Title:کمک به ایجاد و حفظ یک محیط اداری اخلاقی

۰۲-۱۰-۲۰۱۱ ارائه دهندگان: Carol Barrett این وب‌کست فقط برای مشاهده در دسترس است، برای اعتبارات AICP CM قابل استفاده نیست. در حالی که برنامه‌ریزان فردی تلاش می‌کنند تا به استانداردهای اخلاقی بالای منشور اخلاقی AICP دست یابند، محیط اداری مطمئناً یک عامل مؤثر در عملکرد اخلاقی است. از کارول بارت، FAICP، بیاموزید، زیرا او توصیه های مفیدی را در مورد نحوه کار برای ایجاد و حفظ یک محیط اداری اخلاقی به اشتراک می گذارد. او چالش های اخلاقی رایج در دفتر و رویکردهای حل این تعارضات اخلاقی را بررسی خواهد کرد.

قسمتي از متن فيلم: Hello I’d like to welcome everybody to today’s webcast on creating an ethical office environment this is something that I think all of us can relate to and we have a wonderful speaker today Carol Barrett she’s going to be talking to us about our office environment and trying to support our ethical standards through

The AICP code of ethics Carol is our ethics guru she is currently the planning manager for the city of San Gabriel in California she’s the author of everyday ethics for practicing planners which was published by the American Planning Association she has been a lot of her career helping our

Profession with ethics including serving on the AICP ethics code revision committee in 2002 as she helped author the combined APA aicp statement of ethical principles she helped with the AP a statement of ethical principles she’s been a member of the APA and aicp ethics committees and she’s been the chapter presidents council

Representative to a committee which drafted the original aicp code of ethics back in the 70s she spent a lot of time and service to the profession serving as the vice president for a professional development of the APA california chapter and through 2010 she’s been past president of the Texas Chapter past

President at the National Capital Area chapter and a past member of the APA board of directors she is a fellow of aicp and has received a distinguished service award and the Diane Donald award so she’s a perfect person to be talking to us today about ethics I have a few

Things right before we get started if you are experiencing any technical problems you can just type a question into the question box if it’s something simple I can help you with it or you can call our 1 800 number on GoToWebinar for tech support and they can resolve any

Larger issues the slides for today’s webcast are available at the Utah APA org website so if you want to download those slides for today’s session you’re welcome to do so after the fact i will have the recording for today’s session up on the website as well we have lots

Of chapters divisions and universities that are helping to sponsor this free webcast series use and Ohio is our chapter sponsoring today’s event so thanks very much to the folks that help with these sessions together we have a number of upcoming webcasts that may be of interest one of

The things I’ll point out is that this quarter we’re trying to put a focus on the issue of aging in our population and what are the impacts planners should be thinking about so we have a number of sessions one tomorrow on the impacts and opportunities of an aging population and

A number of others that are coming up through the remainder of the quarter so I encourage you to go ahead and register early if you plan to attend any of those events to log your CM credits it is up on today’s calendar on the CM website at

APA just look under today’s date and you’ll select helping to create that’s the title that you’ll see on the calendar as I mentioned a PDF of today’s slides and the video recording will be available at the Utah APA org website my name is Jennifer Evans Kelly and I serve

As the coordinator for the webcast series and so I appreciate everyone that submits their ideas for presentations and I appreciate your attendance at today’s event with that I’m going to turn it over to Carol Carol just in just a second it’s going to pop up and ask

You to transfer over to you so Carol when you’re ready just press the little button that says transfer over you we got it yes we’ve got it thank you so much you can go ahead and get started when you’re ready okay I’m trying to make the little box go away oh if

There’s a little arrow that sticks out on the side of your go to where it is Oh got it all right there you go this way over there all right there we are there’s the first slot hello everybody it’s my pleasure to be with you during

This webinar we’re here to ha have a conversation I’m not an ethics czar and I’m certainly not perfect although I love the fact that somebody in the world said that I was I’m happy to visit with you after this session is over as well so you could see my gmail address if

There’s something that you’d like to discuss that does it really feel like a general share with the group kind of question we can talk with one another later if we’re going to talk about how you build and sustain an ethical organization I want to define what that means and they’re really four components

To working with in an ethical organization employees have to see that there are moral situations out there they have to care about doing the right thing they have to be able to figure out what the right course of action is and then they have to be able to act on

Their decision regarding the right behavior so if we we’ve got a goal of what an ethical organization looks like then we should consider what are the building materials that we have for planners there is very specifically a couple of documents one is the AICP code

Of ethics and we have to spend time on that because of the CM credit provisions other building materials include what you bring to the environment as a human being there may well be where you work local and state ordinances that address what ethical requirements are there’s the culture the community values in

Which your organization functions and that can include tradition history the diversity that characterizes your community and I’m going to degress for just a second and then say we just celebrated chinese new year in the city i work for about seventy percent asian which means there’s a very strong culture around generic gift-giving as

Part of the new year and the gifts come in the form of little red envelopes that are just the right size for some cash and we have to put signs up in our counter saying we really appreciate the notion of your wanting to give us gifts but don’t other

Building materials that are in place are the people who helped to set the cultural tone for the organization the leaders the supervisors the folks who are actually doing the work and so then it comes down to me who are the people that I work with what is the work that’s

On my desk and how does that work it done all of these are the building materials for an ethical environment I often engage in and friendly banter with people about why we have discussions about ethics and a frequent assertion is look I’m a pretty ethical person I assume other people are ethical people

