For nearly four centuries, hundreds of New England towns have governed themselves by open meeting: any resident may attend, speak, and vote directly on budgets, bylaws, and local decisions. It is one of only three documented institutions of direct citizen assembly in world history, alongside the ancient Athenian ecclesia and the Swiss Landsgemeinde.
Durability. Town meetings survived the printing press, the telegraph, and the internet. Visiting in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that New England town governments showed greater political independence than any municipal body he knew in Europe — he called town institutions the schools where liberty is learned.
Direct local self-government is not an innovation to be piloted; it is a heritage to be extended. Your county's own board, with its public comment period, is a descendant of this line. The platform's job is to widen the room — so the meeting includes people who can't be there at 6 p.m. on a second Monday.
Attendance in modern town meetings has declined with town size — the same scale limit Switzerland shows. Direct assembly works best small, which is precisely the county scale.
Sources: Town meeting — history · Britannica: direct democracy