COQUITLAM, BC, August 26, 2021 – Your feedback is needed to help Coquitlam develop a Community Engagement Strategy that will guide how the public is involved in decisions for the community.
From now until Sept. 21, complete the online survey at letstalkcoquitlam.ca/engagement to share your experience. Whether you are regularly involved or have never engaged with the City at all, your feedback is equally important in determining what is working, and areas for improvement.
Once complete in fall 2021, Coquitlam’s new Community Engagement Strategy aims to:
- Examine the City’s current engagement model, identifying areas of successs and opportunities for improvement while ensuring consistency and industry best practices across the organization for participants. Specifically, it will follow the best practices of the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2).
- Provide clarity of when, how and who to engage.
- Consider how to enhance management of the data gathered through engagement activities.
- Bring more diverse perspectives to the decision-making process.
- Identify what additional resources may be required to support effective public participation.
Community Engagement Important for Decision-Making
Community and stakeholder engagement plays an essential role in shaping many of Coquitlam’s projects, policies and plans, and is one of many factors that the City uses to support informed decision-making. Coquitlam is committed to effective engagement that informs and involves people in the decisions that affect where they live, learn, work and play.
Engagement can vary through a range of opportunities, from very formal or legislated opportunities such as Public Hearings, to the annual statistically-valid Citizen Satisfaction Survey conducted by Ipsos, to public input sessions to provide feedback on specific projects.
The City also has formal feedback tools in place to support the City’s evolving engagement needs. This includes:
While Coquitlam has a long history of engaging with the public on a range of topics, awareness and interest in engagement activities has increased over the last number of years.
For example, in the 2019 Citizen Satisfaction Survey, residents expressed heightened interest in participating in surveys (+7 per cent year over year), online feedback forms (+5 per cent year over year) and in small community groups (+5 per cent year over year). When asked if they had participated in a municipal public consultation in the past two years, 27 per cent of respondents said they had – higher than the industry norm of 20 per cent. The City has also seen growing response rates to online surveys and there were more than 14,400 visits to the letstalkcoquitlam.ca portal in 2020.
Establishing a comprehensive Community Engagement Strategy represents the natural evolution of the City’s engagement activities.
Media contact:
Kathleen Vincent
Manager, Corporate Communications
City of Coquitlam
604-927-3019
media@coquitlam.ca