We really don’t have to spend time on this but we do the ethics researched Resource Center recently published a study that found that nearly sixty percent of governmental employees at all levels federal state local had witnessed violations of ethical standards or policies or laws in their workplaces

Within the past year now I don’t have detailed data for planning consulting firms as distinct from public entities although later in this conversation we’re going to look at some information about private businesses but I don’t have a basis for thinking that life and consulting land is substantially different from public sector planning so

The misconduct most frequently observed at least by federal employees was abusive behavior safety violations lying to employees and then putting one’s own interests ahead of the organization’s interest fifty-eight percent of the people who witnessed misconduct don’t report it because they don’t believe managers would take action and then a full 30

Think there’s going to be some retaliation if they do do reporting additional surveys show that fraud occurred is frequently in government as the private sector with comparable rates for things like altering documents miss representing hours work lying to customers the public employees and it’s my belief that right now planning ethics

Is providing ethics is in a time of special challenge I don’t know about where you work but if I hear the mantra we want to be business friendly one more time I’m going to punch somebody or at least think seriously about it cities are desperate for jobs it puts pressure

On planners to approve projects cut some corners that they might not otherwise think of doing and some of that pressure is coming from our supervisors leading to ethical compromises so that’s those are reasons why I think we need to talk about ethics ethics is not just following the law however and ethics is

Not just your morals or values although I would say that it you know your morals and values are incredibly important there’s nothing in the code that says you shouldn’t murder people the assumption is that you bring those personal morals and values to the table maybe like a lot of you I learned my

First lesson about right and wrong when I was four years old stole a pack of gum my mother found it and drove back to the grocery store asked to speak to the manager and forced me to return the gum and say what I had done okay so I

Learned from that stage in my life the importance of honesty over dishonesty things like kindness over cruelty doing the right thing instead of breaking the law these are the values you bring to your understanding and interpretation of the code so for planners code is really very central and there is

A a specific meaning for ethics that’s derived from the Greek that that was an easy one it’s either derived from Greek or Latin right it comes from the word ethos that refers to character or sentiment of the community ethics means the principles of conduct that govern our profession we expect planners to

Conform to the standards of that profession and once again I’m pointing out that in some cities there are additional local codes of ethics that you need to comply with I’m going to make the rash assumption that everybody who bothered to dial in knows something about the AICP code of ethics that it

Has four sections the aspirations the rules of conduct the procedures you may not have noted that the last amendment to the code produced a whole new section that says if you’re convicted of a felony you automatically lose your membership and so my general observation about the code when I sit and read it

And talk about it with people is there’s lots of process guidance less information about what the content of our work should be emphasis on how we should do work so the first part of the code that has the aspirational principles 19 of them address process to address both process and content and to

Focus primarily on content what’s significant about that is that’s the aspirational part of the code which means you can’t be charged with failing to adhere to those principles the rules of conduct where you can be charged with violating your code all 26 of those deal with process if you had to summarize all

Of those process exhortation it’s about honesty it’s about truth it’s about fairness but honesty is qualified by disclosure in the century the code net says you can do some things that you think you might not otherwise be able to do as long as you disclose it you have to tell the truth

But there are qualifications you only have to adhere to the standards of truth-telling is modified by not deliberately lying or lying with reckless and difference and that fairness thing once again it’s mostly about fairness in the process not in the outcome and frankly I understand completely why we focus so much on

Process planners work is primarily in the form of recommendation the final decision-makers modifier reject those recommendations and we content ourselves with the efforts to give them wise recommendations that’s the reality but its processing content together that constitute ethical behavior is planners one thing that I really want us to think

About together is if we talk about process in terms of how we do planning we also should think about the way we work with one another in terms of process because this process component impacts each of us on a daily basis it’s the way a group goes about being a group

Remaining a group accomplishing the work it’s how we go about recruiting and involving people how we make our decisions in a planning environment and how the group handles the work we do sometimes does processes devalue the people involved because they’re highly controlled well we may be in an environment where it emphasizes winning

We may be an environment where we exclude or shut out people and as planner I think if you talk about having an ethical organization the very first place to begin is the process by which our groups do our planning work internally and our goal is to do it in a

Way that strengthens our connections to one another and to information so if we’ve talked some about process and we’ve acknowledged that that whole process discussion is not just how we work with the community but it’s how we work with one another let’s look at the guidelines that are in the code that

Specifically provide information about what the content should be of our planning if you pick up a major planning document and believe me I understand these are not standards for every memo that you write or every conversation you have because frequently we’re working on very small discrete pieces but let’s

Step back and look at some of the larger things we do as planners when we read the document it needs to be clear that we focused on the interrelatedness of decisions the long-term consequences of what we do there needs to be information related to excellence of design the

Heritage of the natural in the built environment and then we have aspirational content standards around expanding choice and opportunity being sensitive to the needs of the disadvantaged oh I see a typo its disadvantage not disadvantages and promoting racial and economic integration and going on even further we’re supposed to alter the policies

That work against economic and racial integration and finally not just accept the customary solution but make sure that the recommendations are actually appropriate to the facts at hand so we’ve got that kind of guideline you step back and you say okay if the if that’s the language that our code

Provides us about what constitutes ethical plans you can see that from from a philosophical point of view we’re really talking about justice based planning and focus on the common good and what’s significant about it coming down to those particular philosophical concepts is we’re not talking about a

Golden rule thing you know as long as I treat you the way I want to be treated it’s a good enough plan it’s definitely not utilitarianism we can’t argue that as long as it’s the greatest good for the greatest number it’s a good plan and certainly the old the ends justifies the

Means is not envisioned as ethical conduct within our code of ethics now I’m going to shift gears a little bit and I’m going to talk with you some about leadership and ethics and I’m going to do that very specifically if that’s because the research on ethics shows that formal ethics programs

Elements like having a code have far less impact on our outcomes than our perceptions about leadership and consistency and follow through so if having ethical leadership is perhaps even more important than just having a code of ethics in terms of having the overall ethical culture we need to focus

Them on what that leadership needs when people are interviewed and they are asked what are the most important factors that make you think it’s important to be ethical in your work environment it’s because they see leaders focused on the issue of ethics they think the organization is fair they

See that ethics is discussed within the organization and that ethical behavior is actually going to be rewarded when you flip the question and you say arm are there aspects of leadership that mitigate against having an ethical culture it’s the perception of expectation of unquestioning authority or the obedience to that authority the

Focus on self-interest by supervisors rather than concern for employees and supervisors ignoring community impact when they make those decisions so the notion is you see that stuff it encourages you not to act ethically in in my exaltation to everyone participating in this phone call today is don’t just get your CM credits but

Instead decide that you have an opportunity to become a leader in ethics in your organization in fact each of you is already an expert in leadership despite where you may sit in a hierarchy because you’ve watched it you’ve experienced it throughout your life you can remember the times you’ve been in a

Meeting where one person ran the show or you were in a meeting where there was a lot of engaged hot debate somebody abruptly called for vote leaving clear winners and losers who felt railroaded because of the way the meeting was conducted so that so we all as planners

Actually have a fair amount of experience in ways leadership is carried out leadership is both relational and I think it has a very strong ethical process for bringing people together who want to accomplish positive change and if if you take up my challenge about being engaged in transformers transformational behavior within your

Organization around ethics I think there’s four basic principles for leadership and ethics knowing yourself being committed to engaging in learning new information as you increase your competencies in your role I think you have to be open to differences in value other perspectives and attitudes think you have to practice listening skills in

Coalition building and interpersonal skills and finally there has to be a way to practice civil discourse around the topics where we may not have agreement and and here’s my little inspirational I hope it’s inspirational idea for working on ethics if we don’t have a task to go

With our vision for building an ethical organization all we’ve got is a dream if all we’ve got is a bunch of jobs to do without a vision then all that work is just drudgery but if instead we have a vision around building and sustaining ethical organizations and we know some

Work that we can do in order to do that what we’ve got is hope for our communities alrighty so if we want to be if we want to step out into that great unknown with you as the ethical leader for your community there are a couple of

Things you have to be committed to do and it’s around sharing resources being inclusive and collaborating what makes leadership ethical is recognizing that that the workplace requires very very different skills around collaboration and managing a diverse workforce then the kinds of experiences that characterized a lot of workplaces and

May still characterized some frankly of the old to rural strategy you remember that one rule number one the boss is always right well number you see rule number one I don’t think that that kind of a leadership style is really effective today and instead I think employees are looking to help

Build a shared purpose and the most powerful thing that you have an opportunity to do is lead by example I don’t think that’s easy I think most people wake up in the morning wanting to do the right thing but then there’s all this weird stuff that goes in on men in

The office could be peer pressure could be elected officials engaging in our work could be something as supervisor says so I don’t I don’t diminish the notion that this is hard work it takes courage to sometimes stand apart but I believe that if we practice those skills of collaboration and working together

With our colleague to build authentic strategies for addressing our shared concerns around the organization and the way we do our work that in fact you won’t be standing alone so if if you want to build and an ethical team you have to ask yourself how can I go about

Doing that there are additional surveys that show that in organizations with well implemented ethical programs and the strong ethical culture that misconduct false and and incidences of bad behavior decrease and the reporting of the bad behavior increases so if you’re focused on the notion of creating this really ethical organization you

Need to have more people on the team than just you things that you can very specifically do on the job is engage in your group cross a group discussion of what your processes are I’ve been in so many environments where we focus on our failure while I’m wrong

How do we avoid those mistakes we should take time to also know why what we did went well and what we can do to ensure future successes you have to be able to also encourage reflective back top people have to believe that they can honestly tell you what they think or see

Or hear and and I want to make a little bit of a distinction about people who have fabulous management skills like running great meetings with leadership skills because those two are not necessarily the same leadership means creating the space in which we can do the reflective back talk the other thing

That unethical team needs is the ability to understand that we’ve got standards out there knows know what the standards are and apply them which is why when I do ethical conversations with people we often use scenarios because if people have not practiced the notion of saying

Oh here’s an issue and what would we do and why would we do it when they’re actually confronted with that first big early in your career ethical issue you feel overwhelmed you flounder but it’s the notion that there is a systematic way to think about what we do when we

Perceive there’s a problem it will make it easier for us to deal with those problems I like to recommend people follow a very specific set of steps when they have to make an ethical decision stop and think could this decision or situation be damaging to someone or some

Group does a decision involve a choice between good and bad alternatives or maybe between two goods or the lesser of two evils frankly if the decision is between good and bad it is a lot easier but often the decision is between two competing goods frankly most ethical decision-making goes beyond are just

Having mottos and pledges like we will serve our customers with honesty and courtesy often understanding the problem takes us into a broader need to understand our organization as well as the code the next step you’ve got to go through is finding out the facts the relevant information what do you know

What do you don’t know can I know more who can help me learn that who has a stake in the decision are some concerns more important than others why then the next step is creating options what are my choices who can help me think more creatively about what I could do then

You need to take time to examine the specific guidance you may not have memorized the code or other relevant materials you need to look at that there’s the net for next step which is considering the consequences what are the likely outcomes of the different choices can you live with those outcomes

And you’ve got to make a choice in the end test that action whatever it is you’re proposing to do you’ve got to give it the test of publicity if I had to put this explain this story because it’s on the front page of the newspaper

Featuring me and what I did would I be comfortable with that and then the last step is acting but I go beyond just you have to do it you got to learn from what you do and I just offer one last observation mistakes will be made that’s

Just part of what happens as you build up your repertoire of skills in in ethical decision-making so what we’re going to do now is look at a sin Aereo and Jennifer you can decide whether and how you would like people to respond to this scenario get I hope

Anyway somebody wants to respond before I launch into some observations about it we have three scenarios to discuss and then at that point we’re transitioning the conversation so that it becomes more of a dialogue in much less of a lecture so let’s go to scenario 1 pretty straightforward you’ve got a review

Process in your city you got a bunch of projects under review and bingo a nice big job inducing economic development engine comes in and a council member sends email saying stop work on everything else in the city and move this to the front of the line how do you

Respond and let me ask do people even think this is an ethical issue so Jennifer I’m going to give people a few seconds to think about it and can I turn this back to you to sort of gather some input sure what I’m going to do is allow

Folks to go ahead and type in some responses of what whether or not you think it’s a nickel issue and how you would respond so I know it’ll take folks a couple of minutes to to enter their responses in the meantime I’m going to go ahead and throw out a question to you

Carol while people are are typing in their messages okay so one of the questions this is from Leonora she says my objective was always to empower the employees in my department however what do you do to rein them back in once they view themselves as a planning decision

Maker without consulting the boss okay so I I believe that in a situation like that that there that one way you can approach it is is well the good news is we’ve got people who are out there who are who are working together they honestly may not understand the negative consequences of

Not engaging the boss and to talk about you may not realize that if you’re out there doing this I’m not able to do something else or you may get way far out there and it’s not really appropriate for us or conflicts with another policy so spend some time

Formerly saying that we have the shared goal of really and good work out at the end of the pipeline but part of what defines really good work is that it includes engagement and review by the supervisor then I think you have to ask yourself what you know what can I do to

Make that process of engagement in review frequent enough and and perceptive enough that people want to participate in it so I begin the conversation from assuming that they just may not have all of your skills and understanding why being free agents so to speak and I may be overstating the

Case but why just going out there and doing it um does not build the organization so get so talk about you know our shared culture is around having a really strong organization and and I know that that’s your goal as well and part and so we need to have a more

Embracing picture of what all those steps are okay wonderful Carol so I have a number of folks that have responded and it’s all over the board so at my Jenny and they say yes it is an ethical issue we’ve got a bunch of people that say maybe not necessarily not sure and

Then Paul and Stephen both say it’s not an ethical issue but a legislative or a political issue so you’ve got some responses all over the board I’ll just take Linda’s as an example she says this should be statutory with the ordinance providing the timelines for review it is ethical to since the

Planner will need to ask the city council person to abide by the statutory timeline so i will just those are a couple of the responses and i’ll let you go from there Carol okay so part of what I want to acknowledge at the outset of having my conversation is is I actually

Think this is one of these scenarios where cultures of organizations may be fluid enough to allow for some of this to happen so if we go back and we did we go through our steps about stopping and thinking and do you have all the facts I

Set these scenarios up so that you never have all the facts because it would take two and a half pages and I’d still manage to leave something out I kind of wrote it because I want people to think about this as you this might be bad the

The answers that that said if you’ve got for example and in California we have something called the permit streamlining act and we’re supposed to finish our review within 30 days if you can comply with what you’re mandated deadlines are by shifting stuff around I think I think it’s reasonable for supervisors to say

The resources that we have are going to be deployed slightly differently in order to do this so we’re not disadvantaging anybody we’re not missing statutory deadlines I think that I also in terms of what are the facts have it says a city council member orders well

You know that that is hello red flag why would why would it be why would it let me okay I’m getting rid of all tongue-tied City Council members should not order anything to be done in the planning department they can certainly convey interest and I it’s not clear in

Here because i read it unclearly whether you’re in a situation where an individual council member picks up the phone and directs what you do on a day-to-day basis and if that’s what the case is that is a whole different ball of wax that rate is huge ethical issues

So once again we don’t have the facts about how this mandate came down so we’re collecting facts we’re also should be brainstorming alternatives and let’s assume in this case that if we pick up this big project it really is going to cause problems with other statutory deadlines and other projects what other

Alternatives out there do we have consulting planners on call who could come in and help are there different ways of managing the workload so that what is written as the city manager goal but I’m sorry what’s written is the city council directive but might well be an

Actual goal that your city has about you know achieving timely review of major economic development and issues but but how else might that be done there needs to be some brainstorming of alternatives so I believe that whether or not it’s an ethical issue depends on additional

Facts that you do not have before you but remember before we make our decision we spend a lot of time gathering facts and that it could be and an ethical issue and might provoke the need for some more detailed consideration around what the ethical requirements are that

