civic engagement

In 2010, the City of Monterey engaged staff and residents in a priority-based budgeting process to determine how to best address reduced revenues and a five million dollar budget gap. Rather than make across the board cuts, the city brought in experienced consultants to help them engage staff and residents in transparently crafting a budget linked to results and values most important to the community.  Read more »

Local officials in California’s increasingly diverse communities are looking for strategies to fully involve residents in the civic and political life of their cities. Mike Gipson, mayor pro tem, Carson; Lee Pierce, council member, Santa Rosa; and Sedalia Sanders, council member, El Centro, offer their views on how cities can better communicate with and involve African-American residents.Read more »

Steve Cho, council member for the City of Fremont, and Lena Tam, vice mayor of the City of Alameda (and, respectively, president and vice-president of the League’s Asian-Pacific Islander Caucus), discuss how cities can support and serve their Asian and Pacific Islander populations.Read more »

Interesting survey results on the demographics of those who participate in online political activities.Read more »

Snapshot Summary

Virtually all cities and counties responding have goals or processes specifically designed to reduce automobile dependency.Read more »

Snapshot Summary

Programs to encourage or mandate commercial recycling are increasing in California cities and counties.Read more »

Snapshot Summary

Cities and counties throughout California are responding to climate change through their local policies and programs for land use and community design.Read more »

Snapshot Summary

A growing number of cities and counties are adopting voluntary or mandatory green building programs for new residential or commercial construction.Read more »

Snapshot Summary

A large number of cities and counties engage their residents in discussions about climate change and involve them in developing policies and programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.Read more »

Attracting participants in public decision making who represent the full diversity of residents is a goal shared by many leaders that has often proven difficult to achieve. Research from the nonprofit AmericaSpeaks illustrates current thinking on “best practices” in Latino outreach.Read more »

A growing number of California cities are developing citizen academies. These typically free or low cost courses have many benefits. They improve resident knowledge about their city and local government, encourage and help prepare new community volunteers and leaders, and enhance trust and relationships with the local public sector.Read more »

Increasingly, local agencies are seeking public participation in budgeting decisions in a process called "participatory budgeting."Read more »

Read more about the County of San Mateo's Threshold 2008, an ambitious public engagement initiative to address the shortage of affordable housing in the county. Read more »

Involving the public in local decision-making may be more comfortable for local officials when addressing small or noncontroversial issues, but what happens when community leaders face a deeply divided community and anticipate many tense and difficult discussions? This is precisely the kind of situation where civic engagement strategies can make the largest contribution - in terms of exercising leadership and also in achieving community consensus and making wise decisions.Read more »

The City of Richmond is using innovative methods to involve a diverse cross section of residents in updating its General Plan. The resulting plan will be one of the first in the nation to include an element that addresses the link between public health and the built environment.Read more »

Community visioning processes help local governments involve residents in answering the questions, "What kind of community do we want to have?" and "Where do we want to go from here?" These processes differ from public engagement in crafting an area-specific plan or General Plan because the goal of visioning is to more broadly explore the values and priorities of residents related to the future of their communities, rather than considering the implementation of more specific planning-related strategies or projects.Read more »

Civic participation is receiving a great deal of attention from municipal policy-makers who want to get more people involved in the local decision-making process -- particularly the planning process. Why should decision-makers seek the public’s involvement?Read more »

Given the rich diversity of California’s residents, local officials increasingly seek strategies to fully involve people from many different cultures in their communities. In this article, Mayor Jeffrey Prang of West Hollywood, Vice Mayor Ellen Ward of Signal Hill and Mayor Pro Tem Kevin Dowling of Hayward discuss how cities can better engage and serve their gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) populations.Read more »

Integration Potential of California’s Immigrants and Their Children, commissioned by GCIR and authored by Chicago-based demographer Rob Paral, is a new report that provides estimates of the size and potential civic impact of three immigrant-related populations in California.Read more »

Learn key questions that help shape effective public engagement plans.Read more »

Learn how to bring a broader representation of decision-makers to the table to help with challenges facing your community.Read more »

Al Savay, community development director for the City of San Carlos, discusses nontraditional approaches to engaging stakeholders in local decision-making.Read more »

You’ve devoted time, money and staff (and maybe consultant resources) to a public engagement effort about an important local plan, issue or policy. But so what? Did the process make any difference? Did the local agency benefit? Were the participants satisfied with their experience? What worked and what didn’t? And what lessons will your city or county take from this experience into future participation activities?Read more »

Groups of residents on the SF Peninsula are organizing at the neighborhood level to work with local governments and prepare themselves for emergencies.Read more »