Casual Case Studies in Digital Citizenship: Stormwater
The “Adopt-a” movement regained steam last week when GovTech News published an article about Adopt-a-Drain in San Francisco. A Norfolk, Virginia Councilwoman, Andria McClellan, publicly shared the article on Facebook, where a friend tagged me and Code for Hampton Roads.
If there is anyone who knows what it takes to mobilize people to adopt civic things it’s me. I led the organization and operations for the first “Adopt-a-thon” at Code for America. For three months we researched and recruited people all over the U.S. to redeploy the code for Adopt-a-Hydrant and organize around it. I know it seems cliche to say now, but deploying the tech truly was the easy part — trivial, in fact. Getting people to use Adopt-a was much harder. I can’t think of any instances of Adopt-a from the Adopt-a-thon that stuck.
Nonetheless, people in cities around the country liked the concept and were determined to stick with it. Raleigh adopted bus shelters. Minnesota adopted stormwater drains. (They even got the domain: www.adopt-a-drain.org)
Stormwater is a civic issue here in Virginia Beach, as it is Oakland, CA, where they also adopted storm drains to much fanfare. Now there are Adopt-a-drains in many cities.
The news of San Francisco and the attention of a council member in our sister city up the road got me thinking: are we ready for Adopt-a-drain here at home?
You see, I really like Adopt-a, too, because I think it can be an excellent tool for constructive citizenship and civic engagement. I don’t believe in anything called “the government” because I was taught that government is us. I think also left/right, big/small government politics shouldn’t matter. If you honor We The People then it’s your duty to act among them as a citizen and that doesn’t just mean voting, protesting, volunteering for politics, and giving money. Operating government is a serious, complex, complicated practical matter that too few understand. Government operations are mundane, routine, and, above all, incessant. I think there should be many more opportunities for citizens to be “hands on” with their own government, to get those hands dirty, and to get down to the nitty gritty details of what it takes to run government. I think Adopt-a could be one such opportunity but I’ve been down this road too many times, not just in civics but also in tech business.
So, I put on my Lean Startup hat and sought to find out what people in Virginia Beach and throughout Hampton Roads think about Adopt-a-drain. The results so far might not surprise people who follow our local politics but they are still eye-opening.
Those results come from identical polls in Facebook and NextDoor. The poll asks:
Would you adopt a storm drain?
In NextDoor, which shares by geography, I asked my neighborhood and 43 nearby other neighborhoods. (Va Beach has over 300 neighborhoods.) In Facebook I asked a second question: “where do you live?” To determine respondents’ cities. See the screen-captured summaries below:
Most remarkable to me are the responses from NextDoor. Facebook is heavily biased by my personal network, i.e., recipients are likely to be similar to me and would want to do adopt drains. In NextDoor, however, the neighborhood is my network and that may be where the similarities end.
The most interesting aspect of the Facebook version of the poll is that the 2 lone “No” votes came from Virginia Beach. Not only do my NextDoor neighbors in Virginia Beach disfavor drain adoption by 59% “No” to 41% “Yes”, they had things to say about why.
The reasons why VB residents don’t like stormwater drain adoption:
- Resent the stormwater fee added in 1992
- City is not doing its job, should do more
- City’s budget priorities are wrong; should pay for stormwater not light rail or arena
And here’s where it gets super interesting for a civic geek like me. Superficially, this seems like politics as usual but I think there is something deeper and we need to get down to it and understand it. I’m only asking people to do something that has long been a civic practice: take care of your surroundings. Can’t one oppose fees and favor civic duty? Is the only response of a displeased citizen to demand more from a government they don’t even like? When sidewalks are covered in snow, it’s residents’ responsibility to clear them. In many places it’s law. The reason Adopt-a-hydrant existed (well before there was an app) is that hydrants would be hidden by snow where fire fighters couldn’t find them. Property and lives have been lost as a result of hidden hydrants. It doesn’t matter if the city isn’t doing enough or is doing more than any other city. Cities like Chicago have massive fleets of snow plows paid for by taxes and still the sidewalks and hydrants must be cleared by residents. When it snows sidewalks and hydrants get covered. When it rains storm drains get covered. Stormwater may not seem as threatening as fire, but it is threatening. Doing something constructive to reduce that threat not only feels good, it is good, and it’s easy.
Before & After
I think Adopt-a-drain is important and worthwhile for more than its direct purpose. We need more citizens who participate in their own government — and government cleans storm drains, clears hydrants, and maintains bus shelters. We need citizens who better understand and appreciate how government works in practice, not just through the lenses of political ideologies. Use open budget tools and participate in public forums to have a say in the budgeting process when it comes to stormwater vs. X and also adopt a storm drain. People should stop saying “the city” and “they”. It’s “us”.
Maybe what we need in order to make government better is a stick and 5 minutes with a storm drain.
P.S. I wrote this entirely on my phone, which is amazing, but this should have a heck of a lot more links in it. I’ll have to add them later.
P.P.S. Done.
