Along with the developments experienced in public administration, perception of people on participatory budgeting as a model, which enables them to directly participate in budget preparation process and monitor public expenses, has become a current issue. Budgeting method based on participation of people on local level is a supervising and directing approach for decisions of political actors as key determinants of the budgeting process. In local governments, city councils have been formed for increasing participation of people and ensuring sustainability urbanization on the purpose of reflecting their preferences in budgeting processes from the frame of participatory budgeting. City councils with local community representatives gain importance in the process of preparing municipal budgets with participatory budgeting approach. Consequently, there is a mutual interaction between the participatory budgeting process and city councils. The basic units where democracy can be actualized are the city councils of local governments and if, the members of city councils do not have sufficient knowledge and experience on budgets, public resources might be wasted due to decisions made by these councils. At this point, the general budget experience and budgeting process knowledge of the city council members become important. It is thought that measuring budget perceptions may increase awareness of the importance of city councils. For this purpose, a 5-point Likert-type questionnaire was applied to a sample group of 91 people in order to measure the budget perception of the members of the City Council of Manisa Yunusemre Municipality In the study, it was examined whether the variables related to the general budget information, budgeting process and awareness of the importance of city councils were formed and whether they differed in terms of gender and educational level. As a result of the research, it was determined that as the knowledge level of the budget process increased, the level of awareness increased but there was no such relationship between the general knowledge of budget and the level of awareness. This situation revealed that the members of the city council, although they did not have technical knowledge in general, were aware of the budget process.