By Michael V. Hannigan
Wednesday, July 15, the City of Athens staff held a Community Budget Forum at the Cain Center. With the help of a slide presentation, department heads explained what they do and then took questions from the audience.
Suggestions from the audience included paying more attention to curb and gutters and expanding the hours of the tourism office.
Those paragraphs share the particulars of what happened Wednesday evening for those who missed it — which includes almost everyone in the city. I counted less than 10 people on hand who were not required to be at the forum or connected with city government.
But it doesn’t really tell the crux of what happened.
For two hours, the people who actually run the city on a day-to-day basis asked for input and suggestions in a very public way. They tried to explain the process of maintaining a community of more than 12,000 and stood behind a podium and did their best to answer any question thrown their way.
It was the first time I’ve seen a city do that in 20-plus years of journalism.
As I sat there and watched staff member after staff member stand up to take their turn, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to write everything that was said. Instead, I asked for a copy of the presentation and posted it above so that our readers can see exactly what was talked about during that part of the forum.
I hope you’ll read through the presentation because there is a lot of good information there.
I also hope Athens holds similar forums in the future and there is another chance for the for the public to take an active part in governing their city.