Cut the Mic! Can Your Community Learn from Seven Cities Shaking Up Official Public Meetings?
Local government professionals and leaders around the country face a common challenge: how do you organize public meetings that are efficient, inclusive, and collaborative? A number of communities, ranging from smaller towns to America’s largest city, are actively experimenting with their official meetings and discovering targeted innovations with outsized potential to reshape civic engagement.
These communities, and what public managers can learn from them, are the focus of ICMA’s upcoming fall course, the Better Public Meetings Training Series, hosted in partnership with the National Civic League (NCL). Across four sessions, the series will address common challenges faced in public meetings; explore innovations in meeting agendas, spaces, and formats; and consider the role of public meetings in a more expansive view of civic participation. These lessons have been drawn from the NCL’s experience working with seven cities around the country to study and transform their official public meetings. A quick look at these diverse case studies shows what’s possible both inside the meeting room and beyond.
From Catharsis to Collaboration in Boulder, Colorado
Amid rising tension and declining trust in public meetings, community members in Boulder saw the local government process as “cathartic but not collaborative.” Prompted to action, local leaders reconsidered the design of their public meetings, listening to feedback that testimony-heavy meetings gave opportunities to speak but not necessarily to be heard. Drawing on insights from a public forum devoted to improving meeting design and civic participation, Boulder pioneered a first-of-its-kind deliberative city council study session. With the dais and microphone removed, council members and staff joined residents to explore the city’s economic vitality through nuanced conversation. Afterwards, participants overwhelmingly rated the deliberative session as more efficient and civil than their usual meetings.
Recentering Students, Rebuilding Trust in Mesa, Arizona
Over the course of several contentious school board meetings, the Mesa Public Schools Governing Board watched discussions veer away from student outcomes and towards national political debates. Aggressive behavior injured community trust and even pushed the school board to increase protection around their meetings. Instead of trying to control meetings through new procedures, district leaders looked to recenter student success through a sequence of engagement. By inviting student input through a recurring “question of the month,” student-innovation workshops, and student-led presentations, the district both reoriented school board meetings and expanded their youth participation.
Taking time for Education in a Transient Community
Like many other cities, Fayetteville, North Carolina has tried to invite public engagement through advisory boards and commissions. These venues are great for residents who have local knowledge and roots, but in a transient community like Fayetteville—with a large military population that can change year to year—these volunteer commissions don’t attract enough attention. A civic infrastructure scan has given the city a plan to address this, however, by going into different locations within the community to hold events educating the public about the city’s Community Policy Advisory Board. Meanwhile, other programs with more successful engagement, such as the Fayetteville Next initiative for young adults, could be better integrated into decision-making to bridge policymakers and the public.
Connecting Councils to their Communities in Anchorage
Anchorage, Alaska has a unique system of neighborhood-based community councils that serve to connect residents with the broader municipal government. Among these councils, procedure at times overshadows dialogue, leaving residents confused about how their participation impacts policymaking as well as the role of these councils vis-a-vis the Municipal Assembly. In response, local leaders are looking towards a bevy of reforms to center community relationships over meetings procedure, better aligning with their role as intermediaries between residents and the city. These upcoming pilot programs include introducing meeting formats that support facilitated dialogue, expanding events outside of traditional meeting settings, and creating more sustainable avenues for volunteer leadership.
Broadening the Circle in Rochester
Rochester, Minnesota is a city committed to public engagement. The city has incorporated innovative practices like compensated co-design initiatives to inform public infrastructure projects, and community members are eager to share their perspectives with local government. Progress is uneven, though. Populations with less time and fewer resources struggle to stay up to date with opportunities to provide input, especially lower-income, immigrant, and non-English speaking residents. When they do share their feedback, it can be equally hard to track the impact of their contribution, disincentivizing participation. As a result, Rochester is implementing new, inclusive tools such as AI-assisted live translations and a comprehensive outreach strategy to meet residents where they are. Local leaders are also considering creating a “feedback loop protocol.” By publishing both a commitment to respond to input—and detailing how they will—Rochester can build long-term trust and capitalize on the recent success of its engagement efforts.
Forward-Looking Leaders in Cities Big and Small
With the support of the National Civic League, Better Public Meetings projects are just beginning in two other communities: the city of Mountlake Terrace in Washington and New York City through its Civic Engagement Commission. These twin projects will demonstrate how innovations in official public meetings and community outreach can be scaled in localities of different sizes where engagement occurs both person-to-person and between institutions.
Powering Diffusion of Democracy Innovations
Individual communities have the power to transform their official public meetings and broader civic culture through informed experimentation. Likewise, in a time of polarization where residents feel politically disempowered, there is widespread and growing demand among residents for new opportunities to engage with policymakers. If innovations like these and others are to go beyond each city’s limits, however, practitioners will need to learn from one another.
We hope that you will join us this fall for the Better Public Meetings Training Series to learn more about these specific case studies, including our ongoing and upcoming projects, while sharing your own practices with others.
Want a reminder when registration opens? Please share your interest or any questions about the course with learning@icma.org