Greetings and Happy Holidays!

Welcome to the fourth issue of the Institute for Local Government’s Perspectives on Public Engagement and Local Government. We hope this occasional e-newsletter continues to be of interest to local officials as well as to other individuals and organizations concerned with the capacity of city, county, schools and other local agencies to pursue the effective and inclusive engagement of their residents in local planning and decision-making.

The Institute’s Public Engagement program, author of this e-newsletter, provides information and resources to encourage and support the public engagement efforts of local officials and their communities in California.

This issue of Perspectives on Public Engagement and Local Government contains information about the Institute’s activities and new publications, stories of local public engagement throughout California, and information and resources from other public sector, practitioner and academic organizations involved with deliberative practice and theory. 

We continue to document local public engagement activities around the state and have included below a story of participatory budgeting in the City of Vallejo. We also have a new tip sheet on Dealing with Strongly Held Concerns and Challenges to Public Engagement Processes.

We hope you enjoy this issue. We welcome your comments and extend our appreciation to our funders, especially The James Irvine Foundation, for their support.