Transparency and Community Engagement

Nothing hard happens in government without an organized group of residents behind it. I learned that lesson during my decade as a community organizer and I’ll never forget it.

That’s why we expanded transparency drastically and host town halls on important topics regularly.

• We transformed the office of Constituent Services into Community Engagement and Constituent Services, tasking it with engaging residents in the work of government through the CECS Newsletter and countless meetings.

• We created ArundelStat, a two-person team that works with all departments to create performance metrics, and then we created OpenArundel, the public portal through which these metrics are shared.

• We created the online Budget Tool and the new Budget BuDDE, and each year we host seven Budget Town Halls, one in each council district.

• The community engagement process to create our 20-year Plan2040 involved more residents than any planning process in the history of the county. We also held town halls on hate/bias, transportation, immigration issues, the pandemic, housing, forest conservation, smart growth, and much more.

• Expanded community notification and access to development plans, and are moving the whole system online so that all parties can review details from their homes and offices.