Benidorm opens the process for submitting proposals for the Participatory Budget

Benidorm City Council with the Neighborhood Council, has opened the process of submitting proposals for inclusion in the Participatory Budget for 2021, after yesterday the plenary session of the Corporation unanimously approved the Regulation that will govern the procedure. The Councilor for Citizen Participation, Ana Pellicer, has indicated that "2021 will be the fifth Participatory Budget of Benidorm, which definitely consolidates this powerful tool of participatory democracy that gives citizens a voice and vote when deciding which projects or actions to allocate a part of the municipal investment ”.

Pellicer recalled that "the first year the Participatory Budget amounted to 90,000 euros, while in 2019 and 2020 the planned investment exceeded half a million euros in each year, facilitating the execution of more citizen or larger proposals." At this point, she recalled that "among the actions carried out in these five years are, for example, the rehabilitation of the access ramp to Levante beach in the area of Torrejó square, the construction of the pedestrian walkway to link Ells Tolls neigborhood with Palau d'esports, the implementation of trafficlights for blind people, children's playground and several works to make the neighborhoods in the city much more accessible ”.

The councillor has indicated that “as has happened with other procedures or activities, this Participatory Budget has also had to adapt to the new circumstances derived from the health crisis; in this case, varying the formula for selecting and prioritizing the citizen proposals that will be submitted to the City Council for inclusion in the municipal accounts for 2021 ”.

"The health situation - she has detailed - prevents this process from being carried out, as up to now, through public assemblies. For this reason, exceptionally, it will be a Prioritization Commission created by the Neighborhood Council itself that will establish the order of the proposals based on the evaluation criteria included in the Participatory Budget Regulation ”. Subsequently, these proposals will be analyzed by municipal technicians to determine their viability and cost, incorporating those that can be executed into the Budget.

Pellicer explained that the proposals can be submitted until 11:59 p.m. on December 29, 2020 at the Municipal General Registry located on the ground floor of the City Hall from 09:00 to 14:00, at the email advicevecinal@benidorm.org, or "Through the new Citizen Participation website platform that will be activated tomorrow, December 2". The presentation form is available in the Citizen Participation section of the website www.benidorm.org, where the Regulation and an explanatory guide can also be consulted.

The councillor has clarified that "this process of presentation and selection of proposals for the Participatory Budget will run in parallel to the preparation of the municipal budget, whose draft is already well advanced and that from the local government we want to raise in full shortly." In this way, "the municipal budget will collect the amount that is going to be allocated to the Participatory Budget, which will be at least 5% of the amount reserved for investments, and later names and surnames will be given to the projects or actions to be financed. with those funds ”.

Citizen Participation Website Platform

The Citizen Participation portal (https://www.civiciti.com/es/benidorm) is a new tool launched by the City Council “in order to increase interaction with citizens, facilitating their participation through opinions and proposals, as well as through specific consultations ”.

It will also serve as a channel for information between the City Council to citizens, transferring various municipal information of interest such as official communications, transparency, proposals and ongoing processes, news grouped by topic, agenda, services of public interest and links to the municipal website and to the websites of various administrations ”.

Its operation is simple. It only requires registering the first time you access with your name and an email.

Thanks to the solidarity of the Neighborhood Council

As the mayor did during the plenary session this Monday, the mayor of Citizen Participation thanked the Neighborhood Council "for the solidarity and social commitment shown on the occasion of the pandemic, having given the 500,000 euros of the Participatory Budget to the attention of social needs urgent problems derived from the Covid-19 crisis ”.