Marta L.Safety
A protected lane would make the school crossing less dependent on parent drop-off traffic.
6 replies in thread
Structured Civic Infrastructure
ForoCivic is a platform for city governments to turn public comment into structured, actionable insights that drive better decisions and stronger community trust.
Purpose-built for city managers, department heads, and municipal staff who need to transform public comment into actionable insights.
Meet the team
Founder-led, direct, and close to the work.
Our leadership team directly manages every pilot from onboarding to final deliverable. We provide end-to-end support for issue framing, software implementation, and ongoing moderation so your team can focus entirely on the insights.
Read the full team bios
Michael O'Donnell
Founder & CEO
Product development and hands-on municipal implementation.
Matthew O'Donnell
Director of Sales
Client acquisition, customer relationships, and municipal accounts.
Hayden Robinson
Co-Founder & CFO
Financial strategy, operations, and disciplined early-stage growth.
Cort Koester
Co-Founder & COO
Business strategy, customer engagement, and practical implementation.
SupportResident argument
The bike lane improves safety, but the city should publish a loading-zone plan for Oak Street businesses.
ConcernNeighbor reply
I support safer streets, but deliveries already block the curb. The design needs enforcement details.
QuestionStaff prompt
What delivery windows or curb rules would make the design workable during peak business hours?
Staff-ready organization
The same conversation becomes searchable by stance, theme, question, reply, and source when staff prepare a briefing.
Different approach
A structured place for civic reasoning, not just reactions.
Residents can post arguments, reply to one another, ask questions, and participate over time. Staff see not only what people prefer, but why they hold that view and what tradeoffs matter.
Arguments are sorted by support, concern, and question.
Replies stay connected to the claim they answer.
Tradeoffs become visible instead of buried in comment streams.
How it works
One issue becomes a usable civic record.
ForoCivic keeps the public process narrow enough to manage and structured enough to review: one local issue, one participation window, one record staff can carry forward.
01
Staff frame the issue
Staff create a public issue page with context, background documents, and specific questions for residents.
Output
Issue context and participation window
02
Residents deliberate
Residents post support or concern arguments, respond to neighbors, explain tradeoffs, and ask questions of staff.
Output
Threaded resident reasoning
03
Staff understand
ForoCivic organizes major arguments, participation patterns, areas of agreement and disagreement, and open questions.
Output
Staff-ready issue record
Product preview
What a ForoCivic issue looks like.
A public issue page gives residents context, argument threads, quick polls, documents, and staff updates in one reviewable place.
Surveys and deliberation
Surveys are useful. They are also limited.
A survey captures preferences. A structured message board captures reasoning. For most civic decisions, the reasoning is what staff actually need.
QuestionSurvey inputDeliberative input
Format
Fixed questions
Open structured arguments
What you learn
Preference percentages
Reasons, tradeoffs, concerns
Resident experience
Answer and submit
Read, respond, refine
Competing views
Not visible to residents
Visible and threaded
Staff record
Aggregate statistics
Structured public record
Council prep
Charts and numbers
Arguments, context, and Civic Brief
Polls still have a place. ForoCivic can include quick polls as a secondary tool. Polls are useful as a complement to deliberation, not a replacement.
For city staff
Built around how municipal staff actually work.
ForoCivic is not designed only for engagement officers at large agencies. It is designed for city managers, clerks, department heads, and staff who need to understand what residents are saying and explain it to council.
“We often go into a council meeting not knowing if we heard from the right people or just the ones who showed up.”
Less scattered feedback
Input stays attached to the issue instead of spreading across inboxes and meeting notes.
Better documentation
Arguments, staff updates, documents, and decisions remain in an issue-by-issue record.
Clearer resident reasoning
Staff can see claims, concerns, replies, and open questions without reconstructing context.
Public record by issue
Each participation window produces a record that can be reviewed and preserved.
Easier council preparation
The Civic Brief gives staff a concrete starting point for meetings and packets.
Confidence in coverage
Participation patterns and limitations are visible, including where the record is thin.
0
Participants
0
Arguments
0
Support
0
Concern
Major arguments
Finding 01
Supporters emphasize student safety, traffic calming, and a low-cost pilot before permanent construction.
Finding 02
Concerns focus on curb access, delivery operations, winter maintenance, and emergency routing.
Finding 03
Several residents on both sides ask for a six-month review with published safety and business-impact data.
Open questions from residents
- Which loading zones remain during construction and after launch?
- What maintenance cost is expected in winter months?
- How will the city measure whether the pilot should become permanent?
The brief summarizes participation patterns and all source arguments remain available in the full issue record. It is an aid for staff, not a replacement for judgment.
Civic Brief
The Civic Brief: The clarity of a survey. The depth of a deliberation.
When input closes, the ForoCivic engine transforms a public conversation into a structured executive summary for your council packet—saving staff days of manual spreadsheet work.
- Survey-Grade Metrics: Raw participation numbers and stance distributions at a glance.
- Consensus Discovery: Automatically maps hidden common ground between opposing sides.
- Friction Mapping: Isolates the precise arguments and tradeoffs driving community pushback.
- Council-Ready Prompts: Tracks outstanding resident questions so your team is never blindsided.
The brief is an aid for staff, not a replacement for judgment.
Pilot program
Start with one issue.
A ForoCivic pilot gives your community a structured place to discuss what matters, and gives staff a clearer way to understand what residents are saying. It is a supported engagement around real local issues, producing a public record and a concrete deliverable for staff and council.
Pilot includes
Guided issue setup with ForoCivic staff
Issue framing review before going public
Resident participation over 3 to 4 weeks
Moderation support throughout the pilot
Civic Brief for each issue at close
End-of-pilot report for staff and council