Lakewoodspeaks: Solution or Problem?

Guest post from Lenore Herskovitz

Lakewoodspeaks is touted by city staff and its platform provider Peoplespeak as a place to make hearings “Inclusive. Transparent. Easy. Convenient.” Theoretically, this sounds very impressive but in reality, this costly site has been plagued with numerous problems.

Between 5/10/2018 and 12/21/2022 the City paid Peoplespeak a total of $270,800.00. According to the financial ledger we are presently spending $4,400 a month for this service. Unfortunately, there are many problems that have persisted over the years including which city website to use to locate information, how to successfully phone in a comment, how to post comments on Lakewoodspeaks, what are the specific rules pertaining to public comments, and the technical difficulties when viewing meetings from home.

Recently there has been an issue when completing submission of a written comment. The CAPTCHA function which verifies valid users indicates “failed” but when you press submit it goes through anyway. The city clerk and provider are aware of the problem, but it has remained unresolved for weeks now.

On February 13th, the City posted a comment by an individual claiming to be “Terrified in Ward 1”, clearly a violation of the rule prohibiting using a false identity. The commenter began with a criticism of the way a city councilor had handled an interaction with an attendee at the February Ward 1 meeting then veered off topic into a personal attack on the councilor and a planning commissioner referring to them as “dangerous ghouls”. Through an open records search, the true identity of the commenter was discovered. That individual had not even been present at the Ward meeting.  The city clerk had wanted to deny a posting based on the false identity violation and also suggested citing the policy against personal attack. His recommendation was overruled after several days of deliberation and the inciteful post appeared on Lakewoodspeaks. The city responded to several citizen complaints about this by removing the recommended moderation policy. The new one is vague and weaker regarding what can be printed. Instead of removing comments that violate the guidelines which is the protocol for other Peoplespeak cities (including Wheatridge and Grand Junction), Lakewood requests citizens “to please refrain from the practices”.

There is an addition to the policy which states “Comments that are not protected by the 1st amendment will be redacted or removed”. When the city clerk was contacted for a clarification of specific comments that would not be protected by the 1st amendment, the response was sending the link to the moderation policy.

Mayor Paul talks about decorum at the beginning of public meetings. Because Lakewoodspeaks has changed their guidelines regarding written comment submissions the gates to misinterpretation have been opened. Will decorum requirements be the same for written, in person and phone in comments?  Hopefully, the confusion will not lead to more divisiveness or discourage people from participating in hearings.

There is also confusion because the city has several websites. The greatest problems are with Lakewoodspeaks.org and Lakewood.org. At times there seems to be overlap and at other times conflicting information is posted. At the Annual Council Planning session this year, Mayor Paul suggested a “one stop shop” approach. Since Lakewood.org is the official City website all information could be filtered through this platform. We could adopt a policy similar to the one in Golden, Colorado where comments are reviewed by the City clerk’s office and posted on the city’s website (see image below).

So, is Lakewoodspeaks a problem or a solution? While the aspirational concept is promising, the reality for Lakewood has been less than stellar. Peoplespeak is expensive and riddled with unresolved problems. Now Lakewood doesn’t even follow the moderation guidelines used by other cities with the same platform. Let’s apply the “one stop shop” approach by consolidating our many sites into Lakewood.org. This would eliminate the need for Lakewoodspeaks. Encourage accessibility by simplifying rather than complicating. It can be done, and it should be done.

One last thought, platforms are only meaningful when citizens want to be involved. That desire quickly dissipates when the decision-makers, including staff and elected representatives, disrespect their constituents by not responding to their concerns with action.

Corrected 3/10/2023 to remove information regarding moderation policies found to be incorrect.