This is an in-person system. The assembly is the entry point: 23 of them each year on weekday evenings and Saturday afternoons, in the Casa do Gaúcho for the themes and in school gyms, community centres and association halls for the regions, where people register with their community or association, vote priorities, elect councillors and are counted for delegate seats (one per ten present). Everything after that runs through meetings: forums of delegates every two weeks, the council every two weeks, works commissions on site. In the 1990s assemblies opened with plays by local cultural groups and a video of the works built, and the investment-plan booklet with every approved work and every councillor's address was distributed across the city. Demands enter on a paper form with a map for paving and sanitation and are handed in by registered entities. The intermediaries are the neighbourhood associations, which organised the periphery before the OP existed, and the Harvard assessment notes that each participant typically stands for a family or association that takes turns attending; the City's own regional presence has shrunk from coordinators who ran preparatory meetings in the 1990s to a counter at the sub-prefecture. The 156 phone line is listed because the Fogaça administration routed everyday service requests there, which participants said removed the collective channel the forums had provided. Digital participation never consolidated: the 2001 to 2003 virtual OP fell from 593 to 51 participants; internet suggestions have been accepted since 2004; the 2013 OP em Rede sent SMS invitations and took online registrations; OP Digital in 2019 drew 17,152 visits, 2,599 registered users and 15,418 votes on thematic priorities, and the 2023 rulebook makes it consultative only.