The Town of Marana, Arizona, a finalist for the 2016 All-America City Award, is one of the fastest-growing communities in Arizona and is situated within the stunning desert landscape and Tortolita Mountains northwest of Tucson. Marana’s local government considers engaging its citizens in identifying and resolving community issues a top priority.

For many years, the town implemented a traditional commission-based structure of formal community engagement. Town Manager Gilbert Davidson was looking for a way to energize the citizen engagement process and make it more efficient. A long-standing member of the Arizona Town Hall, Davidson wondered whether a similar process, which brings together dozens of citizens to discuss a single issue affecting the entire state, would work in Marana.

Team formed

To answer that question, Davidson assembled a team of town staff members, including the town clerk, Jocelyn Bronson, and Amanda Jones, a management assistant, and set out to create a new kind of citizen engagement process that would replace the general open-ended commissions with a model where citizens focused on timely issues using a consensus-driven process. The result was The Marana Citizens’ Forum, which was approved by the council in 2011 as a new model for engaging residents and community partners in the town.

The forum is composed of up to 32 delegates from throughout the community, including regional partner representatives from the Marana Health Center, Marana Chamber of Commerce, Northwest Fire District, and the Marana Unified School District, as well as at-large citizen delegates and town-council-appointed delegates, all of whom bring their unique viewpoints and expertise to the discussion to help develop recommendations for broad town-wide issues.

Citizens’ Forum Goals

The Citizens’ Forum has increased the number of informed and engaged citizens in Marana. Some of its other goals include:

• Developing feasible action plans for recommendation to Council
• Connecting ideas and action plans to the Town’s planning documents (strategic plan, general plan, economic road map)
• Establishing and maintaining a positive feedback loop between the forum and the Town Council
• Promoting civic dialogue in order to implement community action plans from forum recommendations
• Providing Town staff with direction on various projects based on citizen input and engagement.

Meet the Manager

Gilbert Davidson

Marana Town Manager

Gilbert Davidson has served as Marana town manager since July 11, 2008. He was appointed by the Town Council to oversee all government operations and implementation of policies adopted by the elected governing body. He served as city manager of Wilcox, Arizona, prior to joining Marana as Deputy Town Manager in June 2005. Davidson is a 1998 graduate of the University of Arizona with bachelor’s degrees in business administration and public administration. He earned a master’s of public administration degree from the UA in 2004. In 2009, he completed a certificate at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government for Senior Executives in State and Local Government. In addition, he is an ICMA Credentialed Manager. Davidson has served on the executive board for Arizona Town Hall, as past president of the Arizona City/County Management Association (ACMA), on the advisory board for the Joan & David Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at Arizona State University, on the University of Arizona Public Administration Advisory Board, and is currently the vice chair for the University of Arizona Alumni Association. In 2015, he received the John J. DeBolske Professional Excellence award from ACMA.