Civic Genius is excited to announce an upcoming civic assembly in Snohomish County, WA! Kicking off this spring, the assembly will consider how the county should use AI to make services more effective and efficient. Read more in the Everett Herald.
Snohomish County will be the largest jurisdiction in the U.S. to rely on a civic assembly for public input, and the first to take on this pressing topic. FIDE North America will advise on design and conduct an evaluation of the process.
The county is a mix of diverse urban centers, agricultural land, protected forests, and three federally recognized Native American tribes. As in most of the country, denser areas lean blue and more rural areas lean red. In Everett (pop. 113,000), public school students are the children of both dockworkers and professionals and speak more than 50 languages. Rural Darrington (pop 1,500) is a world away, with some of the best hiking in the North Cascades.
It’s also a hub for dialogue and bridging divides. Snohomish County Councilmembers Nate Nehring and Jared Mead have been forces for common ground since 2021, writes the Everett Herald, when they “began conversations between themselves and with civic groups and high school students about how to bridge the growing partisan divide, leading to the creation of their Building Bridges Project.”
We’re excited to share the insights from this assembly as it gets underway, and welcome conversations with cities and counties that are interested in bringing deliberation to their communities.
