Every year in the Fall, the City of Fountain holds a Citizens Academy. This 9-week course is designed to help connect our citizens with our City government and to help inform them of all aspects of the City organization. Mayor Ortega and I were able to welcome the incoming class of the Academy last night and, as always, are very excited for what our departments have in store for participants.
A typical academy will have around 15-20 class participants and meets once/week (usually Thursday evenings) for 9 weeks. Each week, one of our departments host the class and engages with them on issues pertaining to that department. For example, next week is the Parks & Recreation week where participants will jump on a City bus and visit Parks throughout our community – getting a sense of what our community has to offer; the challenges of providing Parks & Recreation; and sharing ideas relative to what we can do to improve our Parks and/or Recreational offerings. Future nights with the Police, Fire, Utilities, and other departments will have a variety of hands-on activities and some great conversations around what we do and how we could do it better.
This year represents our third Academy and the success of the program just seems to be building! Surveys of past classes have indicated that participants have really enjoyed the experience and our own Departments value this opportunity to “show off” what they do. Through this Academy we’re also helping to grow and train our future leaders – whether they be for elected positions, appointed positions, commissions, boards, or committees.
It may be a little too late to join this year’s Academy, but I would really encourage you to consider joining it next year at this time. . . truly a worthwhile experience!