Citizen Budget: Choosing Needs vs. Wants

With the public's attention focused on the massive civic bailout of the Millennium Water Olympic Village project, this year's city budget will attract increased public interest and media scrutiny.

For the third consecutive year, Think City will conduct its annual Citizen Budget survey on the budget priorities of Vancouver residents.

For the past two years, more than 2,000 citizens have participated in Think City's Citizen Budget project, greatly adding to the debate about civic priorities. In fact, in 2008, Think City collected more than double the number of budget surveys from the public, when compared to the city's own efforts.

Moreover, our Citizen Budget consultation process reaffirmed the city's own research that showed the vast majority of the public supported expanding or maintaining existing city services.

This year Think City will expand our efforts by conducting our online Citizen Budget survey and holding stakeholder focus group consultations aimed at segments of the Vancouver community who have been under-represented in past city consultations. For the second year in a row, the University of British Columbia's Dept. of Sociology's Dr. Amy Lang and several undergraduate students will assist Think City with our outreach work.

In addition to our consultation process, Think City would also like to produce two budget discussion papers on the topics of new revenue streams for municipal governments and fair taxation policy for small business and residents.

This March, Think City's 2009 Citizen Budget survey will be available online on this site. Please check back then to participate and make your voice heard.

If you would like to volunteer on the 2009 Citizen Budget project, go to our volunteer page to sign-up.