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News update from India:
Pune citizens to decide how the municipality spends money
Pune, Oct 23 - If all goes well, Pune's residents will become the first in India to play a major role in deciding how the city municipality should spend its budget.
Read more: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/128795.html
In the UK, a mass of football fans has banded together to pool their money, buy a football club, and democratically decide on all major club spending and decisions.
From a BBC report:
"Fans' community website MyFootballClub has agreed a deal to take over
Blue Square Premier outfit Ebbsfleet United. The 20,000 MyFootballClub
members have each paid £35 to provide a £700,000 takeover pot and they
will all own an equal share in the club. Members will have a vote on
transfers as well as player selection and all major decisions."
See the MyFootballClub website for more info, or to join the club
yourself!
Any volunteers to research this and report on its progress?
This reminds me of a like-minded website - PledgeBank, which lets people pledge to contribute a certain amount of money (or anything else) to some purpose, but only if a certain number of other people do the same. If enough other people sign on, the pledge becomes reality. An interesting model for bottom-up decision-making...
Toronto Community Housing (the city's public housing authority) recently posted on its website a new overview of its participatory budgeting process. This is probably the clearest description of a PB experience in North America, and of PB in public housing.
See: http://www.torontohousing.ca/key_initiatives/community_planning
