I’m looking for something where I can do some local community building, I’m guessing mastodon might work but I think the ideal is something like facebook where I can join a group tied to a common idea and a location, as well as being a bit more personal. Is there anything like that?
You can try one of the following:
Minds
Aether
Steemit
Pixelfed
Diaspora
No one in your locality is going to follow you there unless you can convince hundreds of people local to you to setup there with you.