestrian bicycle facilities, which are primarily used for recreational exercise purposes. And that's one of the reasons why people move to derbies because they value the existing pedestrian cycling infrastructure. Our policies since the 1990s has required new developments to provide sidewalks on both sides of the street. So that's great for new subdivisions, but existing neighborhoods don't always have this facility. So this plan looks at how we can install pedestrian bicycle facilities in existing neighborhoods and not only have these facilities for recreation, but also for active use. So people are using it, not to people go shopping or go to work. And one of the recommendations in the huddle and the comprehensive plan, but also the workforce plan is mixed use, which would encourage people to walk from their home to go shopping or, or to go to work or whatnot. So really this plan has many different components. The most, I think important is how to incorporate walkable infrastructure in existing neighborhoods where it's lacking. And that's a challenge because you have existing utilities and infrastructure that you have to work around.
Lindsay: (08:22)
And for the walkability plan and also Derby's comprehensive plan. I imagine there was quite a bit of work to engage with your citizens along the way. Can you talk about some of the strategies Derby has relied on historically when attempting to engage the community on these planning matters?
Everett: (08:38)
So traditionally Derby has utilized open houses, which have been decent in getting community feedback. You're able to meet the people and explain somewhat complex ideas with them. I know when we did the walkable development plan we had decent success with going to the schools and talking with parents and students. But Scott has more experience in this process than I do.
Scott: (09:08)
Yeah. I think the traditional method, I think is something that in terms of meeting people, asking them questions on surveys, putting out, you know, drawings for them to put their ideas on. I know I've had several planning commissioners in the past that always call the planners the sticky note guys as we ask people to write ideas and stick them on maps and never have really understood why that works. But I think the real benefit to that approach that doesn't relay as well in some of the online tools, which I think the online tools are getting better at, is allowing people to see other people's ideas and react to it and kind of have a conversation, whether it's actual conversations, which occur at the open houses or serial conversations of somebody making a comment, somebody seeing that comment, making a comment about that comment and building upon it.
Lindsay: (10:10)
Yeah. Well, I will say that the tools have really come a long way in this department. We're actually doing a series on citizen engagement starting in February and running into March, that's going to break down some of these tools. Um, and they do have the functionality actually to have those back and forth dialogues, which a lot of local governments are seeing as necessary now that we can't meet in person, at least for now, or at least those social gatherings are going to be pretty limited. I know a lot of cities too are trying to really help more of the community engage that has not traditionally been able to engage. Just things like your town halls might be at a time that don't work if you work at 7:00 PM, um, or if you have three kids at home. Having ways to engage with the community that can meet them where they are, and they can participate at their leisure is really important and that's going to be necessary through digital tools. So I would encourage you guys, and then also any other local government that feels the traditional tools no longer are making the cut to listen into that short podcast series that we're doing. We're definitely highlighting some industry leaders in that area, and it might be a good opportunity to identify some tools that could be real game changers for your city. So even pre pandemic do you worry about some of these strategies losing their effectiveness?
Scott: (11:35)
Yeah, definitely. From what I've seen over the last now almost 30 years in this business is the number of people that would come out, uh, to a meeting and actively participate, uh in a process and help the community, uh, define its vision and, uh, the ways in which, uh, the community desired to get there, uh, that level of active participation has definitely declined. And it's, you know, a lot of things that you just said, people don't have the time to come and spend, hours, uh, with, uh, their peers in the community, having that conversation all at the same time. And I don't think it's necessary that they have to do it all at the same time. I think that is mentioned in a lot of the excited to hear about some of these tools out there. Im researching some of them, currently, uh, I think the ability of those tools to have that conversation virtually without it occurring all in real time is going to be a real advocate because quite frankly, that is, uh, critical to doing plans that really are your community’s plan.
