The New Orleans Citizen Participation Project

The intersection of good public policy, community organizing, and government personalities and priorities is always an interesting one to navigate.  In New Orleans this summer, CBNO is dealing with all of these, and as always, doing our best to find common purpose and move the civic engagement ball forward.

Our Big Easy Budget Game interactive website (www.bigeasybudgetgame.com) has now compiled some 450 people's individual versions of the New Orleans city budget.  We will be releasing our first snapshot of the resulting People's Budget in a few more weeks.  We attended each of Mayor Landrieu's Budget Town Halls to distribute information about the Budget Game (and in the process noticed how attendance at these has dropped severely as people increasingly recognize that they are not meaningful community participation opportunities).  We have hosted one Spanish-language community Game night and have another one scheduled.  A variety of partners has helped circulate the link via email, so we are well on our way to achieving our minimum goal of 600 participants.  Included among these partners was the city's Office of Neighborhood Engagement, which we were very happy to see support us in this way.

We have launched the Lower 9th Ward Participatory Budgeting (PB) project, the first-ever PB process in the deep south and the first to be done completely independent of government funding.  Unfortunately, rain washed out our Lower 9 Summer Fest kick-off event, which in turn hampered our initial outreach.  However, one of our partner organizations was able to get some volunteers to go door to door in the Lower 9 with information flyers, and we are now in the process of collecting project ideas and building up the participant base to take these ideas through the design phase.

The City of New Orleans has launched its mandatory review and amendment process for the city Master Plan, and CBNO has been making presentations on this process at neighborhood and community meetings.  In the lead-up to the 2010 adoption of the Master Plan, thousands of New Orleans residents participated in many dozens of public meetings to create the Plan.  Unfortunately, the current administration has rejected much of the Plan and we have been told that they intend to use this amendment process to substantially rewrite it (ironic in that the amendments will be adopted about nine whole months before they are term-limited out of office).  The only way to protect community voice, and ensure that the Master Plan continues to belong to the people instead of the politicians, is to have comparable levels of turn-out for the current process as we experienced for the original plan.  Given the level of "meeting burnout" in New Orleans as we approach 11 years after Hurricane Katrina, this is truly a heavy lift.  CBNO is committed to doing as much as it possibly can to remind the community how invested they already are in the Master Plan, and how important it is to protect that investment by coming to the table as we go through the review and amendment process.  Playing defense for the community against powerful political interests is never fun, but if we can succeed, we can turn around and use that momentum to make real advances in creating community input structures in New Orleans.

The friends and donors we meet through Global Giving are vital to our ability to be successful.  The financial support is essential and invaluable; the moral support is equally appreciated.  We hope that even in the shadow of the national political scene, you will keep on eye on events in New Orleans and continue supporting our efforts to give people here a real voice in their futures.  Thanks so much from the whole CBNO Citizen Participation team!