Civic Engagement: What Can Residents Do? A Multi-part Plan

Become aware of local issues, especially within your ward. (And when I say 'aware', I'm talking about a level more akin to understanding what's right and wrong with your favourite sports team, not to roughly understanding what the weather forecast is.)

Read your Councillor's blog or site, comment, contribute. (Push them electronically. Initiate dialogue yourself. Use the medium to its full advantage. People defend cell phones for kids with the rationale that the technology can help provide a level of safety, security. The same can be said about online access regarding improving the relationship of engagement between residents and their Councillors.)

Read online neighbourhood/community sites, comment, contribute. (Again, online access is a tremendous mechanism not only for information, but for change.)

Join neighbourhood associations, community groups. (Take the activism offline and 'into the streets', as it were. When those of a like-cause meet, it helps keep everything real.)

Engage your Councillor directly. (Emails and phone calls are nice...in-person is better. If we're ever to rid ourselves of the 'Us vs Them' mentality, if we're ever to decrease the 'tally of cynicism', if our residents are ever to have a positive default reaction to the phrase 'local politics', then we need to accentuate our humanity.)

Attend 'town hall meetings', either the brick-and-mortar or electronic kind. (This serves multiple purposes. It puts faces to names, both on the 'online neighbourhood' sense, and also regarding the Councillor. It also provides a more visceral opportunity to engage; we are, remember, skin-and-bone, not mouse-and-keyboard.)

Inject civic awareness into your family's awareness. (Think of it as the political equivalent of 'Neighbourhood Watch', or 'street-proofing' your children.)

Add your voice to the efforts to have 'Civics' taught more thoroughly, with more conviction in our schools. (Changing attitudes towards civic engagement has a parallel in changing attitudes towards health and fitness. It starts in the home...but must be deepened in the schools.)

Express your civic interest via groups like neighbourhood garbage cleanups and 'Bylaw Crawls'. (Talk is cheap, actions can be both invaluable, but also inspirational.)

At election time, inform yourself about the candidates. (Currently people put more time and effort into deciding what vacation destination they're heading to, what vehicle they're going to purchase...what film they're going to see.)

Vote, and do so using an informed, qualified opinion. (Although this should actually be more an end result of all of these actions contributing to the sea change in how people regard civic engagement than a goal in itself, it's still as tangible an end result as we could hope for.)