2025 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

Since 2018, the city of Trogir has been implementing a participatory budgeting project through which it wants to involve citizens in budget planning. While the City will invest in larger strategic and infrastructural projects in addition to this project, with this project it wants to solve minor communal, traffic and infrastructural deficiencies in the area of ​​all 9 local boards and involve citizens in the political life of the city. 

The project works so that at the beginning of September every year, citizens send proposals for small investments, the proposals are received and evaluated financially and technically. This is followed by public forums in all local committees, where the received proposals are presented, and the citizens present have the right to vote for those they consider priorities. 

Total budget for the project "You've been asked, too!" amounts to 240,000 euros, which are divided proportionally to the number of inhabitants of a certain local board. After voting on the projects, the City undertakes to realize them in the following budget year. The entire dynamics of the project are regularly published by the City through official channels. Participatory budgeting implies projects for the arrangement of communal infrastructure facilities with the aim of raising the quality of life of citizens, i.e. improving communal standards and harmonizing the standard of equipment of local boards. These are, conditionally speaking, smaller projects, but at the same time, those whose implementation greatly affects the quality of life of people and the appearance of public areas.

In the six editions of the project that have been completed so far, approximately 2,000 proposals for small communal investments have been received, of which 250 have been voted on and implemented. On average, 350 participants took part in the stands per year, and a total of one million euros was spent on the project, which was used to arrange green areas, public lighting, rehabilitate roads, install surveillance cameras for public areas, and so on. 

It's our obligation to keep this project ongoing and building trust between our citizens and us as their local administration and stranghten connection between their voice and our work. 

• https://trogir.hr/participativno-budzetiranje/ (External link)