City of Grand Junction Planning Commission Provides Online Public Hearings

People Speak Provides Inclusive, Convenient, Easy, Transparent Public Hearing Engagement Platform 

The City of Grand Junction has boosted their Public Hearing meeting accessibility and citizen engagement with the People Speak Public Hearing Engagement Platform. 

City of Grand Junction public hearings are available at http://gjspeaks.org/ where citizens can review the materials for issues at upcoming meetings, leave public comments that are reviewed by commissioners, and join the meeting remotely to watch the live stream and provide input during the meeting. 

People Speak’s Public Hearing Engagement Platform gives citizens a chance to review the same information online and they would in-person, replicating the core elements of public hearing, including presentations. Citizens can access items that matter to them, without sifting through massive quantities of information and hours of live meetings. The online presentation exceeds the transparency of live public hearings, providing acknowledgment of public input, decision, and status updates to citizens. 

People Speak’s packet management features make publishing public hearing materials very efficient, with batch upload, Word to PDF conversion, and PDF combine – it is possible to publish a complete meeting in just minutes. Workflow automation eliminates previously manual tasks for staff, bringing further efficiencies to the management process. Deployment and the ease-of-use of the People Speak Public Hearing Engagement platform makes starting very quick – the City of Grand Junctionally Planning Commission initially inquired about the software in late March and were able to go live and have the first online public hearing by mid-April.   

“We held our first planning commission meeting last night and conducted a full quasi-judicial hearing. Our planning commissioners really liked utilizing the platform and were impressed at how quickly we were able to get this up and running. We are so pleased with your responsiveness, willingness to troubleshoot and help train, and your attention to detail.”

- Tamra Allen, City of Grand Junction Community Development Director

The City of Grand Junction is the largest city in Colorado’s Western Slope region. With over 60,000 residents, it is known as the hub of Colorado’s wine country.