For the last few years, the city of Santa Barbara has been grappling with increasingly brutal multimillion-dollar budget cuts. In that regard, our community is not unlike many other cities and towns across the country.
But Santa Barbara isn’t just any other community, and I’m not even talking about our spectacular scenery and weather.
We have a proud tradition here of getting involved, of seizing historic moments, of community activism. Now Noozhawk is about to provide a unique opportunity to put that passion and creativity to work in the most innovative way yet.
We’ve just been awarded a public engagement grant from Common Sense California, a nonprofit organization based at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy. Despite the oxymoronic name, Common Sense California has been at the forefront in developing policy solutions on some of the most challenging issues our state faces. Click here for a related story on Common Sense California.
Through grants, partnerships, relationships and conferences, CSC helps foster public, or civic, engagement in the areas of K-12 education, land use and municipal budgeting. CSC has been watching Noozhawk since our founding in 2007 because there are so many interactive, public-engagement elements to what we do in the online-only world. A key advantage is our staff of professional journalists.
Common Sense California is looking for ways to help local government develop structural budget reforms that are vital in today’s tumultuous economic environment. CSC asked Noozhawk to identify a local project and, gluttons for punishment that we are, we chose the Santa Barbara budget.
Over the next six weeks or so, Noozhawk will explore the city’s current financial situation, trends in the past decade, how the budget works, what the process involves, who the players and stakeholders are, what the issues are and — most important — why you should care.
Then you get your say.
Through a Web-based, social-media program provided by UserVoice.com, Santa Barbara residents will be able to communicate directly with us and with fellow users — creating, sharing and voting on long-range priorities, directions and possible solutions in a massive public-input process. Users will have another six weeks to propel ideas forward for how Santa Barbara spends its money, or how it can do it more wisely. Meanwhile, Noozhawk’s professional reporters will tackle your ideas from the research and analysis side to help determine their viability.
At the end of our project, we’ll take the top few ideas and present them to the mayor and City Council, the city administrator, union officials and other stakeholders. Our goal is to provide several constructive, workable solutions that can assist elected officials and policy makers in making the tough long-range choices they must make, in a far more collaborative way than previously possible. We also hope we can help citizens become more informed about what a city can — and can not — provide.
I’m asking you to follow along as Noozhawk’s public engagement series gets under way this week, and then join us in this project. Once UserVoice is launched, I need you to register to participate and add your voice — and then ask all of your Santa Barbara family, friends and neighbors to do the same. As we go, we’ll explain in greater detail how UserVoice and the public engagement process works. Online tutorials will make it even easier.
On issue after issue, Santa Barbara appears to be in crisis, but its citizens are some of the most creative, educated, engaged and civic-minded people you’ll find anywhere. We have the tools, you have the talent, and together we can meet these challenges and restore our community to fiscal health.
It’s time to make your voice heard.
— Noozhawk publisher Bill Macfadyen can be reached at wmacfadyen@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk. Become a fan of Noozhawk on Facebook.