The City of Penticton is putting the brakes on its 2017 budget planning process in order to spend more time talking to the public.
“The change is a direct result of initial engagement sessions which showed that citizens do not believe the city has been listening and acting on feedback gathered in previous public consultations,” reads the city’s press release.
The budget planning sessions, which would have started Nov. 22, have been pushed back two months, with a new start date of Jan. 24, 2017 to better incorporate citizen feedback into the decision-making process.
“The city is lengthening the engagement period to provide more detail to the public and to hear from more citizens prior to council budget deliberations, according to the release.
Earlier this month, the city announced it is facing a $175 million infrastructure deficit, and part of developing a plan to deal with it would be educating the public and gathering feedback. The newly hired engagement consultant, JoAnne Kleb, was tasked with that public engagement and held three public information sessions last week.
