The Finance Councilor of San Bartolomé, Antonio Rocío, explained this Wednesday the participatory budget model carried out by the City Council as an example of municipal management at the Inter-Administrative Conference on Citizen Participation and Collaboration of the Canary Islands that was held in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. "We are pioneers in participatory budgets and we presented our model and proposal within the framework of the conference," Rocío pointed out.
The City Council of San Bartolomé was selected among the 88 city councils and island councils of the Canary Islands to present the "successful" experience of participatory budgets in these conferences in which, according to the City Council, the Government of the Canary Islands, organizers and other city councils "congratulated" the councilor, who trusts in this model as the main tool for participation and citizen involvement in management." San Bartolomé has also been the first City Council in the Canary Islands to implement specialized software to support this action, a tool that was also presented at the Conference by Javier Barbe (Sernutec).
The City Council of San Bartolomé plans to allocate 200,000 euros in its 2018 budgets to be allocated to the demands of citizens as it did in the accounts of the current year, thereby "fulfilling the commitment acquired in the past elections to allow the population to make decisions regarding public budgets."
A model "that will be implemented"
Participatory budgets, explains the City Council, are a direct tool for consultation and dialogue between the community and local authorities on what some of the investment priorities of a municipality are. "The neighborhood makes proposals, a study of technical feasibility is carried out, resulting in the proposals that are debated and, finally, voted on. The chosen proposals are included in the Municipal Budget of the following year, carrying out the most voted proposal or the most voted proposals that fall within the assigned amount. With this, we delve into a participatory democracy seeking solutions that correspond to the real needs and desires of the people," they point out from the institution.
San Bartolomé highlights that it was one of the Spanish municipalities with the highest participation rate in the first edition of participatory budgets with the involvement of 1,034 residents, that is, no less than 5.5 percent of the population." In contrast, the percentage of participation in the whole of the State was lower, and ranged between one and three percent," they point out from the City Council, from where they indicate that "in the process initiated for the 2017 participatory budgets, 107 proposals were registered, which must now be analyzed to verify that they meet the requirements before being submitted to a vote by the citizens." All of this has led Antonio Rocío to present the model followed within the framework of this Inter-Administrative Conference on Citizen Participation and Collaboration of the Canary Islands.
"We have been pioneers in the implementation of this system, it has worked and therefore we have presented our experience to technicians from city councils and island councils throughout the Canary Islands. The neighborhood has responded to this process of creating a new space for participation, of involvement in which to talk about public money and investments, being part of the decision-making, has highlighted for its part the mayor, María Dolores Corujo, adding words of congratulations to the Councilor for Economy, Finance and New Technologies, Antonio Rocío, "promoter of this model that will be implemented".