By Keith Twitchell | President
The summer heat has descended upon New Orleans, but we are still moving full speed ahead here at the Citizen Participation Project!
At last we have new mayor who supports community engagement. LaToya Cantrell is the first woman mayor in the 300 year history of our city, and someone we have worked with in a variety of capacities for more than fifteen years. As a former neighborhood association president, she truly understands the on-the-ground perspective and the need for resident and neighborhood empowerment. While serving in her previous position on the New Orleans City Council, she was the biggest champion of our Big Easy Budget Game, and has committed to making it an official part of the city's budget process. She has also reached out to us about bringing Participatory Budgeting to New Orleans. And her official transition report includes the full Community Participation Program, including the neighborhood boundary mapping. Yes, we are excited about the opportunities!
Speaking of the Budget Game, the 2018 version is now well under way. We have done numerous community Budget Game events, at places ranging from senior centers to school classrooms. In addition to the support from Mayor Cantrell, we are getting equally strong assistance from the new City Council. Several of them are promoting it through their constituent newsletters and social media. We have four Budget Game events set up in collaboration with District E Councilmember Cyndi Nguyen, and are working on similar events with other Councilmembers. We anticipate a very large increase in the number of participants this year now that we have a formal relationship with city government. We've also had a recent surge in interest from other municipalities around the country and world in bringing the Budget Game to their cities (a hint to our Global Giving supporters: if you think the Budget Game is cool, contact us about bringing it to your home town!).
One more quick note on the budgeting work: a just-released study by the Participatory Budgeting Project indicates that cities that have adopted PB have seen an average increase in voter participation of 7%. As we all focus on the mid-term elections later this year and the next presidential election, increasing voter participation is vital, and PB is now proven as a tool to achieve this.
The most immediate next step for the Community Participation Program (CPP) is launching the work of redrawing the city's obsolete neighborhood boundary maps, something we've discussed previously in this forum. We have now submitted the draft legislation to authorize this to the new city attorney (who, happily, is a former Committee for a Better New Orleans board member) and to new Councilmember Jay Banks, who as head of the Community Development Committee has given us very strong assurances of support. We've also applied for a couple of grants to enable us to undertake this work, so keep your fingers crossed for us. We really hope to begin this work within just another month or two, as it would be highly preferable to complete it before the 2020 census and the consequent redrawing of political boundaries in the city.
We also continue to work on building the diverse coalition that will be essential to finalizing and adopting the New Orleans CPP. We had an excellent meeting of our core team in mid-June, and agreed on some key next steps. As eager as we are to move on this, especially with the political will at City Hall on our side at last, we still have to be strategic and intentional. The core team is working on setting up a meeting with Mayor Cantrell and also with Councilmember Banks, just to be sure everyone is on the same page regarding process and timelines.
A quick final note: we have had a major controversy here with paid actors turning up at a City Council meeting to support our utility company's request to build a new power plant. CBNO had an op-ed on this serious issue published in The Lens; you can find the link to it below.
We are so thrilled (and relieved) to have support for all this work on the city side. It feels like we have been largely dammed up for the past eight years, and our first instinct is to rush forward as rapidly as possible. But as mentioned above, we do have to be strategic, set priorities, and pick up some initial victories. With your invaluable support, these victories will come; by the time of our next report, we should have more stories to tell and be moving forward with the full CPP review and finalization process. Have a wonderful summer, and please consider helping us really make the most of these amazing opportunities! Thanks so much from the NOLA-CPP team.
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