The James City County Board of Supervisors is considering another way for citizens to get involved in the county’s decision-making process: an online Open Town Hall.
At its Tuesday work session, the board heard a presentation from the county’s Communications Director Jody Puckett about a company called Peak Democracy and its cloud-based forum for town hall-type discussion.
The aim of the discussion was to present the idea of subscribing to the company’s program, not to vote on whether to move forward with it.
Puckett kicked off her discussion telling the board the county’s civic engagement staff work under three main goals: Encouraging citizens to participate, providing educational tools in order for citizens to participate and giving citizens as many ways to participate as possible.
“We know we have many tools in our tool box for that,” Puckett said, adding the county is missing out on broader opportunities for citizens to engage.
Currently, the county operates a website with JCCTV live streaming, a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a YouTube page.
Peak Democracy would provide a site where the county can contribute information on a topic and ask for the public’s feedback on that topic. Under the annual service subscription — which comes with a $9,000 price tag — the county can pose unlimited questions to citizens. The questions could be about any decision facing the county or about items up for public hearing.
“Open Town Hall replicates a town hall-style public meeting and is well-suited to reach citizens that may not, for whatever reason, come to public meetings,” reads a staff memo to the board. “Open Town Hall will supplement but not replace traditional [county] meetings, providing citizens with a convenient new tool for civic engagement.”
The forum would allow citizens to comment one time per topic. In order to comment, citizens would sign in using their name, email address and street address. The only information that would ever be shown to the public would be the commenter’s name, but citizens can elect to have their name hidden. The street address information would be used to map where comments come from by district.
A viewer could then visit the Open Town Hall and see how many people from each of the county’s five voting districts commented; it would not show which address an individual comment came from. The map function would also show how many comments came from outside James City County.
“So it’s kind of a neat way of finding out where your statements are coming from,” Puckett said.
James City County staff and government officials would be able to set up parameters for what isn’t acceptable in comments. If a commenter then wrote something that went against those parameters, Peak Democracy would notify the county and the commenter. The commenter would have the opportunity to change their comment to have it posted; if the comment isn’t changed, it would be moved to a separate page where a warning would pop-up, telling visitors there could be offensive material in the comment. No comments would be deleted from the site at any time for any reason.
Citizens and county staff and government officials could also obtain copies of comments submitted to the Open Town Hall at any time.
Open Town Hall is available across all current technology used to access the Internet, including computers, smart phones and tablets.
In Virginia, the cities of Williamsburg, Norfolk and Virginia Beach, as well as Arlington County use Peak Democracy for online forums. Williamsburg only uses the forum for targeted questions; it is not active year-round.
Puckett’s presentation swayed at least one supervisor to support the Open Town Hall.
“This is very intriguing to me because it has some elements that we don’t even have in public comment,” said Supervisor Jim Icenhour (Jamestown). He said when a citizen calls or emails him, there’s no way to involve the public in that conversation.
He also said the open public comment sections of board meetings are structured and limited as far as who speaks, the time limit given, and people who can’t attend the meetings being unable to comment.
Icenhour also said this opens the opportunity for a younger demographic to become involved because it’s online. Supervisor Andy Bradshaw (Powhatan) agreed.
On the opposite side of the table, Supervisor Mary Jones (Berkeley) said some new technology removes people from the one-on-one interaction of speaking at a board meeting. She said with the online forum, there’s an opportunity for anonymous comments that take away from the value of the board knowing who is commenting.
“I have some concerns about moving forward in this direction,” she said. “I don’t know if the value justifies the time and the money.”
Replying to Jones’ comment, Bradshaw said there’s probably no way to know the value without implementing the forum and trying it. Supervisor John McGlennon (Roberts) said he would also be willing to try the program, but he is skeptical about whether it will be valuable.
Supervisor Jim Kennedy (Stonehouse) was absent from the meeting due to a family illness; he had indicated to county staff before the meeting he had some additional questions.
During the open public comment period at the board’s regular meeting Tuesday, a handful of speakers were opposed to the county pursuing a contract with Peak Democracy.
“This is yet another typical wasteful program of this progressive majority,” Keith Sadler said. “Is this a way to steer consensus in the direction you want? Will public comment at meetings eventually be modified or stop?”
His wife agreed and worried about turning toward technology for this aspect of local government.
“We don’t need this county run by bloggers,” she said. “Slowly I turn and poof, traditional public comment is gone and the First Amendment is moderated for content.”
