Knowing how to best engage with city government is difficult. Many of the processes that standardize city operations and make work effective for city employees can be opaque for residents. At CivicLex, we’re excited to partner with LFUCG on two new initiatives to examine and improve this process.
Richard Young, Director of CivicLex
NewsHour and NPR and in Foreign Affairs Magazine, Danielle Allen of Harvard University and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences labeled CivicLex as a model for reinventing American democracy for the 21st century. Months ago, we launched a new partnership with LFUCG to revise the city’s public comment process in city meetings, which we know can be frustrating. Whether it be city meeting times/locations or the commenting process itself, CivicLex and LFUCG have both heard feedback from countless residents that this process can be improved.
Our participatory design process to reshape public comment launched in April, with a survey for Lexington residents. This feedback will be combined with input from city employees and used to create recommendations for ways the city can improve its process. With these recommendations in hand, we’ll get to work with LFUCG officials to see what options are viable for implementation. After that, we’ll launch another community survey in the early fall where residents can provide feedback about these proposed new options. Keep an eye out for it!
We know that working to revise a process that relatively few residents end up utilizing isn’t enough to address this issue. So, we are also piloting an exciting new project with LFUCG starting this summer: Lexington’s first-ever Civic Artist in Residence program. Starting in June, we are embedding three Fayette County-based artists inside three departments of LFUCG to work with employees to think through creative new ways of engaging with residents.
While creating more ways to provide resident input to city government is helpful, the reasons for these programs are much more significant. Over the past three decades, trust in government and American institutions has cratered. Data from the Pew Research Center shows trust in American government has declined from 64 percent in 1997 to less than 35 percent in 2019. When we don’t trust our government, we become more disengaged. When we become more disengaged, decisions are made based on input from relatively few residents, further eroding trust. Government alone cannot interrupt this cycle — we need more neighbors to engage and have a relationship with our local government to reinforce our democracy.