Title
Peak Democracy - Virtual Town Hall Meeting
History
Founded in 2007, Peak Democracy, Inc. is the most widely used online public engagement platform for government entities, with 2,500 open town hall forums, reaching over 300,000 constituents. The California-based company has worked with over 100 government agencies in the United States, Canada and Australia, accommodating municipalities ranging in sizes of under 2,000 to 8 million residents.
In August of 2015, staff previewed the Peak Democracy virtual town hall website. The village agreed to a one-year contract from January 29-January 28, 2017. The village seeks this online format to further strengthen civic engagement on pertinent topics affecting all residents. This format allows the village to maintain control of public engagement by focusing on feedback from constituents while ensuring the dialogue is civil and legal. In 2016, the village provided residents with The Grapevine post, allowing residents to share any village-related question or concern, and a 2016 Village Priorities post asking residents to list the top three issues they would like the Village Board to address. Both posts remained open all year. Moving forward in 2017, The Grapevine and Village Priorities posts will remain, with additional potential posts addressing topics such as the mayor’s Open Lands Commission, water rates, and other upcoming village developments. Topics will be chosen with the input from the Board of Trustees and the Community Engagement Committee.
Peak Democracy will continue to provide the village with one Town Hall Portal and grant administrative access to an unlimited amount of designated employees. This cloud-based government online forum will continue to be implemented through the village’s home page. Peak Democracy provides network bandwidth and will host the village’s service on our server.
Peak Democracy will also continue to provide the village with best practices for government online forums. In addition, the PIO is able to receive support in crafting topic content, as well as help marketing topics via press release, social media, email blasts and mailers.
Peak Democracy monitors user registrations and posted content. All users on the village’s site are authenticated through a registration that confirms an individual’s email address, geocoding each user’s street address and monitoring each user’s name, IP address and browser cookies. Should a registrant’s activity or content violate the village’s guidelines, Peak Democracy staff will work with the village to reconcile the issue.
Once a topic has closed, records are retained with Peak Democracy and the village will have access to downloadable PDFs. Topics will stay open to resident feedback for one month, with three to four topics staying open at one time.
Financial Impact
The cost of a one-year subscription is $7,000.
Sufficient funds have been allocated in the FY 2017 Budget.
Recommended Action/Motion
I move to approve the proposal from Peak Democracy, Inc. to continue to provide a virtual town hall site on the village’s website;
And
Approve the Interim Village Manager to execute an agreement with Peak Democracy, Inc. to set-up the virtual town hall site in an amount not to exceed $7,000.