Our budget must reflect our values, priorities, progress, goals, and objectives. The need to include resources to implement recommendations from various plans and studies is important for the public to see. As the Director of Business Services for the city of Charleston, we engaged residents in creating a mock city budget to illustrate the process, challenges, and opportunities that each budget provides during our series “I’m A Resident, Now What?”

As Mayor, I would be intentional in including the public in the budget process so city leaders have additional information on what residents want and how much they are willing to pay for it. This type of participatory budgeting would increase public awareness and civic engagement on how tax dollars are being spent, what makes up the sources of funding, and improve our short and long term planning efforts.