A new online tool is giving residents in Chatham-Kent a chance to design their very own municipal budget for 2017.
It's also aimed at giving local taxpayers a better understanding of how the budget process works.
The municipality recently partnered with Open North to create an online tool called Citizen Budget.
During Monday night's council meeting, the Director of Budget & Performance Services Gord Quinton presented a video, highlighting the new online tool.
By going to the website, locals can use the budget simulator to create their own municipal budget by allocate where funds should go and see the impacts of each decision they make.
By inputting their own property assessment value into the simulator, locals can also see how their taxes pay for certain municipal services, based on last year's number.
The idea of Citizen Budget may sound daunting, but Quinton says it's very easy to use and only takes about ten minutes to complete.
"It just simply asks you a series of questions based on different municipal services and whether you'd like to see more or less spent in each of those areas," says Quinton.
Citizen Budget is in its beginning stages, but Quinton says so far the pilot project is doing well.
"We've gotten over 80 responses where people have filled out the entire survey," says Quinton. "We feel that's a great response and we'd like to get the word out as much as possible."
Ideas as to how to promote the online tool are still be discussed, but Quinton says for now they'll be promoting through social media.
"We would just like to hear from the citizens of Chatham-Kent on what's important to them and just to collect general comments on anything that they might like to see either plus or minus in the 2017 municipal budget," says Quinton.
Locals can use Citizen Budget until December 10. Once results from the online tool are collected, a full report will be presented to council during the budget meeting on January 18, 2017.