Corruption and scandals are disheartening to read about when it comes to your local government. But one of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is to pay attention.
Your city council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.
Thinking of attending for the first time? Here are some tips to get you started.
Figure out which government represents you
This seems like a no-brainer, but can actually be tricky to nail down. You might think you live in a neighborhood within L.A.’s city limits, but actually live in a separate city, or vice versa. Or you might think you live in a city but actually live in an unincorporated part of town, in which case you don’t even have a municipal government — you’re represented by the county board of supervisors.
You can input your address into these planning maps for L.A. County or Orange County to find out what city you live in, or if you’re in an unincorporated area. That will determine which government actually represents your neighborhood.
Once you know whether you live within a particular city’s jurisdiction or an unincorporated area of the county, you’ll know your main governing body for policies that impact where you live. If you live within a city — a mayor and city council vote on local rules. If you live within an unincorporated area of the county, your county board of supervisors makes the decisions.
Decide which meetings to attend
Who actually has power over the issue you’re interested in? Boards and commissions usually set policies for specific city departments, or provide recommendations to the mayor and city council. City councils and boards of supervisors pass legislation. (Here’s our election guides for L.A.’s City Council and L.A. County Board of Supervisors, which explains what they do.)
If you want to weigh in on the police department, you can attend a local police commission meeting. If you have thoughts about a new building being proposed in your neighborhood, your city’s planning commission meeting might be the place for it. Figure out which group has influence over the issue you care about, and see what’s coming up on their agendas. You can peruse your local government’s website to get a list of different boards and commissions.
Here are reference pages for the city of L.A., Burbank, Glendale, Santa Monica, Huntington Beach, Anaheim and Santa Ana.
Good to keep in mind: L.A. County and Orange County have 10 million and 3 million residents, respectively — and yet each county only has five representatives on their board of supervisors. The supervisors for both counties control budgets that, combined, total over $50 billion. With so much power in such few hands, those county supervisor meetings are important to keep an eye on in general.
Find meeting schedules and agendas
State law requires governments to publicly post an agenda at least 72 hours in advance of each meeting. That’s where you can find all the meeting details: when and where it’s happening, what topics will be addressed, and how to submit public comment.
City councils usually meet at least twice a month, although larger ones may meet weekly. Committees and boards tend to meet less often, typically once a month. You can find meeting schedules and individual agendas on your local government’s website, or posted physically at your city’s city hall. Often, you can sign up to have meeting agendas emailed to you when they’re available. Here are some examples of where to find what you need from Culver City, Huntington Park and Tustin.
If you can’t attend a meeting in person, many municipal governments offer live streaming or other ways to participate remotely. Those details should be on the government’s website and on the agenda itself.
Get familiar with meeting rules and common agenda terminology
A few norms to get acquainted with:
- Officials can only discuss and take action on items on the agenda. You can bring up other matters during the general comment period, but officials can’t get into discussions on those issues unless they’re on the agenda.
- Members of the public have a right to attend all public meetings. But portions of the meeting may be in a “closed session,” meaning it’s restricted to the public. This is only supposed to happen when officials discuss something that has to be kept confidential for legal or privacy reasons, like sensitive information about a city employee or a pending lawsuit.
- A “consent calendar” is part of the agenda that includes routine, non-controversial items that officials can approve in one motion without having to open up individual issues for discussion. Public hearings and votes on motions (an official proposal to do something, like launch a feasibility study or create a new task force) or individual legislation (laws that affect all residents in the city or jurisdiction) generally come later in the agenda.
Give public comment
Every public meeting allows community members to give comment, whether or not it’s about something on the agenda. You can give written comment via email or an online portal, or verbal comment in person at the meeting or, in some cases, by teleconference. The verbal comment period may have a time limit, with individual time limits per speaker. The meeting agenda will have specific instructions for giving public comment.
Jeanine Robbins of Anaheim, who often attends multiple city council and board of supervisor meetings a week, says it’s best not to wing it when it’s your turn to speak.
I always write it down so I don't lose my train of thought, and so I can get everything out that I want to say.
— Jeanine Robbins, Anaheim resident
"I always write it down so I don't lose my train of thought, and so I can get everything out that I want to say," Robbins said, adding that elected officials respond to public commenters in different ways. "It's very easy to get flustered up there. Some of them are staring at you, some of them are looking down and never once look up, some of them are on their laptop, some of them are on their phones."
The public comment period is also where you may get acquainted with some of the, ahem, more spirited contributions from other community members. Don’t be too surprised if you witness excessive profanity, a Joan Jett cover, a goat puppet or a surfer bro pop up at some of these meetings.
Keep participating! Tips from a local watchdog
It doesn’t have to end with that one meeting, or that one comment.
Cynthia Ward, a longtime civic activist in Anaheim, suggests setting up a Google alert for your city "so that any time something is happening in your city, that pops up in your feed." Then if you want your voice heard at a public meeting again, you’ll know what to do.
Even as “mind-deadening” as it can be to sit through a local government meeting, they’re vital for understanding how your city works, she said — so even if you can’t actively participate in each one, you can still livestream it and have it on in the background while you’re doing dishes or house chores.
“Even in the really boring stuff in those meetings, you get a feel for who’s who, you get a feel for which of your leaders is truly representing you and which ones are making excuses for lobbyists and developers and special interests,” she said. “And those are the ones that you need to watch for so that when the next election comes up, you're not playing eeny meeny miney mo at the ballot box."
LAist correspondent Jill Replogle contributed reporting to this piece.
