Peak Democracy has just released its May 2013 Newsletter with stories that highlight how Open Town Hall is used to help local governments engage their constituents online.

In this edition read about:
-our enhanced survey features that integrate with our platform's Insight Bar
-seminars taking place in California and New Mexico
-one-click reports and how they are integrated with our insight tools

To see how Peak Democracy increases public trust in government through online civic engagement, please feel free to ask for a demonstration.

We realize that many of you in this Group are here because engaging citizens is essential to your work – particularly as it relates to influence in the budget process and participatory budgeting.

It is in this spirit that we too are seeking to advance the conversation, to share and disseminate stories of huge successes, and to collaboratively consider future possibilities for citizen engagement.

We’re attempting to do this by assembling some of the greatest contributors to this body of work, together at the "Summit of Leading Practices"

http://pbbconference.org

The conference co-sponsored by ICMA's Center for Management Strategies and the Alliance for Innovation, and will be held in Washington D.C., this July 9th and 10th 2013.

We are excited to announce the following leaders, who will speak to the “Leading Practice” of civic engagement:

--- Davenport Institute's Pete Peterson will contribute to the discussion on what “legitimate citizen engagement” is all about, and how it has been done across the Country. Pete’s experience has taken him to the participatory budgeting events in Vallejo, California, to the first public budgeting workshops in Bell, California, to the Redesigning Democracy Summit in North Carolina. He has inspired our Priority Based Budgeting work in Walnut Creek, California and Fairfield, California, and we couldn’t be more excited than to have him at the conference this July.

--- National Research Center's Tom Miller (who we’re pleased to announce just joined the Conference program this last week) has helped hundreds of jurisdictions use citizen surveys to set annual priorities. Learn more about measuring resident opinion from the man who literally wrote the book about why citizen surveys are important, and how to use them. As Tom wrote to us: “We see such a strong link between the work NRC does to give voice to resident opinion and the budgeting principles of CPBB that rest on community-set priorities. We can’t imagine a better opportunity to show that connection.”

--- Peak Democracy's Robert Vogel will bring to life the cutting edge world of online citizen engagement, including the breakthrough story of Douglas County, Nevada published here in this Group. Peak Democracy has opened up entirely new possibilities for how we engage citizens using technology. Their work presents a revolution in how citizens are able to access and influence decision-making.

On top of this, some of the more profound and encouraging case studies in civic engagement in Priority Based Budgeting will come from your colleagues – some of the nation’s leaders including: Douglas County, Nevada, Cincinnati, Ohio, Fort Collins, Colorado, and Walnut Creek, California.

We hope you’ll consider being part of this event!

Douglas County, Nevada, in partnership with the Center for Priority Based Budgeting (CPBB) and Peak Democracy, used a priority-driven participatory process in developing its budget. An innovative undertaking, Douglas County’s shift from an incremental approach to budgeting to a priority-driven budget invariably involved members of the public. The following case study illustrates how Douglas County involved the public using Open Town Hall as a major component of their community outreach strategy.

For the cast study please go to: http://bit.ly/116UsE2

Shifting from an incremental approach of budgeting to a priority-driven budget is a complicated process. It involves government leaders and the public asking about what the purpose of their local government is. What government does, in priority-driven budgeting terminology, is referred to as a ‘community result’. The participatory-budgeting process started and ended with the same series of questions that ask: why does our local government exist; what is the essential purpose of our local government; and, if our local government didn’t exist, what services and functions would be needed by the residents of the community it served?

For more please visit opentownhall.com

Walnut Creek, California has done something totally different in their approach to engaging their citizens in the budget process. To make their budget more accessible to their citizens, they produced a story, bringing to life the narrative behind the numbers, in a magazine-style publication - pretty amazing!

http://fiscalhealthandwellness.blogspot.com/2013/04/walnut-creek-presents-this-week-at.html

Congratulations to Walnut Creek - presenting this week at the Transforming Local Government conference in Atlanta.

Directly from their Budget:
“A Community Connected: The 2012-14 Budget Story,” seeks to share our budget
information in a new way. It identifies what we plan to do over the next two years with the resources placed under our stewardship. It explains the processes we’ve put in place with the community to set the goals that guided our budget decisions. And it tells our story in a way that we hope will be more engaging and easy to follow, using graphics, photos and short stories.”

UNC-Greensboro is committed to civic engagement. Here's a great resource with useful information on upcoming conferences. http://communityengagement.uncg.edu/news-events/detail-news.aspx?id=124

Greetings All: ICMA International has a group of fellows from China, New Zealand and Thailand that will be traveling mid-April to participate on a four week fellowship program (through funding by the U.S. Department of State) specifically focusing on Citizen Engagement. They will spend four weeks total in the U.S. with two of those weeks in a local government community (Albany, Oregon; Tulsa, Oklahoma; University Park, Texas; Basalt, Colorado). To follow their adventures, visit www.icma.org/pfp.

Citizen engagement in the budget process has been increasingly of interest in our work at the Center for Priority Based Budgeting over the last few years. The logic follows that the more citizens can authentically contribute and influence the decisions being made by their government, the more ownership they might take in their community. Trust increases with transparency. Compassion comes with trust. The benefits are undeniable.

Still, organizations ask us, "but what about the risks inherent in citizen engagement? What is the right role for citizens?" We're asked, "to what degree is it appropriate, safe, meaningful, realistic and effective to have citizens participate in decision making?" Pete Peterson, one of the nation's leading experts in the field and Executive Director of Pepperdine University's Davenport Institute of Public Policy pushed us to recognize the difference between citizen engagment as a means to an end, or an end in of itself.

In our work, we continue to strive for answers to these questions - they are the right questions. With the potential for such great outcomes, if we can answer them correctly and involve citizens in more meanigful and influential ways, we are moved to try and answer the questions.

How are you and your communities involving citizens in your budget process? What are you learning?

Here's a story from one of our recent experiences in Douglas County, Nevada
http://fiscalhealthandwellness.blogspot.com/2012/12/participatory-budgeting-meets-priority.html

Think you know all you need to know about Millennials? Are you really engaging them in a meaningful way? Consider this new study. http://ncoc.net/MillennialsCHI

ICMA, with funding from the U.S. Department of State, is conducting a Legislative Process and Governance Professional Fellowship program for participants from China, New Zealand, Thailand, and the United States. The program’s goal is to provide professional learning experiences for local government decision makers with experience and interest in legislative process and governance, especially citizen engagement, transparency, the role of women, minorities, and marginalized populations, and effective management strategies for creating more resilient, livable, and sustainable communities.
ICMA invites U.S. cities and counties to participate by hosting international Fellows and selecting a local professional to participate in a reciprocal exchange. Cities and counties can apply to serve as hosts by downloading and completing the application (link below). Deadline is January 31, 2013. Questions can be directed to Lauren Crawford (lcrawford@icma.org) or Laura Hagg (lhagg@icma.org).

Click to apply: http://icma.org/en/icma/knowledge_network/documents/kn/Document/304387/Legislative_Fellowship_Application_for_US_Host_Communities

The national League of Cities considers authentic youth civic engagement (AYCE) an essential element of effective public engagement efforts. This NLC document provides a very comprehensive framework for including youth in a meaningful way. http://www.nlc.org/Documents/Find%20City%20Solutions/IYEF/Youth%20Civic%20Engagement/authentic-youth-engagement-gid-jul10.pdf