Why don’t people participate more in their local government?

I’m passionate about the need to increase engagement from the community. We have many residents who give public comment or attend city council meetings, but it is mostly the same people. When we have particularly controversial topics, there are noticeable spikes of engagement and participation - but those are not common.

Why don’t people participate more in their local government?

I can think of 3 reasons: lack of time, disillusionment, and lack of trust. It’s not the resident’s fault; it’s our fault - government. Disillusionment literally means:

• Lack of time: Time is a precious resource - and our working families just don’t have the time to listen, learn, and/or comment on the exciting layers of municipal code and programs (not sarcasm, but I know this opinion is not shared by all :-). Now, sprinkle a dash of poor outreach levels from elected officials and you have the recipe for our current situation.

• Disillusionment: People are disillusioned because they feel we have a political system that overpromises and under-delivers.

• Lack of trust: This contributes to their lack of trust along with a government bureaucracy that is designed to keep the lights on, but not to effect transformational change for the betterment of the people it serves.

What do we do about it? In reality, there are so many good, impactful things happening at all layers of government. City ordinances that increase your quality of life; state and federal legislation that moves the wheel of progress forward. But nobody knows about it. And when they do, they don’t understand it because we (politicians) don’t take the time to explain it to them. We need to be honest, engaging, NORMAL (it’s ok to go “off-message”), and meet the people where they are.