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Gaston County launches Engage Gaston platform to expand online public engagement
Summary
County planning and other departments introduced a Social Pinpoint-powered portal called Engage Gaston, showing project hubs, interactive maps and analytics to gather public input for planning and rezoning work.
GASTON COUNTY, N.C. — Gaston County planners and staff demonstrated a new online engagement platform on Tuesday called Engage Gaston, built on the Social Pinpoint platform, that county staff said will let residents take surveys, drop comments on interactive maps and review project materials online.
Transportation planner Juan Garcia and Jamie (Jamie Kimberlu in the transcript) from Planning and Zoning explained that the platform hosts multiple project hubs — including an Envision Gaston project and the comprehensive transportation plan — and provides tools such as interactive maps, online surveys, comment upvoting and document hosting for large plans and site plans.
“As we go through, the consultants will be updating these slides for us,” Jamie said while describing the Envision Gaston project home page, the online survey and a map feature that lets users place comments and view other residents’ contributions. The presenters showed a conditional rezoning case (Holly Springs) that produced higher levels of online engagement through the platform than the county had previously seen for similar cases, with several hundred comments for some projects.
Juan Garcia said the platform’s built-in analytics help transform thousands of public comments into summarized insights for consultants and staff. Central features staff cited: the ability to host large documents (site plans of 20 pages or more), multilingual support (including Spanish translation), comment moderation options and a mailing list for updates. Centralina and other county departments were listed among early project participants.
Commissioners asked about language accessibility, moderation of “NIMBY” or abusive comments and how staff will use the output. Garcia said the platform can present content in multiple languages and that comment moderation may be configured per project; staff said they will work with the county’s legal team to develop a comment-moderation policy that balances open public input with legal transparency obligations. Jamie said consultants will synthesize comments into analytics reports and that the county can provide comment reports to commissioners, including for rezoning cases.
The county said Engage Gaston is already being used for the comprehensive transportation plan and several planning cases and that staff will expand use across additional departments. Garcia and Jamie invited commissioners and residents to engage with the sites and said the county will run a second round of public outreach for the transportation plan in the coming months.
