Nestled in southeastern Tennessee, Chattanooga is home to just over 180,000 residents. The city is a growing regional hub that values both innovation and inclusivity. But like most municipalities, Chattanooga faces the perennial challenge of allocating a limited budget in a way that reflects the diverse needs and priorities of its residents.
Each budget cycle presents a powerful opportunity to distribute resources and build trust, deepen engagement, and connect with residents in meaningful ways. The City of Chattanooga chose to meet that moment with Zencity.
The Challenge: Going Beyond the Vocal Few
City leaders knew that creating an equitable, $317M budget meant hearing from more than just the usual voices. Traditional budget engagement methods—town halls, static surveys—were falling short. Not only was turnout low, but participants rarely reflected the full diversity of the community.
The stakes were high: without broad input, budget decisions risked being guided by a narrow slice of the population, leaving gaps in representation and potentially eroding trust. Chattanooga needed a way to dramatically expand its reach, deepen understanding of resident priorities, and take meaningful action based on community feedback.
The Zencity Solution: Inclusive, Timely and Actionable
Zencity empowered Chattanooga to design a multi-layered engagement strategy rooted in equity, transparency, and scale.
Reach: The City connected with over 300 residents through virtual workshops and online surveys—far beyond the typical turnout. Even more impressively, Zencity’s platform captured and analyzed over 18,800 organic interactions from social media across all nine city districts. These weren’t just more voices they were voices the City had never heard from before.
Understand: Zencity’s tools synthesized all input – survey results, workshop comments, and social media discussions – into clear, actionable insights. A tailored dashboard visualized resident sentiment in real time, flagging both common themes and critical pain points.
Act: Equipped with rich, data-backed understanding, Chattanooga’s CFO and Budget Team integrated resident priorities into the final budget plan. Key themes included the need for stronger police-community relations, better schools, safer streets, expanded youth programs, mental health services, and economic development.
The Impact: A Budget Built on Belonging
For the first time, Chattanooga was able to move beyond anecdotal input and create a budget grounded in broad, representative feedback. The City also used Zencity to close the feedback loop sharing results publicly and tracking how residents responded to that transparency.
This isn’t just a new way to build a budget. It’s a new way to build community.
By combining surveys, social listening, and sentiment analysis in one powerful platform, Zencity helped Chattanooga connect with residents across barriers of geography, access, and trust. The result? A smarter, more equitable budget and a more engaged public.
Why It Matters: Setting a New Standard for Local Government
Zencity is the standard for community engagement and the platform local governments trust to reach their residents, understand their communities, and act with confidence.
With Zencity, public sector leaders gather inclusive, timely, and actionable feedback from their community. We ensure that leaders navigate tough decisions by measuring resident needs, understanding priorities, and enabling confident decision-making for long-term impact.
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