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Three user-friendly civic engagement tools can help governments capture public preferences on spending tax revenues - social media, surveys, and neighborhood meetings. The most common is social media. According to a Government Finance Officers Association survey of senior budget and finance professionals1, nearly one third of local governments sampled in the U.S. use social media to connect with citizens about budgeting, while about one quarter use surveys. Far fewer try neighborhood meetings, committees, or other tools to gather community input.
More towns and cities used social media and surveys than other types of governments, while special districts used committees and neighborhood meetings more often. Over 28% of governments used one civic engagement tool; about 20% used two, and approximately 10% used three or four. The largest group (40%) used none of the methods to engage citizens.
About half said that staff time is a barrier to connecting with citizens, while nearly one third said public input would not help them reach better decisions. Among towns and cities, 10.6% blamed lack of support from their governing boards, as shown in Figure 1. In Figure 2, the last column shows the difference calculation between those governments that engaged citizens vs....