Chris will conclude the three-day seminar with a presentation on “Perception and Reality: The Battle for Public Hearts and Minds” on Thursday, June 6, at 10.45 am. A member of the ACC Board of Directors, Chris will share insights into how public  education and information campaign initiatives are influencing public opinion and policy directives.

For details of the seminar and to register, click here.

ACC’s annual CLASS seminar brings together coal suppliers and marketers, utility and industrial coal consumers, rail/barge/port transportation management, and coal support service providers. This seminar provides a series of in-depth training sessions on technical, legal, financial and business administration subjects, as well as timely updates on critical marketplace and public policy issues.

Chris Hopkins oversees all of Saint Consulting’s work in the quarry and mining industries in the US, United Kingdom and Canada. He is a regular speaker on overcoming the difficulties of permitting aggregate quarries and mineral mines before such organizations as the National Sand, Stone and Gravel Association, the Ontario Stone, Sand and Gravel Association, the Northwest Mining Association, American Coal Council and the Quarry Mineral Association in the United Kingdom.

Chris has been appointed as an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona, where he teaches a course about how to overcome community opposition and political hurdles when permitting a mineral mine. He has been a frequent guest lecturer at graduate programs in mining at several other prestigious universities as well, including the University of Utah, the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and the University of Illinois. His articles are routinely published in industry trade journals.

Chris Hopkins is senior vice president for mining and aggregates for The Saint Consulting Group, email hopkins@tscg.biz

The post Hopkins To Give Keynote Presentation at ACC Seminar in June appeared first on Saint Consulting.

Job creation is the number one issue for the British public, but NIMBYs, in their opposition to most development, dramatically fail to make the connection between job creation and new projects in their communities, according to a new UK survey.

The DI Tracker, commissioned by Development Intelligence, questioned both UK voters and local councilors and found unique insights in their diverging priorities on what is most important in supporting or opposing development.

The public see job creation as their number one issue, while councilors put impact on the local economy as most important. The public rank traffic impact as second most important, while councilors rank traffic only as fifth in important.

Three in four elected councilors (74 percent) see themselves as NIMBY (the Not In My Back Yard acronym for those who oppose more development because they view their community as overdeveloped or fine the way it is).

Local council opposition to development is significantly lower than the public NIMBYism in the UK, where five in six voters (87 percent) now say their neighborhood is overdeveloped or fine the way it is. This is a slight increase over 85 percent  NIMBY in 2009, 86 percent in 2008, 83 percent in 2007 and 84 percent in 2006 – in similar surveys conducted for The Saint Consulting Group in those years.

Development Intelligence is a strategic consultancy that focuses on the politics of planning. The survey was carried out by ComRes, which interviewed 2,035 British adults between 23-25 January 2013 and 411 local councillors between 8-24 January 2013. Comres also conducted the Saint Index UK surveys from 2006-2009.

The survey found that the most NIMBY regions of Britain are the South West, West Midlands, South East and Scotland, all of which were above the national average.  Councillors in the West Midlands and Yorkshire/Humberside were far less NIMBY than their voters, 62 percent and 60 percent, respectively, compared to 91 percent and 87 percent among the public in those regions.

The DI Tracker has provided a wealth of detail to public opposition to development, parsing the views of elected officials and voters by political party, region, age, income and other demographic groups. It reports that the most pro-development (YIMBY) regions are the North East, the North West and Wales. Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters are more NIMBY than Labor voters, and Tory and Lib Dem councilors are significantly more in tune with their political supporters than Labor councilors.

Saint Index results in the US have consistently mirrored the British public’s opposition to new development, although NIMBYism registers slightly more in the UK . Click here for US Saint Index results.

Click here for DI Tracker – Headlines – Final version – Mar 2013.

Nick Keable is chief executive of Development Intelligence, a London-based strategy consultancy that focuses on the politics of planning, email nick@development-intelligence.com

The post NIMBYs Don’t Share UK Public’s Priority for Job Creation, Survey Says appeared first on Saint Consulting.

