CIC Recommendations

Each year, the Community Involvement Committee selects priority areas during their annual retreat. These focus areas create the foundation for subcommittee work and members work throughout the year to develop recommendations for the Board of County Commissioners.

During the 2023-2024 cycle of work, the CIC focused on two priority areas– budget engagement and community violence prevention and response.

Community engagement in the budget process was selected by the CIC as a topic after learning it is a current priority for Chair Vega Pederson and the Office of Community Involvement. Over the course of the year, the Budget Engagement Subcommittee met with County program staff and community partners who work to improve community voice and power in the budgeting process, as well as reviewed recommendation letters from the County Auditor and Central CBAC. They explored current and planned Multnomah County programs, as well as how other jurisdictions engage the community in their budgets. Their letter shares findings of successful engagement opportunities that are only acessible to a limited number of people. They also found broad barriers to engagement across the County. This subcommittee structured their ten recommendations around three themes. Theme one is to implement best practices for broad and diverse community engagement on the budget: including broad engagement, County-wide budget engagement, and smaller budgeting decisions such as budget notes and adjustments throughout the year. Theme two encourgages improvements to the Community Budget Advisory Committee program as well as feedback loops for all County advisory bodies as part of budget engagement. The third theme recommends future-forward community engagement programs in civic education and participatory budgeting.

The topic of community engagement on programs and policies arelated community violence, and especially gun violence, was chosen by the CIC following conversations about the subject's urgency and importance to Multnomah County residents, as well as it's complexity and difficulty for community to know what is happening and why. Subcommittee members met with County staff who work in many departments and offices involved in violence prevention and response, and attended meetings with partners as well as of the Multnomah Youth Commission. From these meetings they found many activities, programs, and collaborations among departments and jurisdictions, though there were not many opportunities for community members to get involved with the work. They also identified an appetite for increased community engagement, with barriers of funding limiting opportunities and staff time. The subcommittee uplifted five recommendations to the Board. The first recommends centralized information and creative data visualization to improve information access. The second focuses on improving educational opportunities for community and staff to be well informed about the ever changing respose to community violence. Thirdly, the letter recommends increasing large scale events that provide opportunities for both education and input from community, with a goal of hosting one town hall or similar in fiscal year 2025. The fourth recommendation builds on the Budget Engagement Subcommittee's letter in recommending opportunities for communities impacted by violence to shape where and how money is spent on addressing violence in their community. Finally they recommend more work on this topic in years to come.

The CIC will present these recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners at a Board meeting in July or August 2023 - exact date to be determined. You can find this year’s CIC recommendation letters linked below:

2024 CIC Budget Engagement Recommendations (380.3 KB)

2024 CIC Community Violence Engagement Recommendations (336.39 KB)