Richmond Invites Residents to Start Talking Online
08 July 2010
Check out the City of Richmond’s newly launched online community engagement portal - LetsTALKrichmond.ca – and join the conversation.
“Our goal is to have a lot more Richmond residents talking to us about the things that will shape our City’s future,” says Mayor Malcolm Brodie. “We’ve launched this robust online program in a concerted effort to make it easier for citizens to share ideas and comments in a collaborative network. This will improve the quality of public debate and ultimately the strategic decisions we make on behalf of the Richmond community. The biggest benefit – a larger group of citizens can get involved when it’s convenient to them – online, anytime.”
From an easily navigated web page, viewers can access topic-specific discussion forums, links to photos, videos, frequently asked questions, project team members and more.
“The traditional public participation open houses and surveys have provided us with good community input over the years. We know that by providing additional tools to encourage a broader segment of our community to share their vision and ideas with us, we’ll all benefit in better decisions,” says Terry Crowe, Manager, Policy Planning. “We’ve wanted to use online social engagement for some time, knowing it would be a more convenient way for our residents to talk to us. Now we’re launching a portal that is not only well organized and simple to use, it allows the City to easily extract trends in ideas and suggestions to use them directly in future strategies.”
The new web based tool will initially solicit input in preparing the 2041 Official Community Plan (OCP) Update and new 10 Year Social Planning Strategy. The initial 2041 OCP Update topics include a 2041 Vision, transportation and the use of parks – more topics will be added later. The 10 Year Social Planning Strategy topics include poverty, homelessness, addictions, child care, cultural diversity and issues facing youths and seniors.
The www.LetsTALKrichmond.ca portal will initially run as a pilot program for a three month period.
