This is an important concern.
Haven’t heard anything from local town about launching an official discourse site.
Alternative to having a site run by the government is to have a site setup with mail-receiver to post official newsletters as topics that people can reply to, I did this a few years ago with newsletters from the county which I communicated with them about being posted as topics, didn’t get too much interest from anyone wanting to talk about those at my site.
Could try again with the town government, or local neighborhood e-mail list is the only communications system that is setup which I’m involved with.