The first guy you see as soon as you hit the “play” button on that newly available Seattle Channel video from last Sunday’s Citizens Budget Conference at Seattle Center is West Seattle activist/advocate/volunteer Chas Redmond, chair of the City Neighborhood Council, co-chair of the Southwest District Council (which meets tonight). The conference was offered as a chance for citizens to have a say on the head end of the city budgeting process – how do YOU think your money should be spent? Chas was one of several West Seattle participants; we asked afterward for reflections/comments on what happened, and you can read on for his response:

Chas said about 100 people were there in addition to the four dozen or so city staffer types:

The meat of the matter was in the breakout sessions where there were a few to a dozen plus folks engaged in hour-long discussions about two or three different departments. There were 6 sets of breakout sessions for two separate one-hour back-to-back sessions totaling 12 sessions with at least two departments each. A lot of engagement – some serious questions posed about cuts, some unhappy realizations that the revenue stream is down and this year is more cuts than first realized and if we’re lucky next year will be a break-even in terms of cutting services. So, the remaining 7-day libraries will be that way for a year and maybe two. How things bounce back will depend on a lot of things but the local economy is one indicator. Some questions in a lot of the sessions about basing a tax strategy on ever-increasing spending.

Council session at the close of the day was a special session called by Finance and Budget Chair Jean Godden with Tom Rasmussen, Richard Conlin, Nick Licata, and Mike O’Brien also in attendance. They, and the mayor earlier at the start, took written questions from the audience of citizens – relatively demographically representative, thanks to a special effort by the Dept. of Neighborhoods to secure translation services for 12 different languages – for both the spoken portions and the written portions.

It was pretty exhausting to be part of it – was there at 9:30 for setup and finally left at 7:00 with a car full of tired representatives from a variety of district councils which happened to be on my way home (Eastlake and Central – home via Beacon/Columbian Way/WSBridge) from the Seattle Center.

The budget process will have at least three more very public open sessions before the package gets put together in late summer, so said Jean Godden. Mayor McGinn had earlier said that his office would have a series of town-hall style meetings to gather citizen input – the budget process has council and the mayor working together because state lay requires a balanced budget – good approach to creating a mayor/council partnership.

Vice chair of the CNC is Jim Del Ciello from the Admiral Neighborhood Association; he moderated a discussion with Beth Goldberg, acting director of the City Budget Office. You can watch Councilmember Godden’s website for developments along the way.