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In an ongoing effort to engage with citizens and other members of the public, the City of Alpharetta is launching a new online forum to seek and encourage input on current issues in the community.

Launched on January 20, "Open City Hall" is an online discussion forum designed to capture residents’ positions on important City issues that are scheduled to be considered by the City Council. Residents who are unable to attend City Council meetings are strongly encouraged to log into the forum and state their opinions, as well as read what other residents think about issues.

“We know that a lot of residents are interested in alternatives for participating in the public process,” says Alpharetta Mayor Arthur Letchas, “and we wanted to provide another option for civic engagement; one that did not require people to attend a meeting. We hope residents who are too busy to come to our community meetings will find the time to participate on-line from the comfort of their homes.”

In its first use of the Open City Hall forum, the City of Alpharetta is asking the public to comment on the issue most frequently identified as the most important in North Fulton, transportation. By visiting the City’s website (www.alpharetta.ga.us) and selecting the Open City Hall link, the public can currently respond to the question, “What is the highest priority for transportation improvements in the City of Alpharetta?” Visitors can also view comments posted by others.

"We plan to include the public comments from Open City Hall in the packet of recommendations that is submitted to Council next fall,” explains James Drinkard, Alpharetta’s Assistant City Administrator. We anticipate that those insights, along with input from other channels for participation, will help the decision process here in Alpharetta."

Additional topics and questions will be added to Open City Hall on an ongoing basis.

Open City Hall is a forum service by Peak Democracy, a non-partisan California company with which the City of Alpharetta has contracted and whose mission is to broaden civic engagement and build public trust in government.

"Putting the public comment process on-line for governments is much harder than just starting a blog," according to Peak Democracy CEO Robert Vogel. "Government forums must protect free speech while promoting civility - and those two goals often conflict. We developed Open City Hall technology specifically for governments to enable on-line civil forums without any censorship."

The City of Alpharetta is one of twelve local governments across the country seeking public input through the Open City Hall platform.