Click here to view the video

In order to be effective, municipal governments require involvement from the community. Through engaging the public in the decision-making process, municipalities are able to develop policies, programs, and initiatives that are accepted by various stake-holders while building trust within the community. Unfortunately, recent trends have shown that citizen participation in local decision-making is declining. Therefore, it is important that local governments seek new and interesting ways to engage their citizens.

Alberta municipalities have a wide array of needs for and resources that they can commit to engaging their citizens. As well, different activities require different engagement levels from the public. Sometimes informal conversations with the public or conducting a community survey is sufficient to acquire the information you need, whereas other times you may need to form a citizen committee to help make decisions.

This toolkit is intended to assist municipalities create an effective engagement plan by providing a usable set of tools to involve citizens in many different ways. The tool will guide you through the formation of a customized engagement plan that is created according to your needs. Through the catalogue of tools, techniques and best practices provided within the program, the toolkit can also be used as a quick resource on different engagement methods you can employ to help engage your citizens.

CET also incorporates aspects of the Public Input Toolkit developed by Alberta Municipal Affairs & Housing that provides municipalities with guidance on how to maintain good relationships with people through appropriate public input.

Click here to download the toolkit.

Instructions for CET Installation:

• Click on the Click here to download link above to begin downloading CET. Choose Run if you have a choice.
• The installer window will open. Install CET to the default location of "C:\"
• After CET has installed, enter your municipality name in the window provided. CET will finish installing. You may begin using it immediately.
• Note: CET installs a desktop icon for future use of the application. If you delete it, you can run C:\cet\citizen_engagement_toolkit.exe and the application will open. It will create a new desktop icon as well.

Print Page