Are in place so that that’s my take on scenario one we got great responses let’s look at scenario to this one’s a little longer same thing Jennifer while people are reading and thinking about it if you’ve got just a general question that’s come to you I’d be happy to chat

Sounds great okay so we have a question from one of our members Megan says what happens when the AICP ethics standards come into conflict with religious beliefs so specifically the provisions governing discrimination against minorities and religious beliefs that support discrimination most notably in the lesbian gay bisexual transgendered

Community so let me make sure I understand she provides a little bit of an example so let me add on to that so a few years ago she worked for a department where the Zoning Administrator treated gay couples differently than non gay couples specifically in terms of a family

Subdivision the local code would not have precluded the subdivision a lesbian couple came in to get a family subdivision for a parent the land was actually owned by one woman and the parent was the mother of the other woman the Zoning Administrator said that they couldn’t have a family subdivision

Because they weren’t a family when questioned he said he based his definition of family on the beliefs of his church the same person also openly discriminated against one of the members of the department treating him far differently including recognition of the employees relationship and employees desired put a picture of his partner on

His desk everyone else in the office had pictures the employee wound up leaving and I won’t get into the details of that so that’s that’s kind of some background to help you well I’m trying to think of a polite way of saying that that that behavior is not acceptable by any

Manager I you know under the most basic Human Resources policies in any city much less under the Code of Ethics it is simply impermissible and I I respect someone having really strong religious beliefs but when you choose to be in an environment where your religious beliefs cannot be central to

The way you do you work you’ve set yourself up for a really difficult time and I yeah I understand I understand kind of what the question is and that sometimes we do tiptoe around some of these issues but I can’t find anything that makes that defensible behavior I

Think if you if you were the man if you were the boss the manager and you said you know this just bothers me every which way but loose and you wanted to keep your job you might say um I don’t know that I could be as objective as I

Should be so I’m going to just step away from this I’m not going to engage in in reviewing it or understanding it i’m going to put somebody in charge of working on this who can be completely objective and understanding about it and I suppose there is a way that you could

Keep your job by recognizing that your religious beliefs are out of out-of-sync so I don’t think we say to people you can’t have religious beliefs i think we say to people that if you choose this job you have a different set of primary responsibilities and if there is a

Conflict you’ve got to step away from doing the work either on a temporary basis with respect to some zoning determination or on on a longer-term basis and i’m really sorry that people had to go through that i I enough’s enough I’ve talked enough about that okay all right we have a number of

Responses that have come in so Margie says I don’t sign off but continue to work towards a compromise that meets current codes another one at Jenny says set up a meeting with the other public agency to review other solutions we would not issue the building permits another person that

They’ve scrolled off the screen said get your make your York says make your supervisor sign off Lenore says it’s unethical the answer about signing off as know and we’ve got a bunch of other responses in here as well sorry I can’t get to everyone so Carol you want to

Respond thank you that’s great because as this is what I’m dealing with right now and and all everybody who said we we may not quite be at the point where we we have to draw the line in the sand I understand and I respect that and people

Who said you just can’t do it and you make your supervisor sign it I agree with all of those issues and so the actual outcome for me was was an internal meeting we had yesterday with with the question finally being can you make the change to the report it deletes

The building code requirements from from you know from your sign-off in support of the project and I finally said I can’t and these are the reasons why and the responsiveness supervisor was well okay if that’s what you say I definitely don’t want to sign those documents so

I’m going to support you on this and this scenario was really written so that it would be very difficult to say oh well if my boss asked me to do it I guess it would be okay because I’m just an employee so that once again like the other scenario

Left a lot of stuff out this scenario was really written to make it hard to say oh you know I don’t care about the building code and life safety issues so it’s a little bit of a setup alrighty we’re going to do scenario 3 and remember this is our last one before we

Transition into more group conversation and once again we’ll look at the scenario a Jennifer will throw out a generic kind of question and then we’ll come back together to visit about the scenario answer so here’s number three okay while folks are answering that one we got a great question from Jim

Schaffer who wants to know when you’re going to update your book he says he uses it for his graduate planning class at Eastern Michigan University and updating as to reflect new scenarios and the AICP code changes would be helpful I would concur with that I do a lot of

Preparing for the AICP exam and folks love that book but wish that it was related to the latest code please say that to APA because I have proposed to update my book and they’ve not asked me to do it and I’ve gone on to say or

Don’t use me too they look just get something out there that’s really current around the existing code and and I think when they test market this stuff they’re just not sure it’s a big enough money maker for them so they so APA needs to hear from people who use the

Book and would buy an updated version of it that there is a market for it because I’ve not been able to persuade them to do it okay sounds like a commercial from the shameless Department of Hawking things whatever it is shameless Department of cars yes gently stir cover

But that’s basically what it is okay well we do have responses so Paul and curls say you don’t need to do anything there’s no ethical issues if the plantings need the code we have let’s see lisa says if the plantings were a mitigation or requirement of the project then the action of managers

Should be questioned first to the manager than two supervisors if the plantings were not a requirement of any sort then cost reductions were a valid reason to make decisions the economically troubled times has little to do with ethical behavior we have questions about what does the code require had several people comment about

That including Kathryn Terry ass would it be possible to take the project back for amendment and halle says if the approval process used the amendment followed the proper procedure then you don’t need to do anything so it seems like people are leaning towards don’t do anything but there’s some questions

There Thank You Jennifer very helpful so once again it would appear on the servants I kind of crafted this one that people might say mean I don’t know man you know you want to change it it but I don’t know if we could do that and and right away the sophisticated reasoner’s

