Community Engagement and Getting Direct Feedback

Shortly after COVID restrictions went into place at the county and state levels, cities were forced to think about lowered revenues as a result of closures and the impacts to local sales tax. Since sales tax is one of the top revenues drivers for local cities, in #Hemet we began lobbying state and federal officials for solutions to our projected revenue losses.

The federal government began packaging #ARPA or American Rescue Plan Act to help local cities recover from the impacts of COVID, and Hemet was slated to receive over $20M in federal funding. The Treasury had strict requirements for the funding, so we began researching what items were eligible expenses under ARPA.

As a local government leader, it's important that we gather data and analyze it for the elected leadership of the community to help them make the best decisions. I began researching methods on how to collect citizen input, and discovered Polco. I was struck by their mission:

"Our mission is to bring communities together around their most important topics on a single inclusive platform. We work to give leaders reliable insights through civil and constructive civic participation.

Our ultimate vision is to improve resident quality of life in communities everywhere."

With over $20M coming to the community, it was imperative to gather feedback from the community including residents and businesses.

I coordinated a call with Polco, and we immediately began working on the platform by which we would use to gather citizen information. We rolled out a community wide survey, aligned ARPA Treasury rules with feedback from the community, and developed over 40 ideas for funding in the community. We then presented these ideas to the Council for approval.

Some of the highlights of the community values/priorities included the following:

1. Homelessness

2. Small business help

3. Utility assistance

For more information on how we used it, please click here for a link to an article that highlighted our process:

https://the-atlas.com/projects/hemet-arpa-funding-addresses-homelessness-based-on-community-input-3028?utm_source=app&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=project_share

At the end of the day here were key lessons:

1. Don't be afraid to reach out directly to your community

2. Don't be afraid to ask experts for help

3. Listen to your residents; you are there to serve them

4. Data can be your friend