Moving Forward: Civic Engagement Reaches All-Time High in Bell; City Teams Up w/ Residents

Bell is back and it’s on a mission to facilitate collaboration and transparency with the city’s residents. Local officials have been holding open community forums/public budget planning workshops to ensure that constituents know first-hand the status of the city’s fiscal position. These gatherings are the first of their kind in Bell’s history. Newly elected council members want to show that Bell is getting down to business when it comes to righting the ship; undoubtedly, the public’s cooperation and understanding of the tough options before the city is valuable in light of the negligence that allowed corruption to go on unabated in the past. City Hall and its residents are teaming up and the participatory nature of this alliance stands in strict defiance of prior problems.

The city is now experiencing its most open budgeting process by extensively involving the public and explaining the basics of local governance. This new level of civic engagement is a far cry from the outpouring of anger that flooded City Hall only a short while ago, thereby showing that the city is moving forward and doing it constructively. In fact, Bell is striving to be one of the most open, accountable and transparent municipalities in California.

The reform organization CA Forward has applauded Bell’s drastic turnaround and wrote the following of the city’s progress and forum:

“It was abundantly clear that those who participated were eager to dive in at the beginning and very enthusiastic about the new processes after it was done. The reciprocity between local officials and their constituents is the type of two-way dialogue that needs to happen in every corner of the state. Who knew it would be happening in Bell so quickly? The scandal of 2010 was a necessary evil of sorts. It catalyzed the institutional house-cleaning necessary to affect the type of change we saw effervesching from every corner of the room on Saturday. Out of the ashes, a new model of governance is rising - one based on openness and civic engagement. This ensures processes are transparent and leaders accountable to the people who elected them.”

The renewed spirit of Bell is evident in the video clip below: