Vestavia Hills Listens has two participation channels:

• The Registered Channel: Sign in before or just after you submit your response. Either way, Open Town Hall will show your response on this website.
• The Unregistered Channel: Don't sign in and remain anonymous. Open Town Hall will just share your response with Vestavia Hills staff.

Note: The first time you sign in, you'll need to register (establish an account on Vestavia Hills Listens). Registration is free.

The City of Vestavia Hills has contracted with Open Town Hall to monitor responses shown on this website.

• To prevent any single user from dominating the forum, the City of Vestavia Hills restricts the number of responses any one user can post on selected topics. Registration helps Open Town Hall enforce this restriction.
• Users, staff and government leaders often want to know the neighborhood from which a response is posted. Open Town Hall uses registration to show the neighborhood next to each response (not the address).
• If a user posts a response that does not meet the City of Vestavia Hills guidelines for civility, Open Town Hall uses the user's email address to invite the user to resolve the issue.

Open Town Hall will get your contact information. The company is under contract with the City of Vestavia Hills to hold it in strict confidence per their privacy policy.

• Since you'll see your own response on Vestavia Hills Listens, you'll be able to confirm that your response was posted as you intended.
• You'll be able to change and/or delete your response as long as the topic is open.

Yes. Sign out, then set your privacy preference to be "No - just show it without my name to staff". You won't need to register.

While no authentication procedure can perfectly detect every fraudulent registration, Open Town Hall is able to secure the registered channel against systematic fraud: cases where users submit enough statements with fraudulent registrations to sway the overall interpretation of the feedback.

Open Town Hall is unable to secure the unregistered channel against systematic fraud, because unregistered users are anonymous.

Neither the registered nor the unregistered channel represent a certified voting system or ballot box - and that caveat is footnoted on every page of feedback. Instead, both are additional channels for feedback to government.

Users can participate on the registered channel (by signing in) or on the unregistered channel (by remaining anonymous). The City of Vestavia Hills offers both channels in order to broaden participation and maximize decision makers' insights.

The registered channel enables users to assure decision makers that their feedback comes from a real person in a specific neighborhood. It also enables users to participate in a public discussion on the website, as well as manage their own response after posting it.

The unregistered channel is for users who want to provide quick feedback without registering, and/or whose privacy concerns would prevent them from participating if required to register. Because many users with valuable insights will only share them anonymously, this channel gives decision makers the option to consider those insights in their deliberations.

OpenGovl is a non-partisan company whose mission is to broaden civic engagement and build public trust in government. The City of Vestavia Hills has contracted with OpenGov to administer Vestavia Hills Listens.