Learn How Your City Government Works

The Bethlehem Citizens’ Academy, a weekly program designed to educate city residents about how their government operates, will begin in April, the city announced Friday.

Online registration for the course will begin at 9 a.m. Monday at www.bethlehem-pa.gov/about/citizensacademy/. The program is limited to 25-persons per session.

Classes for the spring 2013 session will begin on Wednesday, April 3, 2013 and will take place at various working locations within the city.

Participants enrolled in the Citizens’ Academy will attend one, two-hour session per week, for 11 weeks. During each session, participants will view in-depth presentations and demonstrations of the inner workings of local government.

“The purpose of the Citizen’s Academy was to give a small group of residents a bird’s eye view of what we do,” said Mayor John Callahan, who launched the program in 2009.

The mayor said he started the program with a three-fold purpose: to increase transparency in city government, to expand the city’s volunteer capacity and to help build a new generation of leaders in Bethlehem.

“Citizen participation input is critical to understand how we are delivering our city services and in a world of limited budgets which services we should prioritize,” Callahan said. “It is the taxpayers’ dollars at work and they should have some say in how they are spent.”