PublicInput

10/26/2026

A public meeting ends when the gavel falls. For the clerk’s team, a lot of the work is just starting.

San Diego County serves more than 3 million residents, so the records, the minutes, and the follow-up add up fast.

The county found a lighter way to carry that load, and opened the meeting to more people along the way. Read the story: https://hubs.la/Q04C4nvN0

10/22/2026

Public comment on a rezoning arrives every way you can imagine: email, letters, voicemail.

For Charleston County council, that used to mean a printed binder.

Now every comment lands in one live record. And something else changed along with it: who’s commenting.

Read how Charleston County made the shift: https://hubs.la/Q04C4ljb0

10/14/2026

A city of nearly 175,000 people is not one audience.

Different neighborhoods. Different languages. Different generations. Different reasons for paying attention to what the city is doing.

Rancho Cucamonga took a closer look at what that meant for its engagement strategy, and built a more connected way to reach people across the community.

Take a look at how they approached it.
🔗https://hubs.la/Q04zsPnP0

The City of Rancho Cucamonga is home to nearly 175,000 people in western San Bernardino County, California. The local economy has a diverse business base of office, light manufacturing, distributio…

10/12/2026

A public meeting doesn’t start when the chair calls the meeting to order.

There’s a lot happening before, during, and after that moment, especially when people are participating in person, online, and by phone.

What does it take to keep all of that connected and build a clear record along the way?
🔗https://hubs.la/Q04zsNqQ0

A well-run public meeting starts before anyone joins the room. Notice has to go out on time. The agenda needs to clearly identify what will be discussed. The meeting has to follow the requirements …

10/09/2026

Collecting public input is one thing. Being able to explain what happened to it is another.
When someone asks, “How did you get here?” a stack of comments only tells part of the story.

There’s a bigger story behind good engagement, and it’s worth knowing how to tell it.
🔗https://hubs.la/Q04zsLMp0

Public input is supposed to inform decisions. But when a project is over and someone asks, “How did you get here?” having collected comments is only part of the answer. Agencies need to be able to …

10/07/2026

For residents who don’t speak English fluently, language access can come with an extra step: asking for it.

That small step can be enough to keep someone from participating, especially when they’re already unsure whether support will be available.

What would public meetings look like if language access was simply part of the experience, not something residents had to request?

We take a closer look at the difference in our latest article.
🔗https://hubs.la/Q04zsJYD0

In PublicInput’s 2024 State of Community Engagement Report, 28% of Spanish-speaking residents said they’re uncomfortable requesting an interpreter at a public meeting. When a translatio…

09/30/2026

The midterms are November 3. Is your community's institutional memory ready for what comes next?

After the election, new councilmembers and commissioners will start asking: What have residents been saying?

If the answer lives across meeting transcripts, survey results, emails, project comments, and spreadsheets, pulling that story together can take days. And by the time the briefing is ready, new input is already coming in.

There's still time to get ahead of it.

PublicInput's Pulse feature brings resident feedback from across your engagement channels into one view, surfacing the topics, trends, and resident asks that matter most, with citations back to the original input so findings can be verified.

Your new electeds may be different, but your community's history shouldn't be hard to find.

Learn more about Pulse: https://hubs.la/Q04ytP2L0

Public agencies are gathering more resident feedback than ever, but making sense of it all is another story. Pulse is PublicInput’s new executive dashboard that uses AI to surface themes, tre…

09/28/2026

Today is International Day for Universal Access to Information. This year's United Nations theme focuses on information integrity: how timely, credible public information helps people make informed decisions and participate in their communities.

For local governments, that work starts close to home. When residents share input and never hear what happened next, the conversation doesn't end. It moves to social feeds and community circles, where accurate information is harder to maintain.

Closing the loop is one of the most practical ways agencies can keep residents informed and the conversation grounded in reliable information.

See how agencies are doing it: https://hubs.la/Q04ytrXV0

PublicInput

The Silent Majority Isn’t Silent Forever Every year, PublicInput’s State of Community Engagement Survey sheds light on how residents feel about participating in civic decision-making — and what hap…

09/23/2026

Planners, engagement pros, and anyone who's ever been handed a spreadsheet full of public comments: this one's for you. 👋

Ever get halfway through coding comments, spot a brand-new theme, and realize you have to go back and re-tag everything? 😩

Whether it's 10 comments or 10,000, that rework adds up fast. We dug into where the hours really go and what changes when technology helps with the heavy lifting (spoiler: your judgment stays in charge).

Give it a read 👇
https://hubs.la/Q04y7tMP0

Public comments come in all shapes and sizes. Whether an agency receives 10 responses or 10,000, the challenge is the same: turning individual comments into clear themes, meaningful insights, and i…

09/01/2026

We're growing, and we're excited to welcome Riccí Kearney to PublicInput as our new Technical Support Manager! 🎉

Riccí joins us with years of experience leading technical support and customer experience teams, including leadership roles at Apple and Relay Network. He brings a wealth of experience in customer support, technical operations, and team leadership, and we're excited to have his perspective on the team.

He's joining PublicInput at an exciting time, and we can't wait to see what we'll learn, build, and accomplish together.

New ideas, new perspectives, new possibilities. We're so glad you're here, Riccí! 💙