Jessica Fisher, Public Information Assistant, 509.625.6749
Monday, November 12, 2018 at 2:30 p.m.
Engaging with citizens to understand their priorities and concerns is critical work for the City of Spokane. Public meetings, social media, and CityCable 5 are some routine ways we reach out to our citizens to understand what’s important to them.
Every year, Mayor David Condon also likes to host what’s called a Telephone Town Hall to try to boost engagement. Citizens can participate in the Town Hall by phone, on the web or CityCable 5, or on social media.
As part of this hour-long community conversation, we ask those participating to provide us with feedback on a few survey questions. For the first time, we had more people participate in the survey via our City social media accounts than over the phone, which tells us a lot about the changing ways people like to communicate with us.
As part of our survey, we always ask citizens how they would prioritize investments of additional resources. Funding options include: hire more firefighters, hire more police officers, improve streets faster, fund additional homeless resources, or none of the above. You can view the results here. (PDF 730 KB)
For the first time, our citizens told us to prioritize spending in homelessness issues, over the traditional favorites of police officers and street repairs. We’d like to explore that question further with the community. What would you like to see us invest in? Outreach programs? Additional shelter? Affordable housing? Employment assistance, substance abuse treatment or other supportive services? Permanent housing? Something else? And what outcomes would you hope we could accomplish?
Engaging with you improves our approach. Tell us what you think.
