After attending several municipal meetings that are
open to the public, it has become clear to me that the same people show up time
and again. These people take it upon
themselves to engage with their local government, and to keep themselves
informed as to the recent developments within their community. However, they are a very small minority of
the population, and thus, while it is a good thing, their engagement is not
indicative of a successful community engagement strategy.
A large portion of the population is unaware of what
is going on at the local level, and it is largely not their fault. Many meetings are scheduled during normal
work hours, and people that are living paycheck-to-paycheck have bigger
concerns than trying to book time off work to keep track of everything that
goes on at city hall. Unfortunately,
these are the people that most often are affected by things that are decided at
these meetings that they are unable to attend, as they are the ones that
utilize many of both the city and the Region’s social services.
Although all of this information is technically available
online for anyone to access at any time, the amount of information that is made
available to the public regarding the inner-workings of their local government
would likely seem overwhelming to a newcomer.
These documents are often highly-technical and very thick; essentially
requiring a full-time job and several degrees to fully understand what is being
discussed within them.
So how do you reach people who do not have time to be reached? I don’t have the answer, but offering abridged and annotated versions of council agendas and minutes could be one such direction municipalities could go, if they are not already doing this. The Region of Waterloo has time-stamped all of their online archives of past-meetings, and I think this is a great step, allowing people to pick out parts of the meetings that are immediately relevant to their lives.
To engage an
extremely diverse community with different wants and needs the methods need to
be extremely open, extremely accessible, and extremely visible.