Cities urged to embrace crowdfunding - San Francisco Chronicle

Interesting way to fund public projects through donations and not through traditional taxation or special assessments.  Click title for link.  From the article:

He co-founded Citizinvestor, a crowdfunding site that started in Philadelphia in September. Rather than raise taxes or issue bonds, the idea is for municipalities to submit "shovel-ready" projects for the public to fund via voluntary donations.
"People are willing to pay above and beyond taxes for the projects they really care about," he says. "We're building a platform to empower citizens to invest in their communities at a time when government has no other way to pay for them. ... Municipalities are really, really broke."
While he couldn't provide specifics yet, Raynor says Citizinvestor will expand to at least 10 municipalities in California, including a few in the Bay Area, in the coming months.