Promoting Effective Public Participation at Governing Body Meetings: Opportunities to Deepen Public Participation and Trust

This publication offers suggestions for improving the process of successfully receiving public input at regular local agency meetings. Key goals are to make this input most useful to decision makers and more satisfying to participating residents themselves.
Regular public agency meetings, such as governing body or planning commission meetings, typically represent the bulk of local agency public meeting activity. Such meetings offer a good opportunity to increase public understanding and engagement related to the issues decision-makers are grappling.
This publication is an update of the Institute’s prior publication “Getting the Most Out of Public Hearings.”
An easy thing elected officials and staff can do to promote transparency and trust in one’s agency is encouraging all agency communications to be in plain language.
“Plain language” involves using words that reflect the interests and needs of the listener or reader rather than the interests and needs of the speaker. The ultimate goal is for everyone to understand what is being said.
The two pieces at the right explain why plain language matters and suggest tips for writing for officials.
The Ethics of Public LanguageWriting Tips for Local Agency Writers