Video is a very powerful tool for marketing of products, services, and thought leadership material. There’s no reason your firm – big, small or tiny – can’t have your own internal program for creating and using video for marketing.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to be asked to present to the Association of Management Consulting Firms on how firms can create and use video for marketing professional services and thought leadership content. The presentation was very well received, so I thought I’d share the reference guide & companion deck that I handed out to all the attendees. I’m really bullish on (and passionate about) what video can do for marketers and thought leadership producers – and I want you to know that you, too can (cheaply! very cheaply!) launch your own capability for producing video for marketing professional services and your thought leadership content.

The seminar I was a part of was called “Turning Thought Leadership into Leads” and featured an amazing presentation by Bill Shander of Beehive Media on data visualization, my good friend Bob Buday of The Bloom Group sharing the results of his latest study on how consulting firms are using social media, digital platforms, and interactive graphics and video to build brand and generate new business, and the incomparable Fred Allen of Forbes talking about how they drive engagement and create conversations on their site and in their extended community. Amazing insight from Bill, Bob and Fred, and the conversations we had with the attendees (folks from firms of all sizes, from giants like KPMG and Bain down to smaller, 30-person boutique firms) were enlightening and entertaining.

Seth Cargiuolo is Chief Knowledge Officer & Director of Digital Strategy for The Saint Consulting Group, email seth@tscg.biz

The post Creating & Using Video for Thought Leadership & Content Marketing appeared first on Saint Consulting.

No matter how good you are or how many times you have gone above and beyond to ensure your projects are designed and built to the highest standards, you come to town with a target on your back.  No matter how many times you have made commitments to neighbors and local officials and followed through on them, many will never trust you.  You are a developer.  They know why you are here and what you want.  Their defenses are up and they are ready to fight.

In this age of social networking and internet access to all the information all the time, bad developers are in big trouble.  Shortcuts made on projects here are heard about everywhere.  Commitments made and not lived up to on your east coast project are going to be used to defeat you on your west coast project.  There is no place to hide.

Even the best developers with solid reputations have to deal with the fact that the public is increasingly cynical and ready to fight.  74% of all Americans are saying no to any new development in their communities- That’s no to everything!  This is the handicap that every developer starts with.  Nearly 70% believe that the relationship between developers and elected officials makes the entire process unfair.  A staggering one in five Americans have actively opposed a project in their community meaning they have gathered petition signatures, called officials or demonstrated their opposition by attending hearings.

After 20 years of media showing residents fighting big box development and winning, everyone believes they can fight and win.  The old saying “You can’t fight progress or city hall” is out the window.  Yes you can and everyone knows it.

Local officials are feeling the heat.  No longer do they push for economic development to bring in jobs and taxes.  Now they stand with the opponents and fight development.  87% of Americans believe that a candidates position on growth is important when they decide for whom they will vote.  The people supporting development don’t tend to show up at hearings.  Anger and fear are much stronger motivations.

The system is completely out of balance and it leans heavily in favor of the opposition.  Convincing local politicians to support your project in the face of angry constituents is a real challenge.  You still need to do all the right things in terms of building responsibly, conducting due diligence and outreach to neighbors but that’s not enough.  You also need to be able to demonstrate support- local constituent support.  You need to show that supporting your project is not political suicide.

A developer cannot get by on reputation any more.  The angry constituents have a great deal more influence over the actions of these local officials than any reasoned argument from a developer.  The best defense is to have local residents stand up and make your case for you.  They have the credibility you need and the power to really influence the approvals process.

Patrick Fox is president of The Saint Consulting Group, email fox@tscg.biz

The post Credibility? Developers don’t have any, only a target on your back appeared first on Saint Consulting.

L-R: Congressman Charlie Gonzalez, Mark Harrison, Tom Powell, Chris Hopkins.

By Christopher Hopkins, The Saint Consulting Group

Industry professionals at the 2013 Aggregates Academy & Expo in San Antonio got a 360-degree perspective of techniques to overcome community opposition to a new aggregate quarry or asphalt plant proposal.

I had the opportunity to help lead an AGG1 Academy panel discussion that examined the difficulties in permitting quarry and asphalt facilities from the perspectives of a producer, an attorney, an elected official and a land use political consultant (that would be me).