Said you can’t jump to the conclusion that this is an ethical issue we don’t have enough information if the applicant chose to exceed code standards and is now saying I’m not going to be able to do that you’re down a very different path then if a substantial specimen

Trees were removed and in exchange for taking out heritage oaks this extensive landscaping was proposed as a as mitigation and you’re and you’re changing that so let’s put to rest the notion that this is just all ok under the code and somebody could do it because then that’s not an ethical issue

I have anything else to talk about let’s assume that there was a public hearing process that the whole project required discretionary approval and in my made-up scenario part of the reason for granting the discretionary approval was around the quality of the landscaping and so then I think when you go through this

The extent to which the project will required discretionary approval in a public setting by public bodies that they’re it I agree with the person who said the fact that you know it’s tough times and somebody says I can’t afford to do it oh that that’s not a trivial

Argument to make and you know that’s assuming that that we all really know that these are tough times and that they’ve got an extraordinarily expensive landscaping plan i’ll make a side comment that the mortal life you have as a planner the more often you hear applicants complain that all it’s too

Expensive to do that and they really just test in the water you know maybe you’ll say okay i don’t have to this is a legitimate kind of scenario it’s not one of those throwaway once what I think you have to do in this case and is to

Say that staff can support this we understand it and we’re going to have to run it back through whoever the discretionary approving body might have been whether it was a zoning board of adjustment or a commission another option that I have used when I get that

I can’t afford it right now argument and and it works but you’ve got to have the authority to do this as I have Appleton’s come in and say this is a real this is a real experience I worked on just very recently renovating a building for restaurant very extensive

Mechanical equipment now on the roof there’s a requirement screen that here’s the bid for doing the screening it’s an extra four thousand dollars and I don’t have the money right now in our community I’m able to issue an occupancy permit and a business license I can condition the business

License on within the next six months going out and doing something and so that might be an option for your landscaping person which is to talk about what could we do now and if you had more time to install the landscaping what else might you choose to do so I

People are right on board with what is the fundamental issue and that is in order to understand whether it’s even an ethical issue you need more information and then defining me the kind of ethical issue it is requires more information so folks are answering these questions

Brilliantly so I have one last slide and then won’t go to the questions I really think a fun way that you can build your ethical team is to do brown bag lunches where you can enhance your sensitivity to ethical issues as a staff and you can

Agree on the method you use to explore the ethical aspects of your decision making the goal being if we talk about this stuff occasionally over a brown bag the method is familiar enough so that we can use it automatically when specific ethical issues come into play I think

Communities can be attentive of to who’s on the Planning Commission’s trying to get epical people there to begin with and whoever’s on your planning commission’s offering training which can include the AP a statement of ethical principles that gets at some basic conflict of a conflict of interest

Issues and you can train them in this statement of ethical principles I think we can do a better job in the interview setting I think we can ask scenario-based ethical questions of applicants and when in an interview setting your asked do you have any questions you can throw out a scenario

That raises some ethical question we can do things as simple as putting our codes up at the counter somebody just yesterday sent me an email asking me to do something unethical you know and I just wrote back really nicely here’s a citation from my code of ethics you’re

Probably not aware of that and you would not want to ask me to do something unethical my last item which I call personal financial management and simply to say the sad reality is sometimes we end up in incredibly corrupt environments in the course of two to three years you can have a complete

Change in your elected officials or a brand new city manager and a certain point you really do have to be prepared to resign which means you have to manage your own personal resources so that is an option and that you can’t be forced into doing something really really

Dreadful when I when I think about ethics I don’t expect that what I do any given day is going to change the world but what I do believe is that if we discuss and act together to build more ethical organizations then the world will be changed and and with that final

Comment Jennifer it’s back to you to throw out questions okay wonderful and I will invite everybody to go ahead and give us questions this one is from Frank Carol can you give it another example of when the interviewer asked do you have any questions sure yeah I would never

Say I’m trying to decide if you guys are bums obviously but I would ask a question that says first it’s got to be rooted in the organization so I I would say I looked at your card or strategy online and I want to compliment you and and I saw

Elements in there that were really very interesting what would how would your community handle a situation where you might have somebody who’s a long-term resident and really actively engaged in the civic life who comes in and says you know my dream is to sell my acreage for the world’s largest mcdonalds when

You’ve got a corridor strategy that really calls for in that same area a mixtures development and says no more drive-thru businesses so I have I asked them that kind of a question and the answer i think does give me some real insight on the kinds of ethical issues

That might be at play let me go ahead and give you the companions in question I ask when I’m interviewing people and this is a really good question to ask with entry-level hires because frankly I don’t expect entry-level people to know everything about planning we can teach

Them about planning but I can’t fix flawed instincts or people who have no sensitivity to ethical issues so I give a scenario that’s very artificial you’ve only been with the city for six weeks you’re the only person in the whole planning department everybody else has gone to the annual retreat somebody

Comes in with an application that’s clearly incomplete and they say don’t worry I talked to the mayor and the mayor told me to come right over and that you would accept it because the mayor knows about this project and really really likes it how would you handle that scenario and fortunately

About eighty percent of the time i get very it answers around how I really want to work with you there seem to be some items that are missing and we’ll be able to accept this when the application is complete or let me call my boss on the

Cell phone every once in a while I get somebody who says well whatever the mayor tells me to do that’s my policy and that’s what I’m going to be doing so that would tell me this person would be challenged to understand the ethical dimensions of our work okay Lenora has a

