Scope of Activities Team Meeting, 10.1

Scope of Activities Team Meeting Notes, Oct. 1st

Participatory Budgeting: Perhaps the best place to impact the budget via participation would be at the council district level, by pressing for budget hearings in the different council districts.

We need to be able to effectively distinguish between the short term goals, medium term goals, and long term goals. Short term: the budget for the next fiscal year is already being worked on, so if we want to have an impact on it, we need to figure out a strategy now). Possible goal: allocation discussions and priority discussions crafted to include council persons knowledge of their own districts’ priorities. The executive branch (where the budget currently originates) might be more difficult to influence at this point in time. Should follow up with Hedge-Morrell to float this idea and see how receptive she is to it.

Blakely wants to restart the district meetings around the 18 recovery zones and the CPP has been tapped to assist with the meetings. The meetings could also be used to function as a sort of preliminary participatory budget format, with the target money/budget being not the city budget but the recovery budget. But we would have to be very careful about what the deliverables would be in that setting, and causing hard feelings among the community if too much is promised and nothing comes as a result. People are tired of planning processes, so in order to get enthusiastic participation one must demonstrate exactly what is on the table. Moreover, pushing for clarity over the budget (what is possible, what is not) might help clarify a lot of the public planning processes that are currently ongoing and winnow down the choices.

We need to figure out who gets what for which projects and who decides.

Use the trip to LA’s budget day to explore how it works. Start a dialog with Hedge-Morrell to see what she thinks about the budget.