As the leaves have been falling, we've seen a rise in public participation, from the federal election to weekly climate strikes. Autumn also means that budget season is fully underway, leading to a variety of public sector budget consultations. This month we feature two budget consultations within the Cowichan Valley civic network, including North Cowichan municipality and the CVRD, which has the struggle of balancing many different services and priorities.
Another key theme in recent consultations has been Community Plans. This month we have a look at two examples: the City of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories and the Village of Shawnigan Lake, British Columbia that hopes to regenerate underdeveloped areas.
The Federal Election season is over and there were some interesting applications of PlaceSpeak in the Kootenay Columbiariding and also the Public Health Association of BC.The Kootenay Columbia riding had discussion topics on different important matters, including housing and the climate crisis. The town of Aurora is also looking to redefine their electoral process, using public consultation to ensure effective representation.
PlaceSpeak goes to Toronto November 7-8th for the Future Cities Canada Summit, with hundreds of innovators in the Smart Cities sector to help evolve the ultimate toolkit for city, region and country building. It is obvious that our existing systems have expired and it will be a challenging road ahead to upgrade to Gov 2.0. Across our western democracies, we have new technologies that we can harness for good.
The Town of Aurora is reevaluating their electoral system due to significant growth in the past 20 years. Aurora Council passed a motion directing staff to investigate a ward system. Under a ward system Aurora councillors would be elected from specific areas. There will be two rounds of public engagement for the Electoral System Review. The first one will be to gather general input on how residents think the wards should be designed. The second round will solicit feedback on ward design options being presented.
Community Plan Consultations
Community planning has been one of the most active areas of online resident engagement
since PlaceSpeak began. The ability to engage online with residents within specific neighbourhoods has been critical to PlaceSpeak's mission and vision for civic networks.
Community Plan Review
The City of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories is undertaking a Community Plan reviewand invites residents to take part in this process. A Community Plan is the road map for how land will be used and planned for over the next 20 years. The draft Community Plan is based on surveys, studies of land use, population growth, the economy, the needs of the municipality relating to transportation, communication, public services and social services.
Think Shawnigan
The Cowichan Valley Regional District (CVRD) is using PlaceSpeak to gather feedback on the future look and feel of Shawnigan Village. Think Shawnigan is an intense design and planning process aiming to maximise opportunities for community input and participation. Addressing important issues, including affordable housing and the need for more commercial space, this project is garnering a lot of interest and citizen participation with three active discussions.
Budget Consultations
Autumn is budget season for local governments. Public sector organizations across north America are consulting with their constituents around their budget priorities. PlaceSpeak has been used for participatory budgeting in a variety of forms since its inception across a wide range of organizations.
Cowichan Valley Regional District seeks engagement in shaping
its 2020 Budget
The Cowichan Valley Regional District is drafting a 2020 budget that needs to balance 178 separate services. The budget is currently being reviewed by Committees & Commissions during October & November. Prior to these meetings CVRD hosted a series of open houses and encouraged input throughthisPlaceSpeak topic.
Municipality of North Cowichan
2020 Budget
TheMunicipality of North Cowichanbelieve that engaging with residents is a key milestone in the budget development process. North Cowichan aims to gather input on their proposed budget and upcoming projects. This includes three community budget meetings that have taken place in the end of October, as well as engagement on PlaceSpeak's discussion feature.
Incase you missed it...
4 Haunting Online Public and Stakeholder Consultation Mistakes Even though public consultation can be used to improve trust, it relies on feedback from the public and key stakeholders, which can easily go wrong. This Halloween, don't let these mistakes haunt your online public and stakeholder consultation process.
In Conversation With: Paolo Spada In keeping with our theme of citizen participation in the budgeting process, we are reprinting an interview with Paolo Spada, who has been a pioneer in the area of participatory budgeting. He is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southampton - Democracy Matters Project.
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