Rexburg invites residents to ‘Engage’ with new interactive government portal
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REXBURG — The city of Rexburg has rolled out a new platform meant to get residents involved with local government and increase transparency.
Engage Rexburg, launched in mid-October, was spearheaded by the city’s economic development department in an effort to create an effective way for the city’s residents to stay informed and give valuable feedback to city planners.
“When we first took it on, we were thinking about meeting with the community face-to-face, and when we did, we wanted to be able to address the issues that mattered most to the community,” says Rexburg Social Media Strategist Sarah Kennett-Cromwell.
Rexburg’s economic development team has been working on the project since January.
Kennett-Cromwell says they first needed to zero in on what mattered most to the members of the community.
“How do we know what matters most?” she asks. “We thought we needed an engagement portal.”
To create that opportunity for engagement, the city partnered with Citizen Lab, a software development company that specializes in creating community engagement platforms for local governments, according to their website.
“We’re on a mission to make democracy more inclusive, participatory, and responsive,” the company states on its website.
Rexburg residents can go to Engage Rexburg, register for an account, and start participating in the discussion. Under the menu item “All Projects,” users can choose from a list of topics, including “Share Your Ideas” for general suggestions, “Plan Rexburg” to give input on the potential changes to the city’s comprehensive plan, and options for sharing thoughts on the upcoming recreation district proposal, arts programming, broadband projects, transportation, and parks and trails.
Each section has the ability to host surveys and polls for city planners to obtain valuable information. Users can create discussion topics or peruse existing discussions and upvote or downvote suggestions made by other community members. Kennett-Cromwell says this will help some suggestions rise to the top and show up as priorities for the Rexburg community.
“Our main goal is to use that to answer and address the questions that are most important to members of the community,” she says.
Within the “Share Your Ideas” section, users will find a link for “Bringing Government to You,” which asks users to share how the city government can best communicate and invite participation.
“Our goal with it really is to get people more involved with local government and have people understand what the city is working on and how we are going about it,” Kennett-Cromwell says.
Rexburg Economic Development Specialist Aaron Denney says the engagement portal will be regularly updated and will be an ongoing project to connect the government and the people more effectively.
“This is not just one time,” he says. “Make sure to keep coming back. Comment on each other’s ideas.”
Denney says the platform creates the opportunity for city planners to work in phases to help create a future for the city informed by the people who live there. Each project up for discussion on the site has a clickable “Phases” bar that allows users to see where the project currently stands, what came before, and/or what is still to come.
Kennett-Cromwell and Denney encourage Rexburg residents to use the site, bookmark it for easy access, and visit the “About” page if they have any trouble.