Penn’s Project For Civic Engagement Hosts Community Forums On The City Budget: Tight Times, Tough Choices

Jan. 15, 2009

PHILADELPHIA — The University of Pennsylvania Project for Civic Engagement is hosting a series of four community forums in various neighborhoods across the city. The forums are designed to gather citizen input that will be used by Mayor Nutter and city officials in developing the City’s proposed budget for 2010. The budget will be delivered to City Council in March.

“The City Budget: Tight Times, Tough Choices” was developed by the Project for Civic Engagement as part of the Great Expectations project using a grant from the William Penn Foundation.  In the face of the financial crisis facing the city, this university-led civic dialogue project aims to identify which items and services citizens would give priority to and why.

These community forums are scheduled to take place in mid-February.

Harris Sokoloff, the director of the Penn Project for Civic Engagement, and a team of trained moderators will help lead discussions at each event.

“These four community forums will engage residents in informed and informative deliberation about the real financial challenges facing the city, the 2010 budget and the budgeting process,” Sokoloff said.  “By engaging Philadelphians in focused and realistic deliberations about priorities and trade-offs, we will include them and their views in the City’s public process for developing budget priorities – before that budget is proposed.”

According to Dr. Sokoloff, one of the goals of these community forums is to get participants to work together on developing priorities and working through the trade-offs they are and are not willing to accept.

Participants will consider real city budget information, including cuts under consideration and ideas for new revenue. The City of Philadelphia’s Budget Office will work in partnership with this community forum project, providing this detailed budget information. Top city officials, including the Finance and Budget Directors as well as other senior officials will be at these forums to explain the city’s fiscal outlook.

In turn, the Project for Civic Engagement will share the data it compiles from these community forums with the Nutter Administration as well as post it on their web site.

Additionally, the city will have budget managers in each small breakout group to listen as citizens deliberate on budget choices. The city will also report back to the public on how citizen input was taken into consideration when developing the budget and why.

At the end of the four forums, Penn Project for Civic Engagement will post the data on its Web site and prepare a final report illustrating common ideas and trade-offs to submit to the mayor.

For more information: http://www.gse.upenn.edu/ppce, http://whyy.org/city or http://www.greatexpectationsnow.com/ or by calling Linda Breitstein, project manager at 215-898-1112.

“The City Budget: Tight Times, Tough Choices, Citizen Priorities” is a project of the Project for Civic Engagement, which is housed at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania and funded by a grant from the William Penn Foundation.