Case Study: Frederick County expands resident engagement and budget input with PublicInput

How Frederick County, MD Increased Their Reach

Frederick County, Maryland faced the challenge of engaging its diverse population of over 270,000 residents in critical budget discussions amidst fiscal constraints. With a significant number of non-English speakers and a large rural area, the county needed a way to achieve representative and inclusive public engagement to inform its financial decisions. To address this, they partnered with the vendor PublicInput, leveraging its community engagement platform.

PublicInput's solution provided a mixed-mode engagement approach, combining online, in-person, email, and phone interactions. Key features included multilingual translation for meetings and materials in over 100 languages, ongoing surveys for Spanish-speaking residents, and tools for analysis like automated comment tagging. This strategy resulted in enhanced accessibility, data-driven budget prioritization, and greater resident buy-in for difficult fiscal choices, making the entire process more efficient and defensible for the county staff.

Frederick County

Jan Gardner

Executive