The City Council opens the deadline to present proposals for the 2025 Participatory Budget

The process of preparing the 2025 Participatory Budget is already underway. Benidorm City Council has opened the deadline for citizens to present their proposals for evaluation and possible inclusion in the municipal investment items for the next year. The Councilor for Citizenship Participation, Ana Pellicer, explained that this period for presenting initiatives opened yesterday, Wednesday, “once the municipal plenary session approved the Regulation of the Participatory Budget” and that this period “will remain open until 11:59 p.m. hours of next May 31.”

As in previous editions, Ana Pellicer has indicated that all people registered in Benidorm over 18 years of age can participate in this process "and can share what actions they consider can be positive for the city in general or to improve more specific aspects, such as services, the benefits or the image of their street, their neighbourhood or the areas they usually go to.”

Pellicer has stressed that "we are talking about a powerful participation tool, which gives voice and decision-making power to the neighbours since at least 5% of the amount reserved for investments in the City Council's budget is going to be allocated to the actions or projects proposed by citizens.” "Something," she assured, "has been happening since the 2016 budget and has resulted in numerous works from which many citizens have been benefiting for some time, such as the walkway that connects Els Tolls with Palau d'Esports, the roundabout on Ricardo Bayona Avenue, the adaptation of the old road workers' house on Emilio Ortuño Street or the new park located on Marina Alta Avenue.”

Hence, the councillor has encouraged all citizens “to take part in this process, whether by presenting proposals, or by participating in the subsequent vote to choose which actions are the most necessary and priority and, in this way, to decide how “It has to be the Benidorm we want.”

How to submit proposals

According to the 2025 Participatory Budget, the proposals will preferably be framed in several departments and blocks. The first covers Urban Planning, Urban Scene and Mobility. The second, Equality, Social Welfare, Health and the Elderly. The third block is Tourism, Beaches and Public Security. The fourth includes proposals related to Education, Culture, Youth and Sports, and the last is related to actions related to the Environment and Street Cleaning departments.

Each citizen may submit as many proposals as he or she wishes. The initiatives will be presented in writing at the General Registry located on the ground floor of the City Hall, from Monday to Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.; through the Citizenship Participation platform https://benidorm.governalia.es or by sending an email to advicevecinal@benidorm.org to the attention of the Department of Citizenship Participation. Another option is online, on the municipal website, at the address https://sede.benidorm.org.

The form to present the proposals and all the details can be consulted at https://benidorm.org/es/ayuntamiento/concejalias/participacion-ciudadana, by accessing the Participatory Budgets section. The Councilor for Participation has advanced that this year, for the first time, "thanks to new technologies, the possibility is offered for each of the initiatives to be accompanied by different graphic elements." Specifically, according to the Self-Regulation, two images and a short explanatory video, "where citizens can show the area where they propose to act and complement or explain the action in more detail to make it more attractive."

Once all the proposals have been collected, a telematic voting process will be opened. In this way, citizens who want to participate in the vote will find a list with all the proposals presented that meet the requirements on the City Council's website and will be able to vote on the platform for those they consider most appropriate, through the platform. https://benidorm.governalia.es, between June 10 and 30, 2024.

After the votes, a technical commission will be in charge of evaluating and prioritizing the actions based on the distributive justice criteria included in the bases. Thus, priority will be given to actions that contribute to satisfying the basic needs of the population (water, electricity, security, education, citizen coexistence, etc.); that help reduce social inequality (gender, income, ethnicity, or physical or mental disability); those that meet environmental sustainability criteria (having nearby, renewable, decentralized and self-sufficient resources); those that benefit a greater percentage of the population; or those in which it has not been invested before or has not been invested enough.

Subsequently, these proposals will be the subject of a technical and economic feasibility report by the City Council's technical staff, starting with the most scored and up to the maximum authorized spending limit. If the proposals are not technically viable, “it will be included in another list and the next most voted on the final prioritization list will be selected.”

Finally, the proposals approved by the Regulation will be submitted to the Mayor's Office for processing, taking into account the order of priority resulting from the selection process, executing in the budgeted year those works that do not require a public competition or specific technical project or to be submitted to public exhibition.