The real world of deliberative democracy: a roundtable discussion.

"Lakewood is Colorado's fourth largest city, and we've got a population of about 145,000," says Mayor Steve Burkholder. "Typically the council chambers are not packed, but if it is an issue of very high emotion, the chambers are jammed. We have a capacity of around two hundred, but even if we had fourteen hundred people, that would only be 1 percent of the population. We sincerely believe in the need to provide some sort of a mechanism where people can participate. People want to have their voice heard, but they also believe in the importance of representative government. I think we need some sort of hybrid of the two."

All over America, local and state officials are looking for new ways of bridging the gap between citizens and government. Whether it is a strategic planning effort in Santa Barbara; a healthy communities' initiative in rural Idaho; or a conversation on race in Lima, Ohio, deliberative democracy can break down barriers and clear away obstacles for community problem solvers. But community dialogues can also seem time-consuming and impractical if they don't lead to action and change. To explore the real world of deliberative democracy, we asked four public servants to share their experiences and thoughts with the readers of the National Civic Review. Mayor Burkholder is chair of the National League of Cities Panel on Democratic Governance. Bruce Feustel is a senior fellow in the Legislative Management Program of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Miles Rapoport, president of Demos, a nonprofit public policy and advocacy group, is a former secretary of the State of Connecticut. Curt Wenson is the city administrator of Raytown, Missouri.

With the technical assistance of NCL's Community Services Team, Wenson has spearheaded two citizen-based strategic planning efforts, in Raytown and in nearby Lee's Summit, where he once served as assistant city administrator. We began the discussion by asking Wenson to describe his experiences in those two communities.

Curt Wenson: In Lee's Summit, growth was overtaking the city and creating budget problems. To deliver basic services, the city had to extend the…