Best Practices for Holding Efficient and Engaging Public Meetings

Introduction

The democratic process is the foundation of our government, yet it requires a critical element: participation by an informed and engaged public. Local governments are responsible for making decisions that significantly impact community members’ daily lives. Why then, do public meetings suffer the reputation of being poorly attended? Or invaluable? Is it their formal format? Are our agendas too long? Would better publicity bring more residents through the doors?

Public meetings where elected officials, public managers, and residents discuss proposed policies are critical opportunities to foster two-way dialogue and enable informed voters, but only if participation is high enough. The good news is that your public meetings do not have to occur in front of an empty room nor bore their attendees.

PART 1: How to Increase Resident Attendance

ShapeAccording to Meeting Fever, In the United States, 74% of citizens have never attended a town hall meeting. Why such a low percentage of attendees when meeting outcomes have the potential to shape public policy?

Some believe low participation in public meetings directly correlates to low resident engagement in the community. Others think states control more decisions of greater significance to voters, resulting in less interest in local government dialogue.

Other Common Reasons Residents Give for Meeting Non-Participation:

• I don’t know when meetings take place
• I didn’t receive adequate notice
• I have a previous commitment at that time
• Public debate never impacts policy-making
• The meetings are too long
• The meetings are boring
• It’s too logistically challenging to get to the meeting location

Regardless of the factors that have led to declining participation levels, local governments can re-engage residents by reinforcing the value of their attendance and making it easy to become meaningfully involved. Follow these tips to boost public meeting participation in your community.

Promote Meetings with Sufficient Advanced Notice and Via All Available Channels

Depending on whether your meetings fall into a regular cadence or are scheduled ad-hoc, make sure you are publicizing them at least three weeks in advance. Public notice requirements may have shorter deadlines, but announcing a meeting as far in advance as the date is known allows interested residents to add it to their calendars when possible. Use all available marketing channels to promote participation, including your municipal website, utility bill statement stuffers, community event calendars, facility signage, direct mail (if budget allows), and social media. Some communities have even used paid advertising on social media to broaden their reach beyond just their followers.

Publish Agendas Digitally in Advance

Residents will be more likely to attend your meeting if the discussion surrounds a topic they feel interests them. Publish and promote your meeting agendas in advance via your local government website and social media channels to raise awareness for meeting topics and increase participation.

If advance agenda publication is not possible due to the length of time it takes to create agendas and receive approvals from stakeholders, consider an automated agenda and meeting management solution to save you time and help you publish agendas earlier.

Consider the Location

If residents find it challenging to get to your meeting location or find parking, or if they feel the room itself is uncomfortable, they may not attend. Consider relocating appropriate meetings to more comfortable venues.

Integrate Childcare

Many residents who want to participate have young children and lack the childcare to attend public meetings. Offer safe, professional childcare services in an adjacent room to enable busy parents to participate in public meetings.

Consider the Time

If most of your meetings occur during the workday, you may inadvertently make it difficult for working residents to attend. Consider moving public meetings to after regular business hours.

Encourage Virtual Attendance

To further remove barriers to attendance between your public meetings and busy residents, incorporate live video streaming of your meetings into your local government website. That way, residents who want to attend but cannot make it to the meeting location in person can still watch the proceedings.

Save Recordings of Meetings to Your Local Government Website

Taking your virtual attendance strategy one step further, save recordings of meetings to your local government website and allow residents to watch when they have the time.

Use Targeted Mass Communications to Send Invitations

If you utilize a subscription-based resident notification system, encourage residents to opt in to receive alerts about upcoming public meetings. Services that allow you to tailor messages to the subscriber’s communication channel preferences, such as voicemail, email, or text messages, will be most impactful.

Include Residents in the Agenda-Setting Process

For appropriate civic meetings, poll residents in advance to ask what topics they would like to see added to the agenda for discussion and dialogue. Allowing residents to help shape meeting content will increase their participation.

Continually Reinforce to Residents that You Value Their Participation

It is not enough to promote the date, time, and location of an upcoming meeting. All external communications surrounding public meetings should include language that reinforces to residents why you value their participation and that advocates for their meaningful involvement.

Provide a Translator

The input of all your residents is valuable and necessary to shape public policy that reflects the needs of your diverse population. If you live in a community with many non-English speaking residents, incorporate translation services during your meeting or include closed captioning services as part of your recorded meeting videos.

This extra step demonstrates a level of inclusiveness that will help increase participation by your diverse population base.

Build Relationships with the Media

By encouraging local media to tease meeting topics in advance in their publications, you can amplify the reach of your promotions and generate additional interest in impactful issues, further encouraging resident participation.

Assess and Optimize

After each meeting, ask for public input to determine which tactics were most successful in increasing participation. By continually optimizing your engagement strategy, you can consistently meet your participation goals.

