Sep 21, 2026 · 49 min · 18 segments
This week, we're joined by Joe Snyder, CFO of Rochester Hills, Michigan, to talk about what happens when citizen engagement moves from less frequent public hearings to a year-round digital portal. We…
Justin MarloweHost
Liz FarmerHost
That's a really interesting transition and one that I imagine a lot of governments either are looking at or shifting to.
One of the things that reminds me of is during the pandemic, there was a moment when everyone was trying to figure out how to create this access online.
But one of the things that I remember from those days, especially in the pandemic, but also having been a local reporter at town council meetings or city council meetings, there's almost always kind of the same people there with the same complaints.
And justified often, but certainly not a representative picture of what the whole constituency may or may not be feeling.
Often it's just those loudest voices, though, that get heard, the sticky wheel and the grease and all those things.
But certainly when you're making big financial decisions that affect everybody, it's hard to know how much weight to put on those things.
And even when it's a larger situation, you can still have a whole group of people rallying around something that might amount to like 2% of the budget, but it gets all the attention.
So curious if anything in particular kind of bring to mind in the pre-platform days for Rochester Hills that kind of illustrates that.
We've got our handful of regulars that might attend our council meetings or come to the once a year budget public hearing.
into that quandary where, you know, you need to listen to the loudest speaking person at the mic that night.
many times what we've found, they're single issue people or they just have one issue that drives them up.
So that was really the nice part of, you know, when we, partnered with with cleargov to bring on their financial engagement portal it provided a alleyway for feedback from you know more of a cross-section of our 78 000 residents and truly our silent majority of residents um you know these are residents you know they pay their taxes they use our service and they're they're generally very satisfied folks so they don't really feel the need to take a night or two per month to go town council meetings to you know, air their grievances and things like that.
That's a really interesting transition and one that I imagine a lot of governments either are looking at or shifting to.
One of the things that reminds me of is during the pandemic, there was a moment when everyone was trying to figure out how to create this access online.
But one of the things that I remember from those days, especially in the pandemic, but also having been a local reporter at town council meetings or city council meetings, there's almost always kind of the same people there with the same complaints.
And justified often, but certainly not a representative picture of what the whole constituency may or may not be feeling.
Often it's just those loudest voices, though, that get heard, the sticky wheel and the grease and all those things.
But certainly when you're making big financial decisions that affect everybody, it's hard to know how much weight to put on those things.
And even when it's a larger situation, you can still have a whole group of people rallying around something that might amount to like 2% of the budget, but it gets all the attention.
So curious if anything in particular kind of bring to mind in the pre-platform days for Rochester Hills that kind of illustrates that.
We've got our handful of regulars that might attend our council meetings or come to the once a year budget public hearing.
into that quandary where, you know, you need to listen to the loudest speaking person at the mic that night.
many times what we've found, they're single issue people or they just have one issue that drives them up.
So that was really the nice part of, you know, when we, partnered with with cleargov to bring on their financial engagement portal it provided a alleyway for feedback from you know more of a cross-section of our 78 000 residents and truly our silent majority of residents um you know these are residents you know they pay their taxes they use our service and they're they're generally very satisfied folks so they don't really feel the need to take a night or two per month to go town council meetings to you know, air their grievances and things like that.
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