Participants in Youth Leadership Sandy Springs, which includes students from 10 local schools, used a board game to learn how to run a city, and received some tips from Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul and Councilmember John Paulson.
The board game, which the students played in November, was developed by Youth Leadership Sandy Springs Director Polly Warren and two YLSS and Riverwood International Charter School alumnae, Madeleine Sibert and Rachel Carlson.
“For six years, I had watched PowerPoint presentations on city budgeting and thought there had to be a more interactive way to learn,” Warren said.
With the roll of the dice, players see how much money they receive in revenue and how much they pay in expenditures for city services. They pick capital projects and figure out whether they have funds to add the projects. If they’re broke, they must determine how to raise the money to get out of debt, according to the release.
“The fate of the city is in your hands. You raise the taxes. You make the cuts. Will you go boom or go bust?” the front of the box game says.
The game also has Uber drivers deliver “wild cards,” such as “Hurricane Irma hits; subtract $2 million to cover extra police, fire and roads crew costs” or “a homeless man sets fire to a mattress under a bridge; subtract $12 million for bridge repair,” according to the release.