Question

to what extent and in what ways should residents of a community be involved in capital planning and budgeting? what approaches do you think would be useful in your community?

Answer 1

The way capital planning and budgeting works for the community is that either the mayor of the city or leader of the community decides on the capital budgeting process and decision and it would be slightly difficult if they included every body in the process. They would never reach a conclusive decision, but the idea is that this expenditure is being done while keeping the requirement of the community in mind. One way to involve the community members in the process would be to take their feedback before planning capital expenditure, what are their basic requirements, what they want to be improved, what areas they want the focus to be on, be it schools, colleges, hospitals, markets, roads, what areas they think the community leaders should focus their capital planning on? How much satisfied they are with the current situations? Invloving everyone feedback can also give new ideas for the community capital planning. Once a plan has been implemented, they can be asked to give their feedback on that.

The approach that would be useful in the community would be :

• Survey : Do survey on the requirement of the members, their opinion about the current situation and and where do they think the focus of the capital planning should be on.
• Opportunity to participate : If some of the ideas given by them seem useful and financially viable, ask them to preapare a detailed plan and give a presentation about that to the leaders in the community.
• Post project completion: The basic idea is that the capital planning is being done for the members of the community and we can easily conduct a survey after completion of the project. It will give an idea how satisfied they are with the way project has been executed.