Most of the internet is funded by advertising. When this is the case, then advertisers often dictate the political message of the websites they are advertising on. While not a bad thing for most sites, a site that wants to allow people a voice in local government cannot be under that pressure.
Donations work better, but again, we have seen think tanks, political parties and office holders under a lot of pressure based on keeping donations coming in.
Ultimately, if you want to be the one who’s interests are represented, you need to be the one paying for the service. So my initial idea is to charge $5.00 per year to be part of a cooperative zone. Of course, when there are few members, the value of the platform is low, so $5.00 is way too much.
So I plan on having free memberships for the time being. I can cover the costs of this site as it gets started. Once a critical amount of members are achieved, we may have to verify users so that we can show we are representing actual members of the City/County/State rather than random internet people who signed up for free.
If we have issues of some criticality, like perhaps a occupational zone declared by some group, then expect that memberships will all go to a charged state and people who want to be heard will have to pay the minimal fee. Lets hope that we never need to get to that.