Follow-up question the only two interviews were people handpicked by the mayor how do you choose and ask questions between two people both not qualified for the job oh well I’m going to give you some some things that you could do but my first answer is I think

You’re screwed I mean I guess that’s really terrible language to use on a webinar just rewind that and say I think this is a lose-lose I suppose there is some possibility that they’ll turn out to be better candidates but there there are in most communities there should be

A real hiring process which involves screening of resumes and HR or review in and I don’t know why that hasn’t happened let me make the assumption that in this community the way it’s working is the mayor sends people in and these these applications are just processed I

Think I think you have some options I don’t think that any of them are particularly good one way is to do that reflective back talk where you say to whoever is the city manager or the HR Director I’m really confused here is our job description where you need the

Following skills I’m looking at these resumes I’m not seeing a match and I’m really confused as to how to proceed with the interviewing process you may you may have already done that part of what my goal is is in this kind of situation is to make sure

It doesn’t just look like I’m the planner and I did this stupid thing but in fact this is the institutional setting in which we work so that there are more people on board with this hiring in can and if it’s the policy and if you end up just picking the the best

Of a bad set I would try to get commitment from the city manager around the city undertaking some fairly extensive training for that person sending them off to conferences enrolling them in classes if there happen to be a university nearby to try to remedy the shortcomings i will tell

You have a very good friend in texas who got ordered to do exactly this the city manager sent over the realtor who sold them a house as a good candidate for planning job things being a little slow in the real estate industry and the planner went back to HR and HR said oh

No no you can’t even interview this person they don’t meet the minimum calls went back to the manager and the managers response was to fire the planner so part of what you need to think about in this is what is your goal and if you’re ready to die on the line

You you can say this is completely unacceptable and some point that you know that may be exactly what you want to do if if your goal is to make the best of a bad situation I think about some of those other things I’ve tossed out wonderful John Merston asks is it acceptable to

Have anyone buy you lunch this is a question I get a lot from students and professionals alike what’s your view on this Carol when can we have a free lunch there are a lot of communities that specifically address this and I think it’s the perfect topic for a brown bag

When is it acceptable to buy lunch and in my experience it really varies from community to community it’s probably when I worked in Berkeley for example I was just being seen eating with a developer not not the issue wasn’t even who paid for it being seen eating what the developer was considered

Unacceptable conduct that the expectation of the director was that you would have an adversarial relationship with the development community so my first point is you need to understand the culture of the place in which you work my second thing is I think it’s better if you’re planning entity has a

Consistent position on this not well well planner a logo let me take her to lunch but planner be won’t I think it’s an absolute no-no to have somebody buy you lunch when they need something from you as in you’re currently reviewing their project and they say I want to

Explain the nuances of you know the rootin tootin motel so that you better understand it when you’re doing site plan review can I take you out to lunch no not not while a project is under review but I don’t think you have to say to people oh I’m not going to lunch with

You I think you can say to somebody lunch no but if you want some time to just talk with me come by and we can you know go in my office and pull this I plan out and have a cup of coffee Sudan you don’t have to be ugly about it

But I don’t ever let somebody buy me lunch when there’s anything they need from me whether it’s a new renewal of a consulting contract or some kind of project review where I am personally okay with somebody buying me lunch is is when there is no immediate opportunity

For anybody to have financial gain and it’s really just around getting to know one another but I’m very careful to say if you buy this time I buy next time so it’s not oh it’s time for my monthly feed for the planning director I have to

Take her out but instead says if we’re sitting here because we’re trying to build a relationship then we’re going to flip back and forth in and we will take turns having lunch together so that’s how I would respond to when is a free lunch okay okay along a related line of

Thinking Carol all right you’re a consultant who did work with a organization in the past you developed a good friendship with the supervisor at that organization an event has come up you have two tickets to a football game you would love to take that person along

And you invite them to the football game but you have a future contract not with that organization but that person is one of the stakeholders that will be engaged as part of this future planning project with another agency ethical unethical I don’t I think it’s unethical and though

Here’s the reason that I think it’s unethical the nature of your relationship grew out of the consultancy and so it is it has become a personal relationship but it it first came about because there was that business relationship there is the potential for that to be ongoing and there is and I

Said this is one of my touchstone is there a question at play where somebody can influence a decision where somebody is going to make some money so let me give you an example where you know it might be okay to do the football tickets um 22 people went to college

Together and and they’ve gone to the football game every single year and and the one is a planner and the other is a lawyer and the lawyer always buys the tickets and all of a sudden the planner is now working in the town where the lawyer practices land use law the

Friendship doesn’t have to go away but the point at which that planner is working on a project where the attorney is engaged then it changes so I think in this case because there’s something pending where somebody can make some money I think you have to step away from

That that opportunity and you know maybe you could do something small and nice where you say you know normally I would offer them but i know you have such high ethics that i really don’t want to do that but I would be happy to donate the tickets in you know to a charitable

Organization and they can pick who goes and if you’ve got a group out there you’d like me to favor with the tickets you know I could do that end of answer right so Eric spends asks we have design guidelines that require a certain style of building in a specific district of

The city did this state of the economy the administration is trying to get the Planning Commission to water down those standards to allow for a new development is it unethical for the administration to petition the Commission to try to get them to approve something against the design guidelines in my experience and I