Lindsay: (12:52)
One note I had from the last time we spoke and I would just want to make sure we touch on it here, because I think it paints a great picture of what it is like for these smaller to medium-sized local governments. You talked about your reliance on even cable television, a local network to share some information. Can you break down that a little bit more for me, and then some issues you see with that approach specifically?
Scott: (13:16)
Yeah, so, You know, of course, uh, you know, 20 years ago, you know, cable television was really in its hay day and had really strong penetration into communities. And of course, one of the, one of the things that was done as part of the franchise agreements across the country with cable television companies is that local governments were given a channel on those, on those cable systems. I mean, a Derby is one of those cities that has that. And we televised live our planning commission meetings and give people the opportunity to do that. And of course we, more and more commonly receive from people the feedback. Well, that's great, but I don't have cable. I get by my television through other means through internet streaming and those sorts of things. And so we've created on our web page and the ability to do the same thing. We basically can stream our meetings by logging in to the Derby's web page and watching those meetings the same way.
Scott: (14:27)
I'm sure that's going to change yet again. I’m sure we have not seen the last of the change in the way that people get their television information. And we're going to have to be on top of that because I think that is a critical way for people that in times of pandemic, where really rely on it saying, you know, Hey, you know, don't come to our meeting, but follow our meeting if you're interested because, you know, there's reasons why, obviously we don't want you to come here in person, but going forward, you know, the ability of course we record these, and now, now they're on demand, you know, essentially a YouTube style, approach to, you know, I want to know what happened with the planning commission, let me pull it up and watch it, you know, on my phone while I'm waiting at the doctor's office or something.
Lindsay: (15:22)
Yeah. The citizen engagement piece is a constant challenge because you're going to end up with the same people who would come to the town hall meetings - they're the eager ones that are going to proactively go to our YouTube channel. So I think these, some of these technologies that push notifications and trying to meet residents where they are to engage, you have to go out into the community to really engage them. And so this concept of you, you meet up at the local brew pub and there's a great turnout for that. How do you do that in a time when we're all social distancing and will be for the foreseeable future, how do you continue to engage and have that same type of experience with your citizens? Um, but digitally, this is a really hard nut that everybody is trying to crack. Derby is a small city working on some really great plans to make your city more vibrant and attractive, especially to younger generations. In line with this objective. how is your city similarly looking to engage with this target audience? Are you looking to any of these modern engagement strategies? Scott, you mentioned you're researching a few.
Scott: (16:30)
Yeah, certainly we are having some conversations with our communications department about it as well, because quite frankly, it's not just planning that needs to have these conversations with the community. It's the police, the public works and all of the agencies in the city that they really need to get, you know, feedback from the community about the services that they desire in the way they want to receive them. One of the items I would want him to be working on is, is likely working with a communications and our IT department on, Hey, let's look at, you know, what, what our options are.
Scott: (17:10)
And, um, I'm glad to hear that you guys are going to be doing a podcast on that type of stuff, and I'll be listening in on what those tools are. And it's unfortunately not something that is, but my real strong point, my strong point is standing up in front of the big crowd of people and showing them, you know, hard copy maps and hands-on type, uh, engagement. So it's something that I'm going to have to learn. I’m an old dog and I'm going to have to learn a new trick.
Lindsay: (17:45)
Okay. Well, that's great. I know a lot of old dogs don't want to learn the new tricks. I'm glad that we're talking about this really highlights the struggle for so many small to medium size local governments who are grappling with what really is going to define the future of your city and what tools potentially are needed to help you get there. So you had mentioned you're listening to podcasts, webinars. Um, how do you go about identifying these tools to help with things like citizen engagement?
Scott: (18:16)
Yeah. And, you know, and that's, that's a real struggle, quite frankly. It is because there's so many of them out there and it's, you know, it's tough to find out, you know, how they work. It's tough to have conversations with others who have used them to get you know, a user's perspective on not just the sales person's perspective on how it works, but somebody who's actually used it and tells you. Well, yeah. Okay. It's advertised to do this, but that is a work as well as it was suggested. So I think that, you know, a group like yours, I think is a, is a real key to bringing together governments to have that conversation and really share those ideas and those experiences so that we can learn from one another.
