Saturday 16 June 2012

Participatory Budgeting - Ideas Needed!

This month, the parish council is calling on all residents of Shilton and Barnacle to come up with suggestions as to how they would like to see up to £1,500 of council taxpayers' money spent locally within the villages.

The principle is simple: the parish council puts up the money; local residents make suggestions as to what this money should be spent on; everyone gets to vote on what they think is the best idea; and the parish council then carries out the suggestion that is the most popular.

It's straightforward, but it does need people to come up with their own ideas as to where the money should be targeted, and the deadline for suggestions is Saturday 30 June. Contact the parish council however best suits you - email the Clerk at clerk-shiltonparish@hotmail.co.uk or ring her on 07961 834589, leave a message on the parish council's Facebook page, send us a tweet, or post your thoughts on this blog. It doesn't matter how you make your suggestion, but so long as you tell us by the end of this month, you could find that your suggestion is the one that's implemented!

There's more information about the participatory budgeting project in the current edition of the BASIS magazine, which I've also reproduced below.

Participatory budgeting is about giving members of the public more direct control over how taxpayers money is spent. It's my belief that almost everyone living in Shilton and Barnacle - if they give it some thought - can come up with an idea how to spend that £1,500. What we just needs now, is for people to make those ideas known!

(click on the image to view)