Kisela Voda invites residents to shape the 2027 budget: meetings today in Dračevo and tomorrow in Kisela Voda

The Municipality of Kisela Voda is asking residents to say what the 2027 budget money should be spent on. Under the slogan "Propose, discuss, prioritise", the municipality is holding two public meetings on participatory budgeting, together with Finance Think.

The first meeting is today, Tuesday, from 17:30 to 19:00, at the House of Culture in Dračevo. The second is tomorrow, Wednesday, from 17:00 to 18:30, at the "Biljana Beličanec" House of Culture in Kisela Voda. Anyone who can't come in person can send proposals online, through the link the municipality published.

The process is part of the project "Civic oversight: bridging the gap between political promises and delivery in four development areas", supported by the Government of Switzerland through Civica Mobilitas. The project's name says the problem out loud: the gap between what was promised and what got done.

Letting residents name the priority for their own neighbourhood is a good idea and worth using - a pothole or an unlit playground becomes visible once the people who live there point at it. But the real test of a participatory budget isn't how many people show up to the meetings. The test is how many of their proposals end up in the budget the councillors vote through - and whether the municipality publishes which proposals made it and which didn't.