With Chapel Hill’s newly elected mayor and town council members now in office, remember how several challenger candidates back during this fall’s election claimed that the former mayor and council members weren’t listening to the people?

In contrast, some folks felt that those candidates simply failed to comprehend the difference between being heard and getting their way, or that they didn’t like the fact that their like-minded constituents weren’t calling the shots as they did back in the olden days.

Understandably, those candidates and their supporters bristle at those cynical notions.

So now that several of those challengers are elected officials, it’s their time to prove their naysayers wrong: If our newly-elected mayor and council members are really interested in hearing the people—all the people—it’s time they lead the charge to expand the ways Chapel Hill’s town government solicits our resident’s feedback.

Right now, the primary way you, as a resident, can make sure the town council hears your opinion is to appear in person at a public hearing.  Here’s how it works:  You go to a town council meeting at Town Hall at 7:00 P.M. and sit there until well past 11:00 P.M. on many evenings.  Then, when they eventually call your name, you have three minutes to give a speech on the issue under discussion.

By relying almost exclusively on this in-person public hearing system to solicit residents’ feedback, our mayor and town council don’t merely miss out on residents who don’t consider spending the evening watching town council meetings in person less compelling than anything on Netflix.  They are also systematically shutting out many segments of our town from the conversation, including parents with young children, nurses working second shift, students with evening work study jobs, and many others in our community who are simply not able to spend an entire evening in person at town hall, no matter how important the issue may be to them personally.  In an era when you can facetime Japan on your iPhone, relying exclusively on the in-person public hearing is antiquated and guarantees only a small number of our residents will have the opportunity to participate in the discussion of important local issues.

If our newly elected mayor and council members are genuinely interested in listening to the wide variety of people who call Chapel Hill home, not just those residents who agree with their agenda, creating real opportunities for residents to join the conversation beyond the in-person public hearing is the perfect way to prove it.  It would also leave a powerful and progressive legacy that would serve our community long after this council term has ended.

If, however, Chapel Hill’s elected officials choose instead to continue to rely primarily on the public hearing for public engagement, our elected officials are also choosing to intentionally limit their listening to those residents who have an entire evening to spend with them at town hall, undermining their promise to listen to the people.

I encourage town leaders to choose the inclusive option.

By Matt Bailey