The City is working hard to get citizen input ahead of this year’s budget meetings.
The Citizen Budget is an interactive calculator that lets people use individual property assessments to see what they pay per month for a variety of municipal services, like community programs and events, facilities, parks and trails, public library services, planning, etc…
Using the calculator, they can increase, decrease, or maintain spending in different areas and see what effect that would have on their taxes and the overall budget.
“This is part in parcel of managing the City, but we also want to incorporate that into the budget planning,” says Councillor Garth Frizzell, “For a lot of years, we’ve seen efforts made to try and engage citizens in planning for budgets for Prince George.”
Frizzell says the Citizen Budget lets people act as a ‘Councillor for the day’.
“This was all through research that staff did, and they came forward with the recommendation, we took a look at the tool, and it’s a very effective, cost-effective way of getting information back from the public for what they want out of the City.”
He noted several other municipalities in the North have used a similar tool.
The Citizen Budget tool will be used in conjunction with the Talktober sessions running all next month, with the next one schedules for residents of the East Bowl (including the Crescents, Millar Addition, VLA, Seymour/Harwin, and Downtown neighbourhoods), on Thursday, Oct. 1, at the South Fort George Family Resource Centre.
“As Council continues to focus on community engagement and transparency as one of its strategic priorities, this public consultation process is about residents helping us to shape the 2016 budget, the 2016 Corporate Plan, and the priorities of Council,” explained Mayor Lynn Hall in a release.
The Citizen Budget is now live on the City’s website at princegeorge.citizenbudget.com.