Welcoming the "It's Our Money" dancers... er... uh... bloggers! (The Next Mayor)

You may have noticed a new but possibly familiar name attached to the previous post.

For the next few weeks, The Next Mayor blog and thenextmayor.com will be giving our friends at It's Our Money a place to crash until we get their new place up and running. They promise that they'll clean up after themselves and not eat our Doritos so we're letting them stay for a while.

The Daily News, in partnership with WHYY, and funded by the William Penn Foundation, is launching an effort to cover the city's budget in a way that citizens can understand. It's Our Money will provide a place for analysis, explanation, and public dialogue about the city's spending. There is definitely going to be plenty to talk about over the coming weeks as City Council holds its budget hearings and prepares to vote on the mayor's plan by the charter-mandated date of May 31st.

Yes, we will be covering those hearings and reporting on them - giving you the "who said what and which council person grilled which department head" but we expect that most other news organizations will be doing that as well, including our own reporters at the Daily News and WHYY. As we did with The Next Mayor, you can find that coverage at It's Our Money so it can become your one-stop shop for links to relevant stories.

However, It's Our Money will be more than just a web link gatherer. Our team will try to get behind the numbers and show you - whether you are a resident of Philadelphia or someone who lives in the suburbs and visits the city to work or play - how the decisions made by the Mayor and City Council will affect your lives.

We will bring you input from several of the region's leading experts on city taxes and spending but we also hope get your story and tell it to everyone. Are funding cuts affecting you or a program that you use? Are you a city employee who is concerned about your pension or wages? Or, even better, a city employee who has ideas about how our money (you are a tax payer too) can be spent more efficiently? We will definitely want to hear from you.

We want to make this process as participatory as possible because, after all, it is our money and we deserve a say in how it gets spent. Check back with us often over the next several weeks to find out how you can be a part of this project.

As for the It's Our Money team, here they are:

Ben Waxman - Ben is a longtime contributor to the Daily News having had several of his op-eds published. He's well known in the local blogosphere as one of the editors of Young Philly Politics and he's worked with or knows several of the folks who are involved in this budget process - from labor leaders to council members. This project has its own "heavy lifting" and Ben will be doing the bulk of it on a day to day basis.

Sandy Shea - Sandy is the Editorial Page Editor of the Daily News and knows everyone who knows anything about city government, the budget, tax payer issues. Sandy is the guiding force behind this project and her years of experience covering these issues will provide users of this project with a product of the highest quality.

Dan Pohlig - (that's me)... Having just finished up my role as the Producer and Researcher of The Next Mayor project, I am now the Senior Producer of Web News and Information for WHYY. As such, I'll be WHYY's liaison to It's Our Money and will help bring WHYY's capabilities to help make the information you find here work across all media - audio, video and web. I may also chime in occasionally on the blog with my own thoughts about the budget process.

All of the reporters from WHYY and the Daily News - In the course of their usual reporting on the budget process, the various reporters and columnists from these two organizations will be invaluable in providing a lot of the content that will keep you up to speed on where our money is going.

Questions about the project? Feel free to ask them in the comments below. We'll be checking throughout the day and try to answer as many as we can.

Comments (2)

Sbadeau

Sounds exciting and worthwhile - let me know how I can help as you move forward

Posted by Sbadeau | February 15, 2008 1:09 PM

Anonymous:

Isn't Ben Waxman the guy who wrote that editorial during the mayoral primary that basically called Nutter an idiot for wanting to cut taxes?

Posted by Anonymous | February 20, 2008 3:07 PM

Comments (2)

Post a comment