[tptacek]

All civic tech is awesome, but a word of advice (may or may not be applicable in your particular neck of the woods, but definitely is in mine):

Public comment is one of the least effective mechanisms for influencing policy, at least at the margin. You can drastically amplify your influence with a simple change: move from public to private commentary, directly and personally addressing your state and local reps. They all have email addresses and I think it's more likely than not you'll be surprised when they (and it'll actually be them, not some factotum) respond to your email.

This would stop working if everybody did it, but I live in an unusually (famously, in fact) engaged municipality and have been unreasonably successful at influencing policy and the evidence I see is that almost nobody does this.

There's probably a civic tech thingy to do here. Though I'd also be mindful of the appearance of canvassing. My experience is that decisionmakers very quickly clock canvassing efforts, and then mentally bucket input into "low-effort" and "high-effort", often in a way that amplifies smaller interests.

I also think you can probably get a long way just by doing a better job than your policy adversaries at presenting information. Another thing I've noticed reps quickly clocking: the commenters who clearly have never read a budget, or who don't know the difference between an Enterprise Fund and the General Fund. These are also problems tech can solve, by digesting and contextualizing data so people can present informed (or informed-sounding) arguments.

[pacbard]

Regarding public comments, I don't believe a good politician will make a snap decision at the dais following public comments. Most of them will have received the meeting agenda in advance and formed an opinion about how they are going to vote and the questions they are going to ask. If this is the case, public comment is just a waste of time for them, as they won't really get swayed by it. At most, they will mention a point that a public commenter made to support something that they were already going to do.

Emailing them privately in advance of the meeting will give them the opportunity to think about your input and, in some cases, reply and engage with you about the policy. It might not change their mind, but it will definitely help them see others' perspectives on their upcoming decision.

[tptacek]

In the best case, you're betting on some subset of whatever board showing up not having counted the votes they need for their preferred outcome. If something's on the agenda, it's because the board wanted it on the agenda!