The book
Citizen Playbook
How to Monitor and Influence Local Government
Local government has an enormous effect on everyday life, but many people don’t know where decisions are made, how to follow them, or what to do when something doesn’t look right.
Citizen Playbook gives ordinary citizens a practical way to understand the process, find useful information, ask better questions, and become involved before important decisions are out of their hands.
ISBN 978-0-9772025-6-0
What readers will learn
- How to find meeting agendas and recognize important items
- How to read staff reports, contracts, budgets, and supporting documents
- How to ask questions that are harder to avoid
- How to make useful public-records requests
- How to communicate with elected officials and staff
- How to speak or write effectively during public comment
- How to bring attention to an issue without losing focus
- How to follow a decision after the vote
- How one person can make a meaningful difference
The author
Built from real experience
Mike Webb has spent years following local government decisions, reading public documents, attending meetings, challenging laws, working with elected officials, and helping citizens understand issues affecting their communities.
His stories show what citizen involvement looks like in real life. Sometimes it means reading documents, tracing a public claim back to the facts, or asking the question everyone else has overlooked. Sometimes it means getting neighbors involved, walking affected property with officials, challenging an unnecessary project design, or turning an issue into proposed legislation.
Where to buy
Citizen Playbook is available as a print paperback through Amazon.
Put some of what you learn into practice
The Citizen Playbook app provides tools for specific tasks, including finding officials, examining public documents, preparing records requests, and drafting public comments. The book provides the broader instruction and context that the app isn’t designed to replace.