TurningPoint Case Study

City of Hampton, VA

BACKGROUND

Hampton, Virginia is home to over 150,000 citizens in this seaside city located along the Chesapeake Bay. Established in 1610, the city has garnered national attention for its small town feel with the convenience of metropolitan life. Hampton was voted twice as an "All American City" by the National Civic League and one of the "Best Places to Live" by Money Magazine.

Assistant City Manager John Eagle oversees administration, leisure services and special projects for Hampton. After serving as the Director of Information Technology for eight years prior, Eagle continues to develop policy and look for new, innovative ways to apply technology. In December of 2009, Eagle discovered a way in which technology could aid in the most difficult budgeting process the city has ever faced.

THE CHALLENGE

When budgeting during the "great recession" Eagle and his team found it nearly impossible to cut costs across the board. Smaller departments would literally be forced to shut down operations, which made planning a budget a much more tedious and difficult process. During conversations on how to tackle the budget at a team retreat, the group partnered with the Hampton Roads Center for Civic Engagement to use response technology to answer difficult questions.

During the retreat, the department heads used polling software and response devices to have staff identify most important issues to the organization. Over 200 services were evaluated - from police force to libraries - and everything in-between. During the retreat, City manager Mary Bunting concluded that the use of response technology would be helpful during public outreach and looked to implement it into his own programs for budgeting.

Previously, the city would hold public meetings that presented pertinent issues, discussed possible options and handed out paper surveys to gather participant opinions. Sometimes the city implemented "dot voting" in which participants would move about the room and write out opinions on issues using large sheets of paper and use dot stickers to indicate support for particular services or programs. In most cases, the attendance and participation was low. The staff would frequently outnumber the audience. In order to encourage further involvement and obtain valuable data, the city implemented a response system.

THE SOLUTION

Eagle researched response technology and chose Turning Technologies' TurningPoint system. TurningPoint was used at the retreat, and after further investigation, he "felt that TurningPoint had the most advanced, stable system with a good customer base." Turning was also able to accommodate the request of providing the system, support and training to quickly begin the public forum program within a matter of a few weeks.

Dubbed the "I Value" campaign, the city advertised the various ways in which the community could connect to decision-makers, including attending meetings in which citizens could “vote” using electronic polling devices. Participants completed a similar exercise that the Hampton staff did internally at its retreat. During "budget week" Eagle and his team traveled around the city and held several meetings to gauge public opinion on budget topics. Over 200 slides were used to vote on a wide range of issues that varied from city programs to taxes in order to create a budget that took into the account the viewpoints of the public.

"In the past, we might have had 12 people attend our meetings and had very little community participation," said Eagle. "When we advertised that we would use the response technology during the meetings, people arrived in droves. We had around 80 people per session."

The sessions would review various services, asking questions such as "How important is this service?", "Should this service be eliminated?", "Should this service remain the same?", and "Should funding be reduced to this service?" Although not a referendum, the answers helped decision-makers gauge public opinion and adjust the budget accordingly. Due to the large number of slides, Eagle was nervous that TurningPoint wouldn't be able to handle the amount of input, but no problems arose even with the considerable amount of data. With the help of TurningPoint's reporting features, he was able to sort through the collected information and provide hard evidence for budget hearings.

"We obtained great data from those meetings, and it was really interesting because it didn't matter where we were - what age group, geography or income levels were - there was basic agreement across the board about what the community thought was important. We now have tons of data to back it up," said Eagle.

CONCLUSION

Eagle was amazed at the amount of responses that were received. Over the course of several meetings, nearly 600 people contributed opinions compared to a total of 25 from the previous year. The anonymity and immediate feedback that the system provided were just a few reasons why more attendees were willing to offer responses. Eagle believes that the system allowed more people who would normally not get involved to share viewpoints with the city.

"When you ask people to voice opinions in a group or sit down and take a survey - that's hard to do. Response systems are totally anonymous and you receive immediate feedback. It's nice to know that your vote counts and you can see whether or not the majority agrees with you," said Eagle. "We have had people complain about the city for years, claiming that we were not serious about asking for public opinion. Suddenly they were saying that this was the greatest thing that the city has ever done. The community loved it."

Reporting was a key feature to Eagle and his team, as the advanced functions provided for the collection of demographic information and the power to cross tabulate data. The ability to ask questions on-the-fly, adjust chart formatting and native integration with PowerPoint were also valuable to Eagle. "Overall, it's a cost effective way to allow people to do anonymous voting and receive real-time results. It helped us to get through the most difficult budget ever with community involvement."

For more information about Turning Technologies' audience response systems for your organization, contact us at 866-746-3015.