Don’t know what state this is coming from so I don’t know state enabling legislation but the word guideline is not ordinance and I think you can have guidelines adopted by and in fact they often are adopted by Planning Commission’s adopted by councils but they are never I mean the word guideline

Is in there and so what I so I don’t know i don’t think it’s unethical where it becomes problematic is if it is not a public process and and there’s no you know kind of big picture how does this help community how does this harm the community so what i would suggest is

That is that you need to go through an amendment to the guidelines that says what are the what are the kinds of buildings where we think we could still get quality design but not necessarily what the design was called for in the original guidelines and i think that has

To be a public process what and you know you could do a short amendment to provide for that so I if if guidelines are adopted by policy then I think they can be changed by policy where I think we have a real ethical issue and the term administration is used and so I

Don’t know whether that means somebody outside of the planning department or supervisors within the planning department if the notion is is please ignore these guidelines then I think you’ve got an ethical problem and I think staff needs to come back with some really creative solutions let’s have one of Carol’s famous brown

Bag lunches where we sit his staff and talk and say okay well what what might work and what would be a process that we could quickly implement that would allow us to show some greater flexibility if in fact that is the policy that the the elected officials want us to pursue in

In the community and you know you can even send straw dogs to council meetings in and you can get a sense of some of this stuff or at least in my community and get a sense where I work as the the contractor who doesn’t want to adhere to

The guidelines goes to the council and complaints of adamant is you know in this economy you’re fortunate that anybody wants to build anything and your design guidelines are chasing good people away if the council doesn’t take up that comment it just lies there flat then I would say there’s not huge public

Sentiment around it if you get two or three comments about yeah maybe we do want to think about it then I think you just have to figure out a way to say in in a more public way that the guidelines are being changed that we’re amending them that we’re adopting a temporary

Supplement that we’re throwing them out because we don’t think we can afford them so I don’t have a problem with people changing their minds what I have problems with is selective interpretation saying okay on this project you just you just have to ignore the guidelines and then I think you have

To come back with well I’m not sure how I would ignore them but I certainly understand what your issue is as administration I think there are some other ways that we can work on this if you get some great clarity to pursue some flexibility but

That that has to be a public process end of answer okay well wonderful eric says thank you because they have a meeting about it tonight so you better prepared him to go into that meeting earlier you mentioned is one of the examples of an interview question that you might ask

With related to the location of fast food restaurants in say unhealthy neighborhoods I’m curious what is the responsibility of the planner to address these issues so we we all feel overwhelmed in our jobs have lots of planning things we’re trying to do what is our responsibility to be truly

Comprehensive where do we draw the line of saying I just can’t take this on my plate using for example the issue of fast food restaurants or in California you got the issue of marijuana stores things like that so how do you deal with those conflicts of of taking on issues

Or not okay just to clarify in the example of my interview question what the framework was we had an adopted plan where we want to do corridor redevelopment and we want to make it more pedestrian oriented and there are the streets you know it’s a comprehensive corridor strategy in which

We say no more fast food restaurants but I think the question is around as part of doing comprehensive planning there a lot of interesting areas and a huge one is where can fast food restaurants locate in our communities because the issue is really twofold not only are

There is there a high concentration of fast food restaurant in lower-income communities but there’s a dearth of healthy food choices in the in the community so if I were trying to figure out where I was going to spend my time and what would be the issues that the

Planning department would be focused on because I think it really is a good way when planners note that everything is interrelated everything is interrelated and we can’t end up unable to do our job because there’s yet one aspect that we haven’t explored as you’ve got to go

Back and look at the closest thing you have to a general plan for your community and then from that a work program for what the planning department is supposed to do and that work program should really provide guidance for for what might be things that would be kind

Of fun and interesting and can we figure out a way to do this because as staff we all got to participate in the work program versus where we are unable to take on that issue and I don’t think it’s unethical to say I can’t do everything at once uh but i think it’s

Not helpful to say we don’t do that when we haven’t thought about what a work program is what our adopted plans call for and looked at what is it that we are focusing on so if there’s a well thought-out work program that shows what are the initiatives that you’re

Undertaking and you’re really interested in the fast food thing then you got to get it on the list of things if we don’t do it this year might we do it some other year and I want to thank God for all of the places like Berkeley and

Santa Monica you know that figure this stuff out and then the rest of his years later know how to write the ordinance so that when our communities are interested in banning the fast food restaurants somebody’s already duked it out and it’s been adjudicated in in the courtrooms so

That that’s my final comment if this if these are the kinds of things that really speak to your heart I knew I think you need to find a planning environment where that kind of stuff is really going to resonate as well and that may not be where you are right

Now but I don’t think you have to do everything all at once that’s the answer you are not unethical because you are not all things to all people okay Carol thank you very much I think that wraps up the questions that we’ve had come in we had some really good questions from

Audience and you gave really delightful responses and hopefully folks learn something and had a new view on how they might consider ethical challenges in the future for everybody you will be logging out in just a moment and you’ll have a pop-up survey that will come in please

Take the time to complete that I’ll be providing that feedback to Carol so that she can continue to learn from the presentation she’s given and I you can log your CM credit today on the CM calendar it is under today’s date and I will look forward to seeing all of you

At an upcoming webcast Carol thank you again very much I will follow up by email with the results of the poll at the end all right Carol I’m going to go ahead and close the discussion for us okay all right and thank you very very much I appreciate the opportunity to

Have this conversation

ID: We5yeM8KoyU
Time: 1344353108
Date: 2012-08-07 19:55:08
Duration: 01:20:14

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