Boulder’s City Council is about to test out an interactive new “community-council forum” format for its upcoming meeting on Sept. 26.

Although the new format has never been tried in Boulder, the council members who spearheaded it hope it will fulfill the desire many community members have expressed for a new way to participate and give input earlier in the council’s decision-making process than ever before.

The council typically alternates between regular council meetings and study sessions. At regular meetings, the council listens to public comment and can make official decisions on policy. At study sessions, council members can’t take official votes or hear public testimony, but they do learn about and discuss complex issues affecting the city, and they often give direction to city staffers for up-and-coming policies.

The new meeting format combines some elements of standard council meetings and study sessions with new approaches aimed at better engaging the community. At the forum, council members and community members who have been invited to participate will start by listening to a presentation from city staffers on a policy issue. These community members will typically be people who are strongly affected by the issue or who have expertise in that area, according to materials.

After the presentation, community members and council members will break into groups and discuss the topic of the day. City staffers will facilitate those discussions. After some time spent discussing, the council and community members will reconvene and share the main themes of what each group discussed.

This inaugural community-council forum will focus on an economic development plan for Boulder. Business owners, workers and other people directly connected with the local economy were among the community members invited. Participants for these forums are chosen via a random lottery.

The new meeting format came about through the city’s partnership with the National Civic League Center for Democracy Innovation’s “Better Public Meetings” project, which seeks to improve experiences and outcomes in local government public meetings. Boulder was one of three communities chosen by the NCL for this pilot project. Former Councilmember Rachel Friend was the first council member to become involved with the project last year, and Councilmember Matthew Benjamin later joined her.

Friend and Benjamin worked together as an informal, ad hoc committee at first. But after Friend left office last year and the project started to pick up steam, the work was assigned to the Council Subcommittee on Engagement and a Welcoming Council Environment, of which Benjamin and Councilmember Tara Winer are currently members.

Benjamin told the Daily Camera he looks forward to working alongside community members and feels hopeful that the new format will help them feel more engaged.

“At the end of the day, I want people to feel that this isn’t performative, that they’re really engaged in a dialogue with their elected officials, and we are together as equals, thinking and brainstorming about how to tackle the issues at hand,” he said.

A little more than a week ahead of the forum, many of the logistics remain murky. Benjamin said he did not have details on which community members, or how many people, will participate in next week’s meeting.

At a meeting in June, when the council discussed the new format — originally called a “community study session” — the question of who would participate and how they would be selected was a point of contention. There was debate over how many people should be included and whether a random lottery system would capture a representative sample of the community.

It’s also not clear how many council members, community members and staffers will be in each group, or whether all of the groups will discuss the same questions or have completely separate discussions — and, if that’s the case, how someone watching the meeting could follow everything that’s going on.

The breakout sessions open up thorny questions about how these meetings will comply with the Colorado Open Meetings Law. Per the law, meetings with three or more council members discussing city business must be open to the public, and minutes must be taken.

Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, said Boulder’s new meeting format is unlike any he has seen and could make meetings harder for the public to follow.

“If they’re convening as a council, and then they’re breaking up into smaller groups, it’s still an open meeting,” said Roberts. “People who are there observing the meeting should be able to observe the meeting. It’s awkward that the meeting is in multiple parts, and you can’t be in five places at once.”

Notably, the breakout sessions are not expected to be recorded. Still, Benjamin said he didn’t believe there was a danger the breakout sessions could essentially turn into closed-door meetings since city staffers will take notes and the general conversation themes will be reported back to the larger group at the end. Staffers’ notes should also be accessible via Colorado Open Records Act requests.

Next Thursday will be the first of several community-council forums. Benjamin said changes can and likely will be made for future forums, and he expects some “growing pains” as the city continues to refine the new meeting format.

“If we fall flat on our face, and this thing just fails miserably, then we know, right? And I think, then, we know that there are limits to what you know engagement can look like in this community,” he said. “And if it’s successful, then we know that there’s a whole new avenue, a whole new pathway, for us to directly engage.”

A spokesperson for Boulder could not immediately be reached for comment.