Lakewood Expands Online Civic Participation Tool

LAKEWOOD, CO – Praised by national good government groups, a civic online participation project rolled out by the City of Lakewood's Planning Board has now been expanded to include City Council meetings.

The LakewoodSpeaks.org website encourages residents to find out about important meetings before they happen, and submit comments or email city staff in advance. This simple change allows citizens to view the proposed documents and submit public comment removed from the constraints of time and place.

It's like civic government on-demand, Lakewood's Planning Director Travis Parker told StrongTowns.org last year.

"Just as ride sharing apps like Uber have completely altered transportation, technology will undoubtedly have a similar impact on our public hearings," Parker wrote in an essay on the StrongTowns.org website.

The planning board found that allowing citizens to participate online instead of showing up at a city meeting made participation open up to more people who better represent the city's population. About one-third of Lakewood adults are under age 44, but only a sliver of people in that age bracket attend public hearings, where the average age is 55. This is because they are often parents or unable to swing work schedules. But online, about one-third of participants identified themselves as between 25-44, the data showed.

"The bottom line? In-person participation is not representative. Online participation is," Travis wrote.

Lakewood Speaks offers the following options:

• Watch recorded videos of staff and other presentations.
• Read staff reports and other documents.
• Review any maps and other materials related to an agenda item.
• Ask questions of and receive responses from staff.
• Submit comments to City Council to be included in the public record.
• Use mobile smartphones, tablets or computers for all these options.
• View materials for public hearings 10 days prior to the meeting and make comments online until 24 hours prior to a meeting.

"The hard lesson for all communities appears to be that we are not doing a good job of allowing public participation in our decision making process," Travis wrote. "Weekly in-person hearings have extremely limited engagement potential. Communities that are serious about improving transparency and citizen engagement need to embrace technology. The same technological tools that we use in our business and personal lives can be used to ensure representative participation in government decision making."

Read Travis's essays here and here.

Image via Shutterstock

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