Edmonton provides another Canadian example of a municipality using a citizen panel to help make decisions.  The municipal council struck a citizen panel - drawing on 49 randomly selected citizens - to help make recommendations for its 2010-11 budget priorities.

Edmonton has a pretty extensive public involvement policy that sets rigorous standards for how the public is to be informed and involved; a partnership has also been struck with the University of Alberta to establish a Centre for Public Involvement.

I know the mayor is committed to stepping up our public involvement game here in London town, and an internal process is underway among city staff - so I’m feeling very positive that we’ll see some very interesting public involvement experiments during the next term of Council. I hope that we try a bunch of different ideas until we land on a mix of involvement opportunities that work best for our municipality. 

In the spirit of doing my part to help London become a leader in citizen involvement - and also in the spirit of turning my insomnia into a positive - I’ll keep pulling examples for consideration.