Special Edition: Outreach Notebook for Sunday May 8, 2022

Welcome back everyone to #eastannarbor. Thanks to Trische’ and Kelly from Survivors Speak for encouraging me to speak up at #A2Council this week regarding support for black-owned businesses as a first step toward implementing a program of municipal reparations.

I typed up my remarks to Council and posted them here for discussion. Feel free to join the discussion, offer alternate responses to the other folks’ comments or tell me anything I left out or got wrong. Thanks for your participation.

I’ve written before about the Participatory Budget Process we are engaged in here, here and here with an organizing committee working in partnership with ICPJ.

We introduced the participatory budget process to the entire board this week. But failed to make it in time to register a 1-minute public comment we had prepared for the occasion. Yours truly will be recording and posting a version of these remarks later today. I am writing this at 4am-ish and do not want to wake up our space cadet kitty Simon who is resting peacefully after an impromptu playdate 🤘

The remarks are directly derived from the email [pasted below] I sent to Commissioners, Administrator Dill and Sheriff Clayton. The content of the email is directly derived from our visioning statement[s]/ outline for this participatory budget process, so these words came from a group effort:

May 4, 2022

Dear Commissioners, Mr Dill and Mr Clayton:

I’m writing today to introduce you to the Washtenaw County People’s Budget for Racial Justice & Equity. We are a group of residents who are working with individuals from mutual aid and grassroots organizations.

We have been talking with a few commissioners already about this process and look forward to speaking with each of you about how we can partner to make the budgeting process more accessible to folks from communities needing more resources in order to make sure everyone can live a decent quality of life with access to all basic needs and life nurturing resources like education and job opportunities.

We want to move toward a genuinely participatory process, meaning that BIPOC residents most impacted by decisions to allocate resources to county services, including the department of public safety, are engaged to develop a portion of the general fund that is led by community members, in partnership with county elected officials and staff.

For this process to be successful, we will need to achieve a broad and deep engagement during this collaboration, including the people from the beginning to the end.

Which people?
The people impacted by and using county services most (e.g. public transportation, county health department, sheriffs dept).We need to convene those most affected by systemic inequality to provide input about their priorities for the budget, the needs they see in their communities. This might be young people, old people, formerly incarcerated people, people of color, and other marginalized groups.

We also need to Include consideration and inclusion of people who are returning citizens, undocumented immigrants, and working class people who labor in the county. Include students and other ‘transient’ populations. One final thought too is that we should Include county employees/staff that are *not involved* in high-level decision-making.

We believe that this process should be oriented toward collective decision-making./ This should include representatives from different organizations, groups, populations who can serve as a connector to information that the community needs to be engaged in the process.

Of course we will need adequate resources & time given to provide a lot of education on the process of how government operates, how budgets are created, how change can be made, best practices from elsewhere, information on Washtenaw Co passed budgets (information & education needs listed out elsewhere).

I’ll leave it there for now. We are already drilling down to specific issues and areas of our county government we want to address.

May the fourth be with you.

Greg Pratt, LMSW
East Ann Arbor

That is it for this week’s Outreach Notebook. I’ve abbreviated the typical format which is more an overview of a few activities we’ve been engaged in throughout the previous week.

So today, instead of reading more about what I/we’ve been doing I am inviting you to share your Sunday morning thoughts about what a participatory budget process looks like for you.

What issues do you think require funding and support from the Washtenaw County community?

And now, tell us again but after inhaling a helium balloon.

Have a great day all! Look for our “1-minute with #eastannarbor LIVE” here on our facebook page which you are of course free to like and share. FWIW though, we are not focusing on facebook as a means of discussion, more so for sharing info and upcoming events.