Why A People's Budget?

The "budget as a moral document"

Budgets reflect our values as a community. A dollar allocated for ____ could have been spent on children’s programs, blight amelioration, or investing in real public safety programs. Currently, the values of the City are decided almost entirely by the mayor and their team without resident input. As a result, the budget rarely reflects the values of residents. Instead, it reflects the values of just a small group of people in City Hall. In order to ensure the budget works for all residents and reflects resident values, we must first gauge what those priorities are. The People’s Budget program will educate City residents on the budget and how it works, get input from residents on their spending priorities, communicate findings back to residents and to decision makers, and will advocate for creating a municipal budget that lines up with resident’s priorities.

Reframing what "public safety" means

Despite increases to the police budget every year, residents in Harrisburg still do not feel safe. Deep distrust in the police as well as the inability of the police to tackle the root causes of crime make them ill suited to provide us real safety. In the past few years the City has spent significant amounts of money on CSAs and riot equipment under the public safety budget. Residents have been left perplexed as to how that translates to safer day to day for themselves and their family. If residents were able to directly communicate what public safety means for them, the City could better allocate funds to projects that deliver real public safety City programs that provide after school activities and enrichment to children, that fund rehabilitation and other mental health resources for struggling residents, and that tackle crumbling City infrastructure such as sidewalks, parks, roads, and neighborhood beautification projects outside of downtown and midtown, will provide real public safety.