Participatory Budgeting Through 2018

Citizen participation in the city budget has a long tradition in Jena. At its meeting on October 11, 2006, the City Council resolved to gradually introduce a participatory budgeting process and to develop a plan for it. The first participatory process was carried out in 2007. By 2008, interest in participatory budgeting had grown so much that approximately 30 interested citizens came together in four working groups to institutionalize the process and develop a set of guidelines.

Since then, the Participatory Budgeting Working Group, in collaboration with the Participatory Budgeting Coordinator, has prepared an annual participatory process. The evaluation and presentation of the survey results were carried out by representatives of the Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences in Jena.

The meeting of the Participatory Budgeting Working Group on October 16, 2017, was the last to be held in this format. With the establishment of the Advisory Board on Citizen Participation, the working group’s activities have been integrated into the board’s work. Three representatives of the working group serve as voting members on the advisory board. For organizational reasons, no participatory process took place in 2018. For 2019, a reorientation of citizen participation in the city budget was discussed—shifting from a participatory budget to a citizen budget.

You can view the budget brochures, survey analyses, and presentations of the results sorted by year in descending order.