What topics?

Organize your program to provide the information citizens need most. Feel free to include a comprehensive organizational chart or an outline of each department's many responsibilities in the binders, but don't feel compelled to speak about each topic. You will overwhelm your participants if you try cover every department in complete detail.

Instead, focus on what citizens are most likely to find useful or enlightening, and add a few experiences just for fun. For example, most citizens who work in a business environment will already be familiar with support functions such as purchasing, accounts payable, and fleet maintenance. But they may not know how health inspectors rate restaurant kitchens, the safety issues behind the move to automated garbage collection, or why a shopping center parking lot is no longer designed as a single huge expanse of pavement. Give your participants insight into how and why things are organized the way they are in local government, and you will keep their interest.

Most of the successful citizen academy or neighborhood college programs are organized along functional lines, with related departments presenting on the same evening. Examples of departments that often coordinate their sessions are Planning and Inspections; Water and Sewer; and Streets and Public Transportation. Similarly, those departments that serve residents in their leisure time are frequently grouped together: Parks and Recreation, Library, Senior Center, Museum, Civic Center, etc. Nearly all those running succcessful programs advised against scheduling Police and Fire for the same session, due to the intense citizen interest in each topic.

The most typical format is to begin with an overview of the elected body (Council Members, Commissioners, Aldermen), the City or County Manager's role, and the community's resources (Budgeting and Finance). A few start with a history of the community led by a local author or newspaper columnist. At least one community saves the Budgeting and Finance session for last, and uses a budget balancing exercise to tie together all that the citizens have learned about the organization. Many communities use creative and entertaining catch phrases to summarize each evening's topic (especially if they are covering multiple departments in a single session). A few representative agendas are summarized later in this guide under Sample agendas, and the comparison table includes links to more detailed agendas for each of the communities surveyed.

How many sessions?

Concerning the number of sessions, the range among those programs surveyed is 6 to 13, with an average of 8.8 and a median of 9. As you choose your topics and finetune the agenda, this number may move up and down. All those contacted for this survey stressed that the participants' level of interest and energy far exceeded their expectations, and that many sessions ran past the allotted time due to lively give-and-take both during and after each presentation. One community now deliberately schedules a very light agenda for one evening midway through the program, and asks the participants to suggest additional topics for that session based on their individual concerns.

How long per session?

The time period for each evening session varies from two to three hours. Nearly all the larger communities surveyed (those over 50,000 population) meet for three hours while the smaller communities generally meet for two hours per session. Two communities choose a middle ground, with sessions lasting for two and a quarter or two and a half hours. Consider your staff's schedule and other demands, and keep in mind the advice of those surveyed: sessions often last longer than scheduled due to question-and-answer periods running past the amount of time allotted. The length of each session is one variable that many communities have adjusted over time. The trend seems to be to shorten the time per evening while adding additional evenings to the schedule. In short, the best approach for your first academy or neighborhood college may be to schedule a little less content each evening than you think you can comfortably cover.