Introducing

Better public meetings

02 November 2023 by Ryan Wold

What can we do to improve public meetings?

The decorum and formalized process in a council chambers can be understood and worked with and within, productively.

One must understand, on some level, the etiquitte of public comment. Being familiar with the agenda and the items on it, is a plus.

Very little actually happens at a meeting. Lots of words are spoken by board members, public staff, and citizens, during public comment. Ultimately, a few motions are passed, constituting the action that does occur.

Yet, there is opportunity for more productive interactions at a public a Board Meeting.

Understand what is being voted on, by whom, and to the extent possible, what are the implications of a supporting or dissenting vote by an individual, and the board. For example, consider addressing your feedback to your appropriate representative, based on where you live. Sharing good feedback to a neighboring jurisdiction may be well-intentioned, but is ultimately ineffective. Representatives value feedback from their constituents relatively more, by definition.

So, understanding how to participate begins with understanding a bit of what is and has been going on. Attending a few meetings, or watching them online is a good place to start.

The Solano County Board of Supervisors records their videos and makes them available.

Fortunately, the City of Vacaville’s City Council also records their videos and makes them available.

Online public meeting videos are a great asset and an important artifact of municipal operations.

What if we:

• made the transcripts searchable
• identified people in the video, talking
• annotated public meeting videos with captions, statistics, and commentary
• linked additional context based on past meetings and other public documents (example: link budget documents or project plans across different points on a timeline)