Participatory budgeting is a way of engaging citizens in the real choices in all or part of a local government’s budget. The Journal of Public Deliberation has an issue dedicated to participatory budgeting. In a set of excellent articles, two give specific examples from Australia: Greater Geraldton and Canada Bay. See the articles here. Localise was recently able to assist the City of Nedlands in community engagement on its Strategic Community Plan. As part of that, a small community conference deliberated on the real and hard options facing the Council for addressing infrastructure decline. You can read about the Shaping the future matching services with resources conference here.