My panel also included:

The Honorable Charles A. Gonzalez, who represented the Texas 20^th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives for seven terms before retiring in 2013 (and before that served as an elected judge in county and district courts).

Thomas Powell, Vice President of Aggregate Resources for the Western United States for CEMEX Corporation.

Mark D. Harrison, partner in the law firm Harrison, Temblador, Hungerford & Johnson of Sacramento, California, who specializes permitting mineral mines and aggregate quarries on the local, state and federal levels.

AGG1 Aggregates Academy & Expo is the industry’s leading exposition and education event. The 2013 expo took place in the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center from March 19-21, with more than 380 companies showcasing their newest innovations. The Agg1 Academy is an annual collaborative effort between the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association and the National Asphalt Pavement Association.

Our session — “Effectively Countering Community Opposition To Your Project” — was well attended and sparked a productive give and take between the panelists and audience. We discussed many of the specific problems and hurdles that can arise during the permitting process.

If you were not able to attend the expo and would like information about the ideas we exchanged and the issues addressed, send me an email or give me a call. My contact information is below.

Christopher Hopkins is senior vice president for mining and aggregates for The Saint Consulting Group, email hopkins@tscg.biz or call 615.656.3794.

The post Saint Consulting Leads Aggregates Expo Panel appeared first on Saint Consulting.

With large-scale development often facing clamors of opposition, generating community support for a project is a challenge to developers. To persuade a community to support a new project often means overcoming issues of property use, real estate value, traffic, environmental issues or character of a neighborhood.

A developer needs a strategic communications goal to win such support — and to come across as open, reasonable, and prepared to compromise, a communications plan is essential.

This note explores how to reach out to the community to consider your view, rather than leave these issues to NIMBY opponents to define. Here are basic elements for a communications plan to consider:

1. COMMUNITY AUDIT
Know what you’re getting into before you commit vast resources to a location.
After finding a site that would work economically, developers should invest in a “community audit.” This means researching local newspapers to see how other recent project proposals have been treated and interviewing opinion leaders in the community about development in general and about your potential site in particular. A telephone survey can then determine how the general public feels about new development, and test what arguments will work to change opponents’ minds. The research may cost $15,000 to $25,000, but that’s a lot less than the cost of site plans and drawings for a project that will never be approved.

2. NEIGHBORHOOD CONSULTATIONS
Take your plans to the local government officials, economic development officers, and planning officials, but leave plenty of room for compromise. Don’t go in with a plan cast in stone, but have a pretty idea of what you want to build (e.g. 60,000 square feet of retail, or 125,000 square feet of commercial). Make sure they understand that you want to work with their professionals and the neighbors and with interest groups in the community. Don’t meet with public boards at public meetings at this point. Timing is crucial. You’ll need to approach key public officials and neighbors first (and certainly before the project is outlined in the press).

3. KEEP IT QUIET
You will want to be the first one to announce your plan in the news media to give the news a positive emphasis. You do not want to give your opponents time to mobilize or the ability to “out” you before you are ready. If you work on this process of educating the public and consensus-building before you begin the formal permitting process, you may save yourself a good deal of trouble later.

4. PRESS ANNOUNCEMENTS
Once initial meetings with officials and neighbors are over, prepare a detailed press announcement that includes a description, a list of project benefits, and addresses potential problems. Do a series of one-on-one interviews with appropriate local press. Generally, the local press will give a project one good story, without criticism or comments from opponents; but only if that original news comes for the first time directly from the project sponsor. If an opponent is the first to tell a reporter about the project — or if the first mention comes up at a public meeting — you lose forever the chance to put your own initial spin on the announcement.
The developer, or someone from his staff, should get to know reporters from the local newspapers, radio and television stations who are likely to cover the project and the permitting process. The developer should give reporters tours of the locus, press materials, and complete and consistent access to someone who can answer their questions and comment, on the record, for their stories.
As the project proceeds, the development team should request a meeting with local editors and seek favorable editorials, or the opportunity to publish opinion articles explaining the project on the appropriate opinion page.

