Riverside County last week released a guide to help people better understand the county’s budget, including how the budget is made, where the money comes from and how it gets spent.
“It’s our effort to explain the county budget,” Riverside County Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen said in an interview with The Riverside Record about budget workshops being held across the county. “It’s less than 25 pages, and it’s meant to explain what is a complicated process to folks who don’t live it all day, every day.”
The Budget 101 guide, which is available in both English and Spanish, was released ahead of the five budget workshops and aims to demystify the entire budget-making process in a way that is clear, simple and relevant for Riverside County residents.
The guide starts by giving readers a basic primer of the different levels of government — from federal to state to local — before diving deeper into the specific role county governance plays in people’s daily lives and breaking down from where the county gets its money and how that money is spent.
The document ends with information on how people can get involved in the budgeting process to ensure the county knows what programs and services are important to them, including at the community budget workshops, regular Riverside County Board of Supervisors meetings and at the public hearings on the budgets that will happen in June.
“When residents are informed, they’re empowered to participate—and that leads to better policy decisions and stronger communities,” Van Wagenen said in a release announcing the guide. “I hope you find this guide useful in explaining where public dollars go.”
The guide is the latest in a series of community engagement efforts aimed at getting more public input in this year’s budget. The first was a community survey that asked residents how they would allocate the county’s funds. That survey closed March 31.