The civil insight for the draft budget 2024 for the people of Vlora remains a difficult challenge

A challenge and result of all the challenges of increasing public initiative through citizen participation[1] is the low participation of citizens and especially of interest groups in hearings on the budget.

To illustrate this challenge, we take the case that is still in the process of discussing the 2024 draft budget. Although the municipality has several residents who are still active in the discussions of diverse topics on the development of the city and its surrounding administrative units, it can be observed that on average they have participated in hearings for the budget no more than 0.09% of the resident citizens of the municipality.

Although a number of factors may have contributed to the disadvantage of this situation, starting from the fact that the sessions are held in mostly closed rooms or why the meetings are held during the active part of the day, or even because they are held in a short period and that there is already a decrease in interest to listen to these discussions, as they expect few changes to occur from their discussions and the reactions of the officials of the municipality and the Municipal Council.

In the meeting in Vlora with business representatives, active members of civil society and the head of the Municipal Council of the Municipality of Vlora for 2019-2023, as well as the new representatives of the municipality, the need for the mobilization of human resources and capacities in order to achieve of a level of development of the economy and well-being higher than at present, due to the insufficient use of all those potentials that Vlora has.

The main problem of engaging citizens in the process of public discussion on local budgeting is that the budget presented to them has already been drawn up and in the consultations, it remains only to accept those facts, when it is necessary to give time and help with civil expertise and local intellectuals to create the bases for arguments and a structured citizen’s voice in front of the municipality

At the stage in which the budget is prepared and presented in project form, it is difficult to change the budget lines and the allocated amounts. Citizens seeing this and from the experience of the past years have realized that their proposals do not have a significant impact on the budget, are discouraged and hesitate to participate in hearings.

Therefore, a simple practical solution would be for the mayor/local leaders to conduct consultations and public opinion polls before drafting the budget.

Another area that needs to be much more active is online public information, which is published slowly and at best is difficult to access in published formats, creating difficulties in reading and downloading documents.

The report “Civil insight: Draft budget 2024 for the Vlonjats” describes in its entire content, as the approach of 2022 for the one topic of discussion of the participation in the budget of the citizen’s opinion, but also the need for this item to be defined in the law on local finances, as part of the budget calendar, but also a voice that should come as a parallel process and as a technical opposition to the citizen voice.

[1] https://altax.al/product/udhezues-per-iniciativen-publike-ne-angazhimin-qytetar-2022/