Lindsay: (19:08)
Yeah. We're really trying to break down these barriers and in the podcast series that we're doing on citizen engagement, we're bringing in somebody from local government to talk about their experience and why they selected a specific tool and how they're leveraging that tool. So we're excited to get that out in the open and to hopefully do it more with some other topic based products in this space. Um, Everett, you are one of the younger generation folks so I assume that you're involved in these conversations and bringing the youth in and being more involved. Do you have any insights you want to add?
Everett: (19:46)
I do believe that we could probably do more to reach out to people on social media and not necessarily cumulate comments on Facebook, which are not always the most productive, but reaching out to community groups. Cause Derby does have quite a bit too many Facebook groups, which were very active. Derby’s community members are very active. I think if you reach out to them and provide resources to where they need to meet to an online survey or informational video, which we had decent luck with that with a comprehensive hand, very nice short information daily about the plan, which people were able to easily consume, understand that the pain was about, it's not complicated or overwhelming. And then they can also take a survey after watching that and provide meaningful input. I think that's been fairly successful and we could probably do more of that to reach out to, um, not only younger people, but there's all sorts of people on Facebook.
Lindsay: (20:44)
Right. Some of the tools out there that actually provide great analytics and some of them are using AI. So artificial intelligence to break down sentiment from long form comments. So that's pretty neat. Instead of somebody going through and spending hours and hours and trying to glean insights from all of these comments going back and forth, a computer can do it for you. So that's, that's pretty cool.
Scott: (21:08)
Yeah. One of the things that were used when we did the Vision Derby 2040 created the word cloud, you know, where it took the, you know, the most commonly used words, you know, and displayed them in a way that you can see really see from the comments, the open forum comments, what people, you know, what the ideas were by just gleaning the most commonly used words.
Lindsay: (21:32)
You all love those word clouds. Oh man. Everybody loves them.
Scott: (21:36)
You know I really am, uh, learning some new tricks here cause it's hard. I have, I have done personally to any significant extent. No, there there is, I think ways to get the same information, some very good information that we've been getting from, uh, you know, hands on, you know, the charrette style of come in and let's dig in and let's look at the maps and, you know, tell us what works and what does it, what your ideas are. I think we can still get that same information through these tools. What, what, what I'm seeing from it
Lindsay: (22:20)
Well, I think so many folks are a little intimidated by the technology. And I think that mental shift that this technology could really make your job so much more efficient and so much more effective. So changing gears a little, I'd like to ask a few more general questions if you're game. Do you know of anything particularly innovative happening in another local government that we should check out?
Everett: (22:45)
Well, I believe that Manhattan, um, has been utilizing, I believe it's called tactile urbanism. What they'll do is they'll go out and maybe we'll test out an idea using temporary materials. So for example, if, um, the long-term goal is to have a bowled out crosswalk, I suppose they'll do those. They might paint that out or use tones just in bullying work and see how it works. Or they, I think even used planters and it's an affordable, effective way of testing out before we spend all the money implement apps, quite expensive infrastructure.
Lindsay: (23:25)
Yeah, I was talking with, uh, Colerain township in Ohio actually. I mean, I want to bring them in, cause they're obviously not in New York City. They threw hay bales down in the middle of the road to simulate an island of sorts to see is it actually going to slow traffic down? So for 50,100 bucks they tested it out and um, and then they could justify that big infrastructure spend because it did prove effective. So this concept that you have to be a big city or have a lot of budget, um, to be able to test out some of these things tactile urbanism, I think is, is a really cool concept. And cities are getting really creative on ways to put that into practice. And finally, what's something that excites each of you about the future of Derby?
