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Speak Up! Let City Hall know how you want to spend your tax dollars

Do you wish something could be done about that pothole in front of your house? Or that your local park could see the funding it really needs? City departments will be meeting over the next several weeks to talk about funding for next year’s city budget. Now is the time to have your voice heard! Let city department leaders know what you want to see in your neighborhoods! Getting involved is the first step. We hope that by communicating the priorities of the neighborhoods, we can let city leaders know what really matters– and where we want to see it happen. Check out this link to interactive maps and forms that makes it even easier for you to communicate with city government about the Department of Public Works and NORD spending for the next fiscal year.

Youth Lead the Way for PB Boston

Congrats to the youth of Boston who took the lead on running the city’s first-ever Participatory Budgeting program this month!

Ashley-Rose Salomon, youth organizer for Participatory Budgeting Boston, said of the kids, “They determine how it’s done. They get to say something and see it get done. It’s effective, efficient and it’s empowering. It actually brings the power back to the people,” Salomon said. “I feel all too often, especially in marginalized communities, their voices are unheard, so they choose not to vote.”

May 19, 2014
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PB NOLA featured as guest blogger on Sunlight Foundation website

PB NOLA was featured as a guest blog on the Sunlight Foundation Website! The Sunlight Foundation has funded an interactive website, created by PB NOLA, showing the ins and outs of the New Orleans City Budget. Ever wondered how your tax dollars are spent each year? Who controls them? Soon, you’ll be able to click through a website laying everything out in an easy to use graph! Thanks for giving us a chance to share our excitement Sunlight!

The site will be based on an existing site based in Cook County Illinois. To see how it’ll work, check out their site:

April 17, 2014
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PB NYC announces winning projects

Residents of several New York City council districts voted to improve senior centers, parks, school and handicapped accessibility among many other things during the last round of PB votes last weekend. To see the results from each ballot, check out their website: http://pbnyc.org/. Congrats New York!

Our youngest @PB_NYC 38 delegate presented our winners tonight. budget 4 people, by people #PBNYC38 #SiSePuede pic.twitter.com/VhFu4ZKDKf — Carlos Menchaca (@cmenchaca) April 16, 2014

April 15, 2014
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Landrieu hopes new taxes can cover costs of consent decrees, pension fund

The City of New Orleans is facing a major problem– how to pay for two consent decrees and shore up the millions due to the firefighter’s pension fund while keeping the books balanced. Mayor Mitch Landrieu is hoping to create new revenues by passing three pieces of legislation through Baton Rouge this session to solve the problem. By raising taxes on cigarettes, hotels and property, the Mayor hopes to make up the $34 to $49 million needed to pay for improvements to the Orleans Parish Prison, the New Orleans Police Department and satisfy the debts owed to the firefighter’s pension fund.

How do you think the City should pay for the consent decrees? Are you willing to pay more taxes? In many cities, new taxes help fund Participatory Budgeting programs to give residents a sense of ownership over the tax dollars they pay. Would you be more supportive of the Mayor’s plan if you could control some of the new revenues?

January 13, 2014
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When Citizen Engagement Saves Lives (and what we can learn from it)

Did you know that PB “is associated with a pronounced reduction in the infant mortality rates for municipalities which adopted participatory budgeting” ? Check out this post for an interesting paper that studies the long-term benefits of a more civically engaged society.

DemocracySpot

When it comes to the relationship between participatory institutions and development outcomes, participatory budgeting stands out as one of the best examples out there. For instance, in a paper recently published in World Development, Sonia Gonçalves finds that municipalities that adopted participatory budgeting in Brazil “favoured an allocation of public expenditures that closely matched the popular preferences and channeled a larger fraction of their total budget to key investments in sanitation and health services.” As a consequence, the author also finds that this change in the allocation of public expenditures “is associated with a pronounced reduction in the infant mortality rates for municipalities which adopted participatory budgeting.”

Now, in an excellent new article published in Comparative Political Studies, the authors Michael Touchton and Brian Wampler come up with similar findings (abstract):

We evaluate the role of a new type of democratic institution, participatory budgeting (PB), for improving citizens’ well-being. Participatory institutions are said to…

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White House to promote PB as a best practice in open government!

The White House declared that it will promote Participatory Budgeting as a best practice in open governance as a part of its Open Governance National Action Plan!

Here’s what they’ve got to say:

“The United States will promote community-led participatory budgeting as a tool for enabling citizens to play a role in identifying, discussing, and prioritizing certain local public spending projects, and for giving citizens a voice in how taxpayer dollars are spent in their communities. This commitment will include steps by the U.S. Government to help raise awareness of the fact that participatory budgeting may be used for certain eligible Federal community development grant programs.”

It’s time for New Orleans to be a leader in the fight for transparency!