In rural North Carolina, community organizers fight barriers to local government engagement

One of my favorite photos of my friend Jason Dunkin is a selfie he took where he’s grinning ear to ear. He’s sitting across from his local city commissioners, who are huddled around a table going through the Oxford, North Carolina budget. Jason is the only person in the room besides the commissioners. He’d shown up to their budget retreat. 

Neither Jason nor I can find the photo now, but I can still see it plain as day in my head. I love the photo because it’s very goofy (who gets that excited about a budget meeting?), but also because I know what happened after this picture was taken: Jason and his neighbors discovered some unspent American Rescue Plan funds and successfully petitioned to have a beloved but neglected neighborhood park repaired and reopened. 

I’ve now had a picnic in that park and watched some neighborhood kids play basketball there. If Jason and others hadn’t shown up and dug in, that park would probably still be closed up and overgrown.  

From recreation and sidewalks to schools and roads, local governments have a huge impact on our day-to-day quality of life. But many of us overlook the power we could have in local government. Instead, we spend our time fretting about national issues that, in many cases, impact us less. 

The other week, I chatted with the woman seated next to me on a plane. She was a county commissioner from rural Virginia. When I told her I thought her job was important, she thanked me but quickly lamented: “I wish others felt the same.” She expressed frustration over many constituents being uninvolved and uninterested in local government.

I told her about Jason and Oxford and she seemed genuinely excited–perhaps even envious–that local residents had become so involved.

The truth is, there are lots of barriers to local government engagement. Most of us work for a living—sometimes a couple jobs. Between work, kids, and chores, we have precious little time to seek out information, let alone make our way to a public meeting. But from my observation, we have too readily succumbed to the assumption that no one cares—and I think that can change.

Sometimes the barriers are structural. Two years ago in Watauga County, North Carolina, community organizers attended their county commission meeting to bring up housing concerns. They were surprised to discover that the public comment period was held at the end of each meeting, after the commissioners had their discussion. In order to move their housing concerns ahead, they realized that step one was getting public comments pushed to the top of the agenda. They organized a campaign to do this, won, then began organizing around housing. 

Other times, communication is a barrier; residents frequently have trouble getting information about the goings-on in their local government or, worse, feel shut out. For example, Greeley, Colorado, residents are frustrated that their city council approved a $1.1 billion tax-funded sports and entertainment complex without public input last spring. “A lot of us didn’t even know it was happening until after the vote,” says Mary Metzger, whose family has been in Greeley for generations. 

Currently, Mary is helping circulate a petition to put the stadium question on the November ballot so residents can weigh in. “I can talk to someone who may or may not have heard about the stadium, and may or may not want the stadium to be built, but they sign the petition because we all agree that we should have had a say,” she says. 

In other cases, local governments actually seem frustrated by citizen engagement. In Portage County, Wisconsin, Nancy Roppe is an active participant at her local Board of Supervisors meetings, poring over meeting minutes and frequently making public comments. She and her neighbors began organizing when they learned their county was planning to sell a local publicly owned nursing home to a private buyer. 

Nancy recounts a meeting where the Supervisor incorrectly used minutiae from Robert’s Rules of Order to try and shut down debate. Nancy showed up at the next meeting with a copy of Robert’s Rules and read from it out loud. Acknowledging that meetings can get long and heated, Nancy says the bottom line is that “there are a lot of people who need a say here. That’s what representation is about. And they need to figure out how to make that happen.”

While it’s up to citizens to stay informed and be involved, local governments also need to do a better job of inviting engagement. With the closure of many local newspapers and a dearth of local reporting, this outreach job is increasingly landing on public officials themselves. Seneca Rogers, who sits on the Alamance County Board of Education in North Carolina, says he and his colleagues know they’re responsible for encouraging engagement.

Over the last year, the Board has made several changes, including livestreaming meetings on YouTube and posting their financial dashboard, including statements and check registers, to their website. “We heard that people were having trouble accessing our meetings, so we added more places to watch them, and people always and rightfully have questions about finances, so instead of them having to ask for them, we are putting them out there first,” he explains. 

Democracy is messy, but important. It moves fast and requires constant recalibration by all of us–citizens and our elected representatives. From my view, there’s no better place than local government to muck through and figure it out.