The first-ever participatory budgeting process at the county level has not gone off without a hitch, but it is still going on. BY: JESSICA MCKENZIE OCT 17, 2017 At the end of the month, an elected official in Merced County, California, will lead her district in the first implementation of participatory budgeting at the county level—but unless…
Elected officials must learn that trust is a two-way street
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BY LEE LOR OCTOBER 12, 2017 11:40 AM Democracy thrives on trust. Constituents, residents, and families across this great country must be able to trust their elected officials to do what a supervisor, city council person, school board member or any elected officials thinks is best. Trust paves the way for accountability and transparency because…
Norma C. Cardona: Don’t take residents out of the budgeting process
Participatory Budgeting is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. Though funding for Merced County’s District 1 will no longer be available after a 3-2 vote to dissolve discretionary funding, funding for District 2 will continue for the 2017-18 budget year. The Steering Committee will…
Nancy Reding: Three Merced supervisors took that money away from all of us
Re “Debate gets heated as Merced County leaders vote to end controversial funds” (Front page, Sept. 13): Merced County was on the verge of making history. Now, thanks to Supervisor Daron McDaniel, Supervisor Lloyd Pareira and Supervisor Jerry O’Bannon, the” District Project Funds” of $200,000 has been eliminated. These funds were voted by these three supervisors to…
Jerome Rasberry Jr.: It wasn’t a slush fund, it was help for our neighborhoods
Re “Debate gets heated as Merced County leaders vote to end controversial funds” (Front page, Sept. 13): So, why now? Why did some members of the Merced County Board of Supervisors do away with the program that would have given real people real power in how money is spent? Maybe the politicians didn’t want to share power….