5. ONGOING COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
As the project proceeds, the developer should begin door to door visits to neighbors in the immediate area, discussing plans, soliciting comments, sharing ideas, and making residents feel as if they are getting the chance to contribute and to have their ideas considered.
This approach takes time, so the temptation is to meet only with those who call to object, or to set up group meetings.
But time spent early in one-on-one meetings will reap rewards later; and those neighbors who have spent time contributing will develop a vested interest in seeing the project succeed. Some will become evangelists for your project, counter-balancing those who oppose for the sake of opposition. Others will ease their opposition and become neutral. And, once you’ve shared a cup of coffee with a neighbor at his kitchen table, he’ll find it pretty difficult to attack you in a public meeting.

6. COMMUNICATIONS MATERIALS
Assume that opponents will collect signatures on a petition, write letters to the editor of the local paper, contact public officials by phone or letter, or both, and create specious arguments and exaggerate facts to build opposition to the project.
Assume, also, that concerned residents will raise good questions about traffic, safety, and environmental impacts.
To deal with both situations, you need to develop materials that acknowledge and answer the legitimate concerns and questions, correct misinformation, deflect criticism, and communicate in a strong and direct manner the positive elements and benefits of your project.
These should include:
· A brochure, flyer or question-and-answer sheet that covers all the major points of the project.
· Press materials, including fact sheets and press releases.
· A six-to-eight minute video that shows the need for the project and its benefits, while addressing potential problems and how they will be mitigated. The video should be produced for use on local cable TV, and at public meetings. A video often gets the message across better than other forms of communication because people who cannot visualize the project from a description can see the vision on-screen. Once produced, a video can be cheaply duplicated for distribution to city officials.
· Carefully-crafted, paid advertisements in the local newspapers can be extremely valuable in getting your message across; but these are usually used only when you need to reach the public by going over the heads of the city officials, or when opponents’ attacks are so vicious they demand a public response.

7. BUILDING GROUPS OF SUPPORTERS
Project opponents generally assemble without encouragement, show up at public hearings, write letters to the editor and sign petitions. Often, elected and appointed public officials are swayed by the side that has the most signatures, or the most bodies at the hearing, or makes the most noise.
It is critical to show grass roots community support for a project. The first problem is that most people simply don’t feel strongly about a new supermarket. Sure, it might be nice; and they certainly need one; but their lives are too hectic to get involved.
The second problem is that even when people become proponents of your project, they are less emotionally involved than opponents. For proponents, a new market would be convenient; for opponents, a new market is the end of the world. So without great effort by the development team, you cannot rely on citizen supporters to become activists, like their opposition counterparts. Supporters need meetings; reassurance; handholding; input. And most of all, they need to be convinced that your project will be good for them, their families, their neighborhood, and the community as a whole.
Because it is vital that supporters be heard, it is important to spend the time and money needed to collect signatures of support. Door-to-door canvassing is the tried-and-true traditional method for success, but is both time consuming and labor-intensive. Setting up a booth at a public place and soliciting signatures on a petition is one alternative, though generally not as successful; sending every home in the community a letter with a self-addressed business reply card is another, but the volume of responses may be disappointing.
Coffee parties and speeches before the local service clubs are additional opportunities to identify those who favor the project so they can be asked to write a letter, sign a petition or attend a hearing.

8. PUBLIC HEARINGS
Each public hearing is an opportunity to score points if you are prepared, or to be blown away if you’re not. You must assume that project opponents will attend, pack the hall with their adherents, and try to hoot the project down.
So, preparation is critical. Write, edit and rehearse your presentation. Use computer-generated animation, videos, overheads, or slides to illustrate it — but choose carefully, depending on your subject matter and environment. (Overheads do better in a very dark room, while slides are more forgiving, for example. Videos can be very effective — if done well — and disastrous if done poorly.)
Round up and deliver your supporters to the meeting. Recruit speakers. And at the climactic juncture in the permitting process, get a lapel button made and distributed to your supporters to wear it to the hearing as a show of force.

