By Keith Twitchell | President
This has been a slow quarter for the Citizen Participation Project, though not without some useful steps forward. Part of this is due to the fact that two other major Committee for a Better New Orleans initiatives, our annual Bryan Bell Metropolitan Leadership Forum and our annual Diana Lewis Citizen Participation Awards luncheon, take place at this time. Another substantial factor is that the city of New Orleans must adopt its annual budget by November 30, and with the new administration -- which, by virtue of taking office in May, starts the budget process a bit behind the curve -- this year's budget consumed a lot of time and attention on the part of our government partners.
As part of the budget process, we did release our annual People's Budget report, which is attached to this report. In compiling the results of the nearly 700 residents who played the Big Easy Budget Game this year, we found a lot of similarities, along with a few key differences, between the mayor's proposed budget and the preferences of our players. In the final budget adopted by the city, however, there were two significant changes from previous budgets that directly align with the People's Budget: significant increases in funding for mental health care and for Children and Families programming. These proactive investments in the well-being of the city's people follow the overall theme we find each year in the People's Budget: residents here want to spend more of their tax dollars on programs that will provide people with health and opportunity, and less on the criminal justice system where people end up when they lack opportunity. We are quite thrilled to see the city respond to the People's Budget in this important way.
While the direct impacts of the People's Budget on actual city allocations for next year are obviously hugely significant, we were almost as gratified by the follow-up from Council members and the administration. Key players on both sides were very complimentary of, and grateful for, the report; and both have reiterated their strong commitment to working with CBNO beginning early next year to design substantial reforms to the overall city budget process.
On another front, we had been puzzled by a lack of responsiveness and commitment from the new administration to moving forward with the neighborhood boundary mapping project. Updating the city's obsolete neighborhood maps is critical for multiple reasons, not the least of which being that it is imperative to successful implementation of the Community Participation Program (CPP). At one point we were actually told that the administration did not want to move forward on this at this time -- a big surprise, given that both our updated Master Plan and the mayor's Transition Plan call for doing this. We were able to arrange a meeting with Mayor Cantrell's Chief-of-Staff, where we learned that there were some misconceptions about the project that had led to the objections. We were able to clear these up satisfactorily, and anticipate beginning the work right after the holiday break.
As we head into the holidays, we want to express our profound gratitude for all who have supported us over the past year. We could not do this work without your support. Looking ahead, over the next two years we have the opportunity to transform civic engagement in New Orleans for generations to come. We hope you will continue with us on this journey. We wish all of you a wonderful holiday season, and a healthy, happy, prosperous new year!
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
