ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZAAAB
1
2
Checking the Box and Beyond: A Tool for Meaningful Community Engagement
3
4
5
6
This tool is intended for the use of community based organizations, advocacy groups, transit advocates, transportation agencies, community members, and anyone interested in evaluating and promoting meaningful community engagement practices within transportation planning. With this tool, users can reflect on and evalute transportation agencies' community engagement efforts for specific transportation projects or plans. The result will be a score from 1-5, which will indicate to what extent the agency is successful in conducting meaningful community engagement processes for a given transportation project.
7
8
The goal of this scorecard is to facilitate conversations about how transportation agencies can improve their community engagement processes. Building upon USDOT's definition, we define meaningful community engagement as process that proactively seek full representation from the impacted community, considers public comments and feedback, and incorporates that feedback into a project, program, or plan when possible. This includes communication from the transportation agencies with the public before and after feedback from the community is gathered.
9
10
Instructions:
11
12
STEP 1:Choose a transportation project or plan to evaluate.
13
14
STEP 2: Answer the questions on the "Checking the Box: Guiding Questions for Evaluating Community Engagement" page regarding the project/plan's community engagement efforts. As you move through each evaluation criteria, check the boxes if they apply to the project/plan being evaluated. Use the "Notes" sections to jot down any ideas or reflections that come up as you are completing this section.
15
Note: This section will not impact the final score, but will help users identify specific strengths and areas of improvement within community engagement processes.
16
17
STEP 3:Complete the "Beyond Checking The Box: Scorecard for Meaningful Community Engagement" tool on page 3. Use the rubric to the right of the evaluation criteria to score the community engagement effort from 1-5 for each category, 1 being the least meaningful and 5 being the most meaningful. The score will automatically average out as you are completing the score card.
18
19
Notes on Scorecard
20
21
This score card evaluates transportation agencies community engagement efforts for a specific project using the following criteria: Attendance, Participation, Care, Identification of Impacted Communities, Representation, Linguistic Accessibility, Physical Accessibility, Transparency of Information to Participants, Technology, Variety of Engagement Methods, Frequency of Public Engagement Opportunities, Timing, Involvement of Community Based Groups, Decision Making Power, Outreach, and Incorporation of Feedback.
22
23
Though it is impossible for this tool to include all relevant evaluation criteria, the categories were selected as a result of a comphrehensive literature, observation of transportation public meetings, and findings from interviews with representatives of Massachusetts community groups and transportation agencies.
24
25
Funding for community engagement: While evaluating community engagement efforts, it's important to keep in mind constraints or barriers faced by agencies. In order to meet the criteria of meaningful community engagement, transportion agencies require a significant amount of funding to execute tasks such paying the CBO's, providing ammenities and accomodations to participants, conducting effective outreach, etc. Though funding affects many of the evaluation criteria included in the score card, it was not given its own category as funding constraints for a given project may not be available to or known by users.
26
27
Legal Requirements: No specific evaluation criteria for the legal requirements for community engagement was included in the score card due to the goal of provide meaningful community engagement beyond the legal requirements. While you are completing the score card, we recommend noting if the agency is not in compliance with the the laws mentioned below:
28
Title VI is a federal law that “prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in all programs or activities receiving federal funding” (U.S. Department of Justice 2024).
29
The U.S. American Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in everyday activities (U.S. Department of Justice 2024).
30
The Limited English Proficiency Plan or Language Assistance Plan states that the USDOT and Federal Government are required to ensure that individuals with Limited English Proficiency have meaningful access to information that affects their lives.
31
Executive Order 13175, "Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments requires Federal departments and agencies to consult with Indian tribal governments when considering policies that would impact tribal communities.
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100