How We Reached Out
The city identified three target audiences for outreach that included the community, neighborhood associations, and partners who work within the development community. We did a combination of virtual and in-person events hosted by city staff and individual organizations. One targeted event, which is a continuous relationship to foster our young residents, was presenting and discussing Module 3 to the Urban Studies and Community Development class at Boise State. Other community partners that we continue to engage with include Urban Land Institute (ULI), Boise Young Professionals, NeighborWorks, Boise Regional Realtors, Building Contractors Association of SW Idaho, and safe streets advocates.
The open house was designed to provide participants an opportunity to get acquainted with navigating the materials with staff that are well versed in the proposed changes. In conjunction with the community conversations, an online digital open house and PowerPoint was created on the city’s website. This allowed residents to walk through the same presentation given at outreach events and provide comments and feedback.
The city used various advertising and marketing channels to reach residents about the upcoming outreach related to Module 3. We advertised the events through multiple city social media channels, the city’s weekly newsletter - In the Know, the Zoning Code Rewrite email list and earned local media publications from KTVB, Idaho Statesman, BoiseDev, and NPR. Local partners and neighborhood associations also advertised the events on their respective communication channels.
Outlined below is the list of events the city hosted throughout the community. The PowerPoint presentation from the open houses can be found as an addendum to the report.
DATE | EVENT | PARTICIPANTS | TYPE |
October 13, 2022 | Timberline High School | 20 | In-person |
October 17, 2022 | Borah High School | 28 | In-person |
November 3, 2022 | Capital High School | 35 | In-Person |
November 8, 2022 | Zoom | 41 | Virtual |
November 16, 2022 | Ada County Library at Victory | 35 | In-person |
During outreach, there was an entrance survey that captured demographics of who attended the in-person meetings. We were able to collect 72 responses out of approximately 148 in-person attendees. It is important to mention that there were repeat participants at each meeting, they were only asked to fill out the survey once. The information collected from the survey shows that 80 percent of attendees are homeowners and 20 percent are renters. We saw a variety of ages amongst homeowners and 57 percent of renters fell in between the age category of 18-24. We had equal representation from all planning areas within the City of Boise. However, we did not see equal representation in terms of race and/or ethnicity, 82 percent identified as white, five percent as Hispanic/Latinx, one percent African American/Black, one percent east Asian, and 10 percent preferred not to answer. The last question on the survey, “how did you hear about this event?” was posed so that we can collect information on our communication efforts. The results show that there was an equal spread of residents that heard about our outreach efforts from various communications channels.