City of Brantford’s Public Consultation Task Force hosted a public meeting to discuss options for strengthening community engagement at City Hall on Saturday, February 1, 2025.
The meeting is just one of three scheduled events designed to get public feedback on how to enhance the City’s public consultation framework.
Maria Visocchi, Brantford’s Director of Communication and Community Engagement, started off the meeting with a presentation about the current system and the opportunities for public engagement that already exist, as well as how the City communicates those opportunities to residents.
“The Public Consultation Task Force was struck by Council last year with a mandate to enhance and empower citizens’ input into the decision-making process. While the City has a very established protocol for the way in which we engage, there is engagement that needs to be done, specifically by some departments across the organization where we have a duty and an obligation to consult; we do all of that and it’s a pretty turnkey process,” she said. “There are initiatives and projects where we have a little bit more discretion on how we engage and when we engage, and so those are the ones that we want to work on improving and making sure that people are aware that opportunities exist, and making sure that people feel that their voices matter and that their input will be meaningful in a way that will inform Council’s decisions.”
Visocchi said that while the City already has an online digital engagement platform called Let’s Talk Brantford, the task force is trying to offer more in-person opportunities, engage with under-represented groups and promote inclusivity.
“We feel like we do a pretty good job with older members of our community. [Those that are] 55-plus tend to be the ones in our city that provide us with the most input and seem to have the most discretionary time to attend meetings like this or to complete city surveys,” she said. “So, we want to reach some of the other groups, like the busy parents and some of the youth between the ages of 18 and 24. Those are groups that we feel are underrepresented. …We also want to promote inclusivity in decision making. …The city is growing exponentially, and we need to make sure that all groups feel included in the decision making process.”
Visocchi added that while at times residents may feel like their input isn’t taken into consideration, she wanted to reiterate that everything that is submitted is taken into account.
“It’s really a very challenging job for the Council to have to balance the views of those who will be most impacted by a particular project or issue or initiative, with the interests of the City as a whole,” she said. “That’s always the challenge for any elected official, but we want to reiterate to anybody that provides input, it is read, it is put into a record, it is analyzed, and it is provided to Council as well as to staff, to inform future recommendations and to inform whatever decisions that Council is making that relates back to why we have engaged.”
Noting that the City’s current community involvement framework, which acts as a guide for staff on how to engage on different subjects, at over ten years old, it’s now dated.
“It does not really account for all of the technological and digital ways in which people expect to be able to engage, so this is an opportunity to update that document,” said Visocchi.
Currently, the City lets people know about various engagement opportunities via several platforms including: online surveys (Let’s Talk Brantford), social media platforms (Facebook having the highest level of engagement), in-person townhalls, public information centres, local City-hosted events, utility bills, online, print and radio advertising, as well as outdoor advertising.
Following Visocchi’s presentation, she opened a facilitated discussion for those attending both online and in-person.
When asked if the City had a newsletter that goes out to the residents, Visocchi clarified that yes, there are a number of them including some for tourism and some for specific projects, as well as a monthly Let’s Talk Brantford newsletter that lists all the different opportunities to engage.
“We also have a hard copy newsletter that we do on a quarterly basis. Those don’t go to every single household as that would be expensive for us to produce and send, but we do offer that on the City’s website, and we do promote that on our social media,” she said. “I would recommend that if you want to be on all of the City’s newsletter email list, just email us at communications@branford.ca and we’ll add you to all of the databases.”
Lucy Marco, Executive Director of the Grand River Council on Aging, then took the opportunity to let people know that the GRCOA also has a newsletter that people can sign up for.
“We publish a newsletter every other Friday, and every city request for Let’s Talk Brantford is covered and it’s always in there,” said Marco. “…That newsletter is also published and printed and is in retirement homes, churches and across the community.”
She suggested that if anyone was interested in that newsletter, you can sign up by visiting www.grcoa.ca
Another resident also took the opportunity to ask how many responses the City gets on a regular basis when doing a Let’s Talk Brantford survey.
“In terms of responses, it really does depend on the subject matter and so it varies. If it is a subject that is something wide ranging, say about traffic across the city, we would normally get between 1,000 and 1,500 people who engage,” responded Visocchi. “If it’s something that is neighbourhood specific, probably a couple of hundred. This campaign. So far, we have 400 responses, so it really does depend on the campaign and the level of interest from the community. In terms of our population, it doesn’t seem like a high number, but a few years ago we did a communication strategy and we engaged people with an online survey where we had about 1,500 responses. I remember the consultant telling us that that was an overwhelming level of participation for that subject, because they worked for larger communities where they would think that 500 was successful.”
Other residents later brought up questions surrounding getting in touch with their Ward councillors and having the opportunity to speak as a delegation at City Hall, as well as being unable to attend certain public consultation meetings due to the dates and times they are held.
As well, some suggested that the City put out clear and accessible information in plain language in regards to municipal decisions, and Visocchi agreed.
“That’s a very good suggestion, and actually what came up at the last meeting we held was, ‘is there a way that we can communicate the decisions that Council are considering, and then the decisions that they made in more plain language,” she said. “…I do think that we can do a better job of regularly posting something in plain language saying, ‘these are the items that council will be considering, and if you want to engage on these items, here are the opportunities to do that.’”
The presenters later noted that if any other residents would like to have a say in how the City moves forward with its public engagement process, to partake in the current Let’s Talk Brantford survey. They also encouraged residents to attend the next public meeting, which will be held at the Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre in the Tournament room on Thursday, February 13 at 6:00 p.m.
For those interested in watching the full discussion, you can visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abxGacPjxYQ to watch the full meeting.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