Scott: (24:11)
Well, I'll go first that, you know, the thing that really excites me is, is that, uh, the community has been very willing to have these conversations about mixed use about differing, uh, housing styles about, uh, walking a bicycle and other forms of transportation, uh, in a community that that is, is definitely auto oriented. The thing that really excites me is that that community is realizing that we would be a more livable place, a place where, uh, people would be safer, would have a higher quality of life. If we would take a look at our approach to development. And really when we make decisions that we have a conversation about the entirety of the impacts, because so often the things that get focused on, I will tell you from my long time experience, you know, go in and to talk about a development proposal that I'd be willing to bet you that the very first thing people are going to ask me is where am I going to park? Quite frankly, that's, you know, you're going to part pretty darn close, no matter how we decide this, that, and the real important thing is, is once you get out of that car, how am I going to get to the front of the store without doing that my child getting run over, uh, and that's not a conversation that we have. Derby, I think has been really, really accepting of the fact that, you know, you're right. We don't, you know, it, when we go to the grocery store, it is kind of dangerous for us to walk our kids up to the front of that grocery store. But maybe there is a better way to develop the community in a way that recognizes that, you know, while we all have cars and we all drive somewhere, that's probably not the most important thing.
Lindsay: (26:11)
Right. Everett, how about you?
Everett: (26:13)
Well, I'm excited about the future or West end area, which is the oldest part of Derby originally planned in the 1800s and developed primarily in the 1950s as a commercial corridor or along a state highway. And over the years, there has been some decline in that area and it's very, autocentric. Our Western development plan and also our vision Derby 2040 have really exciting ideas for that area, especially with providing additional trails and mixed use in the area, which will promote redevelopment and also compliment the existing land uses. So we have, we've already made some wonderful improvements in the area. The city has built a beautiful park that goes down with the Arkansas river, I guess we call it our Kansas here. And that has been a wonderful asset to that area. And we've already started to see the effects on adjacent properties, where we do have one developer who wants to build a mixed use development next to that park which will be an extension of that park.
Everett: (27:25)
And that was the whole idea was that this Park's going to be the impetus for a redevelopment area, and we are starting to see that. And so it's very exciting. And also not only to develop that area, but also to get people back in touch with the river, which has been forgotten and people have shunned it. And now we really want to encourage people to be connected with natural resources in the community.
Lindsay: (27:52)
Well, I think today you bring up a lot of great points that are going resonate with so many local governments. It's an exciting time to be in planning because there's a lot of really great challenges. I talk with a lot of folks about the strip mall issue and like, what are we going to do with these dying strip malls everywhere. The auto centric city comes up a lot too. I'm excited for you all because there's a lot of great technologies that could help you get there.
Lindsay: (28:19)
And it sounds like you've really just started scratching the surface in exploring those. So I wish you all the best of luck with your walkability plan and your vision Derby 2040 and just want to remind you all be willing to make some changes because there's already some great technologies that I'm hearing about that are coming out that will reshape what 2040 potentially could look like for all of you. So thanks so much for being here today. And for both of you taking the time to chat. I know this is going to be really meaningful to a lot of local governments globally.
Scott: (28:49)
Thank you as well. Thanks for the opportunity.
Everett: (28:50)
Thank you so much Lindsay.
Lindsay: (28:59)
It's an exciting time to be in city planning from developments in mobility and online shopping to evolving citizen needs coupled with more recent challenges and relying on more traditional forms of engagement, city planning is truly primed for innovation. The challenge now is finding tools and resources to help you get there. For governments, large and small, the Govlaunch platform provides free access to innovation projects, tools, and thought leadership from around the world, whether you're a city of 10,000 or one of over a million, there's something to be gained. So we encourage you to check out the Wiki for local government innovation.
I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano, and this podcast was produced by gov launch the Wiki for local government innovation. You can subscribe to hear more stories like this, wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a local government innovator, we hope you'll help us on our mission to build the largest free resource for local governments globally. You can join to search and contribute to the wiki at govlaunch.com. Thanks for tuning in. We hope to see you next time on the Govlaunch podcast.