Countywide Community Forums

The Countywide Community Forums enhance citizen participation, civic engagement, and citizenship education in government.

In October 2008, the King County Council enacted an innovative public outreach program called Countywide Community Forums. The program’s design is based on a network of volunteers who organize small, community based discussion forums countywide to communicate, discuss, and provide feedback on public policy issues affecting the county.

Forum participants meet in small groups of 4-12 people, three or four times a year, at times and places convenient to them during a thirty-day participation window. Because participants meet in small groups in libraries, homes and workplaces, there is time for participants to share their opinions before the open discussion period begins. The small group meetings are networked together in two ways. First, everyone watches the same short video and reads the same summary of the key facts and the different perspectives on the issue under discussion. Second, everyone fills out a detailed survey that asks for participants' views and opinions on the topic, as well as which topic they would like to discuss next. The surveys are then tabulated, with the results posted on the Web and shared with government officials and the media.

A steering committee advises the county auditor on topics for discussion at the community forums. Members of the steering committee include public officials from county and other local governments as well as representatives from higher education, K-12 education, regional transportation, and the county’s rural areas.

The entire program, including county staff positions, is funded through voluntary donations. The program is led by the volunteer Coordinator, Dick Spady, and two volunteer Deputy Coordinators, Jim and John Spady, who are the authors of the initiative that created this program. They were appointed to these positions based on their extensive knowledge of the Citizen Councilor Network model of civic engagement. The Auditor’s Office oversees program operations and ensure the integrity of data collection processes and management controls over program funds. Chantal Stevens, the program manager within the Auditor's Office, also serves as the public’s primary county government contact for the program.

This is a new program based on a model developed principally by Richard (Dick) J. Spady, President of the Forum Foundation. As discussed in The Leadership of Civilization Building that he co-authored, the purpose of the techniques associated with this model is to enable citizens to participate meaningfully in providing feedback to public officials on issues of importance to the community.

King County also has two other countywide endeavors designed to engage the public. One is the County Council’s Priorities for People. This process, first initiated in 2007 and enhanced in 2008, involves extensive outreach to solicit the public’s input on budget priorities to guide the council’s budget process (http://www.kingcounty.gov/council/budget/citizen_engagement.aspx). For 2008 that process included focus groups, community forums, and online polling. Concurrently, the County Executive has a new performance management website, AIMs High (www.metrokc.gov/aimshigh), which uses community indicators to describe community conditions and performance measures to show King County agency performance. This year, with support from a grant from the National Center for Civic Innovation, the executive’s performance management director, Michael Jacobson, is organizing two focus groups to get feedback on its public performance publications, including a proposed “citizen’s scorecard.”