FAQs

Traditional public engagement usually involves attending public meeting or providing written submissions to the Town Council, and this can often be time consuming and inconvenient, and sometimes intimidating. Engage Amherst gives you the opportunity to have your say on issues that are important to you, at a time and place of your choice.

• It is a quick, safe, and convenient way to have your say on a range of issues and topics.
• It is a great way to keep up to date and contribute your views on issues affecting your community.
• You can see what other community members think about an issue or topic, respond with your own views, and engage in a discussion

Submit your feedback via the online discussion forums, quick polls, forms, and surveys relevant to each of the open projects.

To participate for the first time, simply:

• Sign up for Engage Amherst by clicking on the "Sign Up" or "Register" button on the top right of any page
• Choose a username and password
• Complete a few questions about yourself
• You will receive an email to validate your email address
• Return to the website and click the "Sign In" button

While registration is not required to access Engage Amherst, it is necessary for many of the more interactive engagement opportunities. We ask you to register to the website for a few reasons:

• Email Updates: It allows you to stay-in-the-know on project updates and events through periodic newsletters sent directly to your email. Easy peasy! You don't have to check the website, we send you updates.
• Equity Tracking: A goal of Engage Amherst is to hear from every person, neighborhood, and point of diversity - gender, age, race and ethnicity - in Amherst. Especially those we don't typically hear from! By registering we are able to better measure who we are hearing from online to ensure a broader set of perspectives are represented. These metrics also help us understand who we aren't hearing from, so we can get to them! As such, we encourage you to please answer all the optional demographic questions.
• It helps ensure that a broader set of perspectives have an opportunity to be represented by attributing feedback and frequency of feedback to individuals.
• It promotes accountability and encourages people to provide more thoughtful responses because feedback can be attributed to them.

Yes, you can use this website anonymously. Even when you register and post comments, your anonymity is protected because you are identified by your chosen screen name

All comments, ideas and suggestions are collated and used by the relevant project teams to inform the development of strategies, programs and activities, or to gain an insight into community views and opinions.

Often, feedback provided online is used in conjunction with other face-to-face consultation activities such as meetings, open houses or surveys.

When each project cycle closes, all contributions are compiled into a report, which will be included in the presentation and decision-making when considering the particular matter.

All feedback provided will be considered; however, this does not mean that every suggestion will affect the project or be adopted as proposed.

Note: All comments you make through this website will become public records for anyone to read.

Yes! Your privacy is absolutely protected, and the Town of Amherst will only use your email to contact you with updates. Your email address will not be distributed to any third party or used for any other purpose. We do not ask for your personal details or require them at any time as part of your participation. For more information, see the platform Privacy Policy.

All public comments are moderated 24 hours a day seven days a week, for inappropriate language, comments that disrespect other participants, and for comments that are off topic.

All moderation is carried out by Bang the Table and all moderation is independent to the Town of Amherst. The moderators do not edit or alter any comments and will only remove comments deemed to be significantly off topic, offensive or malicious, in which case they are removed from the site immediately and the person who posted the comment is advised by email. See the moderation policy (add link) for more details.