Order and Decorum in Government Meetings

Government agencies run public meetings under strict rules of order and decorum, designed to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in civil public discourse. These rules enable government agencies to:

• restrain speakers from disruptive speech,
• remove extremely disruptive speakers from meetings,
• limit each speaker's time to prevent any one person from dominating meetings,
• provide personal attention to anyone needing special assistance, and
• protect speakers' privacy by allowing them to speak without sharing their home address.

Order and Decorum in Open City Hall

Open City Hall™ is a public comment process monitored by Peak Democracy to have the order and decorum of a government meeting.

Moderation

Using software and staff, Peak Democracy inspects every statement for disruptive content. If a disruptive statement is found, Peak Democracy moves the statement to a separate web page and contacts the author. Read more »

Authentication

To prevent any one person from dominating the forum, each participant is limited to one statement per topic. To enforce that limit, and to identify which statements come from inside the community, Peak Democracy collects and authenticates each participant's real name, home address and email address. Read more »

Support

Peak Democracy provides personal attention via email to any user that requires special assistance - whether its a general question about Open City Hall or a technical problem in the user's browser. Read more »

Privacy

Peak Democracy does not share the user's registration information with anyone – not even with the government agency hosting the forum - without the user's consent. Read more »