GROUP SEEKS 'BEAUTY OF CONSENSUS'
Can't work it out? Give mediation a try
Our Family offers help to reach agreement
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Our Family Community Mediation has a few openings for volunteer mediators this spring. One requirement is a 40-hour mediation training course.
The next training course begins March 20, with preregistration required. Participants must be 21 or older.
Classes held: 1 to 5 p.m. March 20 and 27; 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. March 21, 22, 28 and 29.
Where: 3830 E. Bellevue St.
Fee: $400, or $350 if paid by March 7
Since 2005: 1,000 cases were open for mediation; 350 went through with the process. Of that group, 332 reached consensus and 315 were still in agreement at follow-up 30 to 45 days later.
650 never made it to the process; either one party could not be reached or did not cooperate, or consensus was reached on their own.
How to apply for help from Our Family Community Mediation Services:
Visit or call the office:
10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday
3830 E. Bellevue St.
323-1708 Ext. 504
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A $150,000 windfall ripped apart a downtown neighborhood when residents had conflicting ideas on how to spend it.
A close-knit midtown community unraveled when folks couldn't agree on a design for their community pool.
The two groups had different dilemmas, they shared a common need for outside help to reach a consensus.
Enter Our Family Community Mediation, an agency that has handled disagreements between individuals for years and now, in the last three years, has branched out to resolve conflicts within groups, including neighborhoods.
The idea is to resolve differences before they become permanent problems by bringing people together to encourage listening, talking out the issues and discarding assumptions.
Downtown's Barrio Kroeger Lane and midtown's Stone Curves are the most recent of five groups helped by Our Family Mediation. Program director Victor Quiros said the group success rate is 100 percent, with all reaching a consensus after using Our Family's services.
"The community mediation program entails education and community building," Quiros said. "It's helping people live in and communicate with others in their neighborhoods. It's productive to do that in a group setting. A lot of times, in those groups, it all comes down to miscommunication."
The mediation program, which was established more than 20 years ago and is funded by the state, county, city and other entities, has three staff mediators and 38 volunteer mediators at its offices at 3830 E. Bellevue St. The mediation program, along with Our Family's education efforts, cost $275,000 of Our Family's $4.6 million annual budget.
Services cost $25 per mediation session for individuals and $75 to $125 per hour for a group. The agency has helped come to agreements in as little as two hours.
"Everyday issues are usually what brings people to mediation," Quiros said. Topics range from barking dogs, a noisy rooster, wills and inheritances and more.
"Sometimes it's those little things that fester over time and people aren't sure how to talk about them," he said.
While some parties are relieved to be introduced to mediation, Quiros said, others continue to balk.
"People often feel mediation is touchy-feely or they give up control," Quiros said. "It's quite the opposite. Even though there is a third party facilitating, the control of the outcome is completely in the party's hands - there's no judge, no jury."
Some residents of Barrio Kroeger Lane, which sits at the base of Sentinel Peak ("A" Mountain), fell into the balking category.
"At one point some people were not willing to have mediation at all," resident Cynthia Dominguez said, "but people's hearts opened and they listened."
The issue was the $150,000 longtime resident Josefina Cardenas had secured in 1997 bond money to build a neighborhood cultural center. Cardenas had even picked out the center's name, Rancho Chulson, and had visions of horses, artwork and festivals.
Because of opposition from the city, lack of matching funds and other factors, the plans never went beyond the drawing board.
After a decade of languishing unused, the money was in danger of being lost, Quiros said.
"It was frustrating," said resident Margaret Ward. "I just wanted the money to be spent, for us to get moving on something."
Neighborhood association President Carlos Ochoa agreed the bickering was going nowhere.
"It was like a bad stain in the carpet," he said. "The more you rubbed it, the worse it got. We liked the cultural center project but felt there were other things more important for the neighborhood. We had a lot of gangs, a lot of drug use, a lot of violence."
Negotiations, or lack thereof, dragged on for months. Some wanted the money to go for street repairs and enhancements. Others wanted parks, a peace garden or water harvesting. A few held firm that some funds should be reserved for Rancho Chulson.
There were plenty of heated arguments, but no resolution.
Once Our Family was called in, Ochoa said the tone changed dramatically.
"It was a different form of setting," he said. "Everybody was very professional, and it set the stage for that perfect arena for an agreement to come up."
The agreement, reached in less than two hours, split the $150,000 three ways, with $50,000 going to parks, streets and water harvesting.
"We did the right thing having the people come together and let them decide what was best for the neighborhood,'' Ochoa said.
Cardenas agreed, although none of the money will go for Rancho Chulson.
"It has a spirit of its own," she said of the project. "It will keep on going."
The co-housing community of Stone Curves, which longtime resident Shawn Mulligan calls "a neighborhood on purpose," always agreed on the best way to run its neighborhood - until it came to the community pool.
"We have 48 families here, from people with infants to people in their late 70s, and all had varying needs and perspectives on what this pool should be," said Mulligan of the community nestled just north of the bend of North Stone Avenue near East Limberlost Drive.
The seniors wanted lap lanes, parents with kids wanted shallow areas and stairs. No one agreed if the adjacent spa they were also building should be fenced.
"When it came to the shape of the pool, oh my gosh,'' Mulligan said.
But Mulligan said the biggest decision was how to filter the water.
"Saline, chlorine, sand filtration," she said. "That was the hardest decision to make."
With the help of Our Family and a five-hour mediation session, the community finally decided on saline filtration, a nonfenced spa and an L-shaped pool that accommodates lap lanes on one side and a shallow area with stairs on the other.
Construction of the pool was complete in June, in time for summer swimming.
"The beauty of the consensus process is you can have people bring forth concerns and really listen," Mulligan said.
"If you make assumptions about what you think the concern is about, it can be damaging. But when you really listen it can open up eyes, minds and hearts."
RENEE BRACAMONTE/Tucson Citizen
I agree with the unreasonable person comment. You sound like one.
I have been on the other side of the barking dog issue, however, it was not my dogs offending. Instead, I have a harrassing neighbor who claims that my dogs bark, but can never show any proof of it. He spent the first 30 minutes of our mediation session yelling about hoe he doesn't want to be there, and how I should just comply with his demands. When I brought up the point that he has no proof that it is my dog that barks (after all, he is 300 feet across a wash), the mediator essentially backed up his story.
I'm sorry, but this is still America, and you still have to provide proof if you're going to accuse someone. The mediator let this dude break all the "rules" of mediation, and still sided with him. Not really an "agreement" I would say.
I told Our Family as much afterward, when they called for my opinion.