9. POSITIONING STRATEGY
The strategic communications goal during all phases of the permitting process must be for the developer to (1) appear open and flexible, (2) seem reasonable and prepared to compromise, especially when compared to the most strident opponents, and (3) be honest and concerned.
Developers cannot afford to lose their tempers, seem insensitive to community concerns, be uninformed on local political circumstances, or appear unwilling to accept reasonable compromises.

Patrick Fox is president of The Saint Consulting Group, email fox@tscg.biz

The post Nine Key Steps to Winning Community Support for Development appeared first on Saint Consulting.

Jay is chief business development officer and waste sector practice leader for The Saint Consulting Group. He will address Waste Expo on Monday, May 20, at 10.30 am.

The annual Saint Index continues to find opposition to waste and recycling industry projects. Jay has been writing industry articles and holding web seminars on a new style of conversation with communities designed to neutralize this opposition. Described as “identify, engage, harness and mobilize,” this approach leverages leadership and corporate responsibility to earn the respect of communities.

Waste Expo brings together 550 exhibiting companies and 12,000 participants. Click here for details.

If your company would like a personal seminar on community engagement for the waste industry, contact Jay at vincent@tscg.biz

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A client recently asked me how to deal with an angry mob.  If you are confronting an angry mob of residents opposing your project at a public hearing, you’re not alone.  I can tell you it is happening across the US and Europe with greater intensity and frequency.  But what now?

If you have just walked into your public hearing and you are surprised by the level of opposition, you have made a number of mistakes.  The days when developers could cut a back room deal with officials and quietly walk through the local approvals process are long gone.  The politics of land use has changed.  Maybe you missed the memo.

The post Dealing with Angry Public: Developers Should Engage Community, Seek Mutual Gains appeared first on Saint Consulting.

The coal industry took out a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal today to send an open letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, saying “with all due respect” that his recent comments about coal ignore the realities of global energy trends and coal’s benefits for the world.

The open letter, sent by Peabody Energy and the World Coal Association, said: “Coal is alive, well and growing.”

The letter then set out some highlights on 21st century coal and reduced emissions from clean coal technologies, saying coal has been the world’s fastest growing major fuel for more than a decade and is expected to replace oil as the world’s largest energy source as early as this year.

Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City and the 10th richest person in the U.S., recently contributed $50 million from his personal fortune to the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign.

“Let’s put people first, Mayor Bloomberg, and bring more light to the reality that the world needs all energy forms,” the industry respond concluded, inviting Bloomberg to learn more about clean coal solutions.

Click here for the coal industry’s open letter, and click here for details about Bloomberg’s donation to Sierra Club.

Christopher Hopkins is senior vice president for mining and aggregates for The Saint Consulting Group, email hopkins@tscg.biz

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If you’re a successful entrepreneur, you’re likely adept at drafting a strong business plan complete with your market research, pro formas, etc.  That is, your business plan likely consists of a bottom-up model.  You don’t start with the idea that there are X number of people that match the demographic and psychographic profile that you could potentially reach.  You start with the number that you canreach.

As Guy Kawasaki says in his book, The Art of the Start, to accurately forecast you shouldn’t start with the potential market size and work your way down.  You need to start with how many sales you can make in a year and work your way up.

The same bottom-up approach applies to developing a land use campaign plan.  If you’re a developer seeking either legislative or electoral approval for your project, your campaign needs to identify and motivate a critical mass of voters who will demonstrate support for your project in the face of likely NIMBY opposition.

So how do you identify which voters to target in the vast universe of a community totaling perhaps several thousand or hundreds of thousands of people?  This is where you need the expertise of political professionals who can target your vote and determine the most efficient voter outreach methods for educating the community on the merits of your project.

However, identifying your vote is only half the battle.  You also have to motivate your voters to demonstrate support for your project.  As the legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden has said, 90% of success is just showing up.  Mr. Wooden would have made a great land use political consultant because your chances of success are not very good if your supporters don’t show up.

Owen Eagan is a Senior Consultant for Saint Consulting, an international management consulting firm specializing in land use politics.  He is also an adjunct faculty member at Emerson College, the nation’s only four-year institution dedicated exclusively to communication and the performing arts. Email Eagan@tscg.biz

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