The 2nd of 4 budget workshops was held in Germantown at Mastery Charter School’s Picket Campus on Feb 18. More than 400 people turned out to help in their chance to help shape the City of Philadelphia’s next budget. They have been asked to help reduce city spending and/or raise revenues to close a projected $200 million gap for the fiscal year that runs July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2010.

Citizens worked in small groups of 20-25 along with 2 moderators. Later in this story you can see the reports submitted by the moderators.

How the groups worked

On the worksheets citizens used for this exercise, each possible action was assigned a point value, based on how much it would do - either by cutting costs or raising revenues - to close the gap.

Each group was challenged to approve a list of actions that added up to 100 points - equivalent to balancing the budget.

They did so, working with moderators from the Penn Project for Civic Engagement,  by first sorting the actions into four buckets:

1)  Low-hanging Fruit - Items that 75 percent of the group could swiftly agree should be done.

2) No Way, No Hows - Actions that a 75 percent majority agreed should NOT be done, no matter what.

3)  Shared Pain - Actions that people originally wanted to avoid, but concluded should be done _ after discussion and by a 51 percent majority vote.

4) Gut Wrenchers - Actions that people really, really wanted to avoid, but were led to reconsider after early efforts to close the gap fell short.  Approved after discussion by a 51 percent vote.

Group 1 - 57 points

Group 2 - 47 points

Group 3 -  93 points

Group 4 - 56 points

Group 5 -  81 points

Group 6 - 38 points

Group 7 - 49 points

Group 8 - 52 points

Group 9 - 73 points

Group 10 - 74 points

Group 11 - 59 points

Group M - 56points