How Frederick County, MD Scaled Engagement to 14,000+ People While Automating the Public Record

At a glance

• 14,045 people engaged since 2020
• 1,411 public meetings
• 999 meetings automatically transcribed
• Over 1,700 residents shaped a 10-year housing plan

Frederick County, Maryland has more than 300,000 residents spread across rural and suburban communities, and nearly 1 in 5 speak a language other than English at home. Reaching them all traditionally means more staff, more meetings and more cost. Instead, the county runs its surveys, public meetings, transcripts and reporting on a single platform, PublicInput, and has grown participation without growing overhead.

Turning Resident Voices into a 10-Year Housing Plan

In 2025, Frederick County asked residents to help shape its Housing Needs Assessment and Affordable Housing Strategic Plan. Over 1,700 residents took part through the 10-Year Housing Study survey and left 1,950 comments.

County Executive Jessica Fitzwater and City of Frederick Mayor Michael O’Connor released the results on February 19, 2026. The plan estimates the county needs about 20,000 affordable homes for households earning under $75,000 and 32,000 new homes overall by 2035. It sets 5 goals and 26 strategies to get there, all with a documented public basis.

Automating Accessible Public Meetings

Frederick County has run 1,411 public meetings on PublicInput. Automated transcripts cover 999 of them (1,626 transcripts from about 2,174 hours of audio), which cuts manual note-taking and gives residents a searchable record. The County Council’s virtual meeting room alone has drawn 2,394 participants and 3,196 comments.

Meeting pages, captions and transcripts can be translated into more than 100 languages automatically. Residents have viewed pages in 16 languages and commented in English, Spanish and Portuguese. A dedicated survey of Spanish-speaking residents drew 1,062 answers and 261 comments from 70 respondents, showing staff where residents faced barriers to county services.

As former County Executive Jan Gardner said in 2022, “We are stronger when everyone has a voice in how our county operates.”