Tonight, Oakland City Council is meeting discuss the controversial proposed 2010 municipal budget. At Oakland Local, we've been trying to understand Oakland's budget process -- especially how public participation really fits in. Unfortunately, Oakland's budget process is daunting, convoluted, cryptic, and frankly seems engineered to discourage meaningful public participation...

Fortunately, local experts like VSmoothe, Make Oakland Better Now, and Becks (all of whom have spent time closely examining the intricacies of this city's politics, processes, and finance) do a first-rate job of distilling how the latest proposed budget affects and reflects how Oakland is working. We value and recommend their work on this front.

But for the average Oaklander who doesn't have a ton of time or expertise: How are you supposed to figure out what the city is trying to do with the budget, and what that might mean for the local programs and services you care about?

How do you make sure your voice gets heard, and that your questions get answered?

Can Oakland's budget process be opened up so that it's not just a game for political insiders?

Yes, some nominal channels for public participation in Oakland's budget process are available. However, in practice those channels are generally limited, challenging, and not feasible or welcoming to most citizens.

Really: Is finding and deciphering a heavily bureaucratic agenda, showing up at a public meeting, filling out a speaker card, and hanging around just to get to speak for a couple of minutes the best we can do?

At Oakland Local, we think it's just not good enough that Oaklanders must rely almost entirely on what experts, politicos, and bureaucrats say about our city budget. This is our money, after all!

How it gets spent, allegedly on our behalf, is all of us should be able to follow, grasp, and (if you care enough) get involved in through a reasonable investment of attention and effort.

Granted, in almost every US city, local budget processes are convoluted, cryptic, and insider-oriented. Oakland isn't probably much worse on this front than most other towns. Also, having a few limited channels for public participation is better than having none. Still,  we think Oakland can improve -- and we'd like to hear how Oaklanders would like to participate in the city budget process.

So Oakland: What kind of information do you want to get about the city budget and its likely effects?

When would you like to get that information, and through what channels? How would you like to be able to contribute your views or questions, and what would satisfy you that your contributions are fairly considered? We'd like to explore this issue. Please help us get started by commenting below.

CITIZEN GUIDES TO LOCAL BUDGETS: OAKLAND VS. SAN FRANCISCO

Let's compare how San Francisco and Oakland each explain and manager public engagement in their budget processes.

Here is what the web site of Oakland's City Budget office currently offers as the official city budget process overview: A 2004 presentation from the City of Oakland "explaining" the budget process -- apparently for an audience of city staffers, since it's billed as a training document. Also, note that the words "public" and "community" appear just one time each in this 46-page document, while "citizen" doesn't appear at all.

Oakland City Budget Process 2004 Presentation

...In contrast, here is the official January 2010 Citizen Guide to San Francisco's budget process -- which names and explains all the players and participation channels. Note that it's very current, and only eight pages long. It's also available in Spanish and Chinese, too:

SF Citizen Guide Budget Jan 2010

...Maybe creating a similar guide for Oakland might be a good start.

As a bonus, here's the latest (2007) published organizational chart for the City of Oakland's Budget Office. Notice that managing public participation doesn't particularly seem to be anyone's job there. Yet.

Oakland City Budget Office Org Chart Dec 2007