It does take leaders who want to engage with the public but there’s considerable knowledge and skills needed to make it work cost-effectively. And in the case of city budgets, it’s tough to get many citizens interested since it’s such a complex issue.

It’s a fascinating trio of questions. However, it seemed to come from a top-down perspective, at least to me.

The 2.0 media, with participatory information sharing and potential for increased participation in decision-making, offers great potential. As you know, I’ve suggested that we try to “wiki” a city general fund budget and crowd-source public spaces in our community…and seen little enthusiasm from our leaders, at least those in power in 2010.

My 8 years of experience in Northfield makes me think that the “interested public” has the 2.0 skills to make it happen…it’s the government that generally appears to lack these skills. Even worse, sometimes it seems that government views the public’s 2.0 skills as a threat to their power and perks.

I think greater progress will be achieved with a change of leadership at the top, both elected and hired. We need people who look beyond the opinions of the highly-paid professionals and view citizens, with and without 2.0 skills, as low-cost but valuable resources.

Yeah, trust could provide some powerful leverage…