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| GovFeeds
STATE BRIEF |
COLORADO · AUGUST 2026 |
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THE QUESTION THIS WEEK
How Colorado governments are asking residents for input on social media
Sixty Colorado governments posted surveys, town halls and listening sessions this summer. The strongest ones told residents exactly what the input would be used to decide.
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| 📍 60 Colorado governments posted about surveys and public input · 267 posts since mid-July |
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THE SIGNAL
Every local government asks for input; far fewer say what happens to it. Colorado communicators spent this summer running that gap in both directions — some published a specific decision the feedback would shape, one published last year's results before asking again, and one held the meeting in a cafe instead of a council chamber. The common thread is that a request for input performs better when the resident can see the decision it attaches to.
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HOW CO GOVERNMENTS ARE SAYING IT
| WHEAT RIDGE |
41 engagements |
“68% rated the overall performance of city government as excellent or good, the highest score since surveys began in 2004.” The move: Publishing the result of the last survey is the most underused move in public engagement. Showing residents that responses get counted and reported — with a twenty-year baseline — is what makes the next survey worth filling out.
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| ADAMS COUNTY |
68 engagements |
“We value your feedback. Your responses to this survey, which will be open until the end of August, will help guide this amendments process” The move: A close date and a named process the input feeds into. Attaching the survey to a specific amendments track, rather than to general community sentiment, tells residents which decision they are actually influencing.
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| TOWN OF WINDSOR |
198 engagements |
“Join Windsor Town Board and Planning Commission at its public work session at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 3, at the Windsor Community Recreation Center (250 N. 11th St.) to learn more and leave written feedback about potential municipal code revisions” The move: Time, address, and the mechanism for participating — written feedback, which lets residents contribute without speaking at a microphone. The subject here is contested locally, and the post stays on logistics rather than position.
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| CITY OF GOLDEN |
86 engagements |
“City of Golden Mayor Laura Weinberg will be holding a Mayoral Town Hall at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, August 3, at Scully's Cafe, 1812 Miners Spur Road, Golden.” The move: A cafe rather than a council chamber, with the full address. Venue is a message: the room a government picks tells residents who it expects to show up.
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| CITY OF TRINIDAD |
38 engagements |
“Have ideas, concerns, or feedback about our community? Join us for the next City Leadership Listening Session and be part of the conversation that helps shape Trinidad's future.” The move: An open-agenda session with no single topic. It is the least specific ask in this brief, and it works as a standing invitation precisely because it is recurring — residents learn the session exists before they need it.
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THE PATTERN TO BORROW
Name the decision the input attaches to. "We want to hear from you" is the weakest sentence in public engagement. The Colorado posts that earned responses named a specific thing being decided — a code revision, an amendments process, a future plan — or, in Wheat Ridge's case, showed what happened to the answers last time. Publishing results is itself a recruitment tool for the next round.
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GovFeeds State Brief — a policy-focused, state-by-state companion to the GovFeeds weekly.
Topics are surfaced by engagement across Colorado local-government pages — not editorial endorsement.
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