Fix City Finances 8: All Cities Should Do "Participatory Budgeting"
Cities that are serious about building public trust should provide citizens with a real voice in how money gets spent.
It’s your tax dollars. Imagine if your city actually gave you a meaningful say in how those tax dollars are spent.
Some cities do! Through a process called participatory budgeting.
Not to be Confused with “Consultation”
Most cities provide public consultations around the annual budget. But this is not participatory budgeting. It’s theatre. The budget barely changes between the initial and final drafts. Best case scenario is that Councillors gleam some local priorities through these consultations that they can advocate for in future years.
Rather, participatory budgeting is a process that lets local communities decide how a pot of money is spent. It may be a small pot, but it does provide citizens with some ability to get more money steered towards their priorities.
In a typical participatory budgeting process, community members first propose projects that they would like to see funded. Projects are evaluated against pre-determined criteria, and those that meets the criteria are put forward for decision. The decision-making process differs from city to city. It may be a decision by Council based on staff recommendations, or it may be a vote open to all citizens.
Montreal Shows the Way
Montreal is allocating $45 million this year for participatory budgeting. In the grand scheme of the total city budget that’s not very much. But in terms of the amount of money that a North American city offers up for decision by its citizens, it’s huge!
The process in Montreal is laid out clearly, along with the criteria and expectations. Anyone can propose a city-wide project up to $5 million in cost, although most projects are smaller and decided on a neighbourhood borough basis. A total of $10 million is reserved for initiatives targeted to youth.
Once the projects have been submitted and vetted against the criteria, every citizen in the city gets the opportunity to vote on which projects they would like to see funded. The projects with the highest number of votes win.
Worldwide Practice
Participatory budgeting happens in cities around the world. It started in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1989.
Some places do it better than others. The New Yorker describes how participatory budgeting works in Cascais, Portugal — a model for how it is done well — where more than 15% of the city budget is decided by citizens.
Participatory budgeting is not a panacea. It tends to focus on discrete and modest projects. It’s not a vehicle for systemic policy change.
Sign of a City That Wants to Build Public Trust
The benefits of participatory budgeting are not surprising.
Greater trust in government
More civic engagement
Funding for projects that local communities care about.
If your city is not open to participatory budgeting, then it may be that, sadly, engagement, trust and local priorities are just not all that important to your municipal administration.