PART 2: How to Better Engage Residents During Meetings

If your meetings regularly bring in residents yet a look around the room reveals they are bored and disengaged, follow the tips below to encourage more meaningful attendee participation.

Incorporate Live-Meeting Polling

Some residents will likely be comfortable speaking up during meetings to share their perspectives. It can be easy, however, to find that the same residents are frequently the only ones sharing ideas and adding commentary.

Keep them engaged and demonstrate that you value their input by incorporating live, digital poling of meeting participants during public meetings. Digital polling allows participants and meeting facilitators to see the instantly tabulated results to help further shape the discussion and move decisions forward.

Offer Education and Resources so that Community Members Understand how to Participate

One consideration that may hold some residents back from participating is their unfamiliarity with the proper meeting procedures and protocols. Provide educational resources to help residents understand how to participate in meetings effectively. Not only will they enable community members to share their opinions, but they will also help you to keep sessions running effectively.

Train Speakers to Efficiently Present Information

You want experts on local topics to present at meetings, but being an expert on a subject does not necessarily mean one knows how to act as an engaging, dynamic speaker. Provide resources and training for staff who regularly present and facilitate meetings to help them understand how to hold their audiences’ attention.

Set the Right Meeting Environment

Your meeting room should be at a comfortable temperature— not too hot and not too cold. Extreme temperatures can be a distraction to those in attendance. Ensure all who will be speaking are using microphones or that they can be heard clearly from all locations in the room. Use multimedia screens to help attendees follow along as you move through meeting content. Many agenda management solutions have a built-in display feature that allows you to control visuals seamlessly as you progress through your meeting items.

Prepare and Distribute Background Documentation in Advance

Residents will be more engaged in discussions if they can review relevant documentation, consider all perspectives, and form their opinions in advance. If you struggle to distribute meeting agendas and supporting materials to attendees in advance due to manually intensive paper-based agenda creation workflows, consider a digital agenda and meeting management software solution to help expedite the collaboration and distribution process.

Use Visual Aids

Dynamic visuals can help stimulate engagement. Incorporate dynamic content into presentations, such as photos and videos, whenever possible. For example, if debating the development of a new dog park, build a slideshow that includes schematics of the proposed parks, visually impactful survey data, and even videos of interviews with community dog owners and area residents.

Manage Speaking Time

One reason meetings can quickly begin to feel dull is if a single speaker talks at length and does not realize they are being repetitive. Using a meeting management software solution that provides a visual countdown clock for speakers will help set an expectation for exactly how much time all speakers are allowed so there are no surprises, and they can maximize their speaking time.

PART 3: How to Manage Sensitive Issues or Conflicts During Public Meetings

You have increased meeting participation and have captured your residents’ attention. What happens when you have so much participation and engagement that you need to calm flaring tempers? Managing sensitive issues or navigating conflict in public meetings can be one of the most challenging aspects of creating a successful civic participation strategy.

Follow these tips to help ensure your meetings involve constructive exchanges that stimulate respectful two-way dialogue in which as much listening takes place as speaking.

Reasons Residents May Respond to a Discussion Emotionally:

• A situation has hurt them
• They feel threatened by risks they cannot control
• They believe their fundamental beliefs are being challenged

Start by Acknowledging the Resident’s Concerns

A resident who is emotionally charged wants to be heard. Start your response by acknowledging their feelings. Even if their sentiments are not aligned with the goals of your administration, still acknowledge how they feel.

Stick to the Facts

When data is available, support your perspective and help others understand it by validating your leadership’s perspective using statistically valid data.

Convey Sincerity and Trustworthiness

Residents want to believe that their public servants are making decisions from a place of public interest and good intentions—not from special interests. In all public actions, especially during meetings, ensure all representatives from your administration convey trustworthiness and compassion in everything they say and do. Such transparency and sincerity will help strengthen relationships and build rapport.

Commit to Minimizing Negative Impacts

When relevant, commit to addressing resident concerns by taking steps that will minimize disruptions. For example, if residents are concerned that a new highway project could have a negative impact on the environment, commit to working with environmental specialists to take necessary precautions.

Accept Responsibility

If a resident is rightfully distressed about an event or policy that had a proven negative result, acknowledge their feelings, accept responsibility for the events that transpired, and shift the discussion to looking forward to future initiatives, whether they be preventive measures to ensure additional negative results do not occur or corrective measures to mitigate the results of previous issues.

Conclusion

Holding public meetings that effectively steer public policy, engage residents, and create informed voters are not unicorns — but they do require a strategic approach and continual refinement. As civic leaders and decision-makers, the goal of your community’s administration should be to facilitate public meetings that make residents feel that their opinions and voices are shaping public policy.

All steps to promote and execute successful meetings should be predicated on this goal. By doing so, you give yourself the greatest opportunity to hold engaging meetings filled with respectful dialogue and anything but boring.  We can help! Speak with one of our experts and realize the full potential of civic engagement.