Portland Office of Neighborhood Involvement, Budget Advisory Committee
Diverse geographic and ethnic communities build trust while cutting their own budgets
Portland’s neighborhood system has long been a national model of effective grassroots involvement. Recently it expanded to include organizations representing ethnic as well as geographic communities. With only a few months of experience working together, they had to confront the reality of deep budget cuts. Building on their very different experiences with consensus decision making, they were able to honestly confront differences as well as commonalities and to achieve full consensus.
- Engaged in an eye-opening discussion of how different communities approach decision making and consensus building.
- Considered competing priorities and adopted a reduced budget that served them.
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