Participatory Budgeting at the US Social Forum

The Participatory Budgeting Project is excited to announce a special workshop at the US Social Forum in Detroit, featuring organizers of the first participatory budgeting process in the US (Chicago's 49th Ward) and the largest process in North America (Toronto Community Housing).

Participatory Budgeting in the US: Public Control Over Public Money
June 25, 2010 - 10am-12pm
Cobo Hall: W2-58

Sponsoring Organizations:
The Participatory Budgeting Project, Community Voices Heard (New York), Toronto Community Housing, Office of Alderman Joe Moore (49th Ward Chicago), Rogers Park Community Council (Chicago), Liberty Tree Foundation

Description:
This session introduces participatory budgeting and explores how it has been used and could be used in North America. Participatory budgeting is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. Since 1990, it has spread from the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre to over 1000 cities around the world, including several in Canada and the US. It has helped communities gain democratic control over spending and policy decisions in municipalities, public housing, schools, and organizations. This has led to more informed and equitable spending, more accountability and transparency, and more active and organized communities.

After a brief introduction, presenters will share their experiences through a roundtable discussion. Representatives from Community Voices Heard will discuss why community control over budgeting matters and how they are organizing around budget participation in New York. Representatives from Toronto Community Housing and Chicago’s 49th Ward will present their experiences with participatory budgeting. The session will then break up into facilitated small groups, to discuss key question, challenges, and opportunities for participatory budgeting in the US.

Video: Democracy in Action

Check out the new video on participatory budgeting in Chicago's 49th Ward:

If you like the video, register on the website and vote for it in the contest!

Chicago's $1.3 Million Experiment in Democracy

The first year of participatory budgeting in Chicago's 49th Ward concluded last week, with huge turnout for a final voting day. Residents selected 14 community projects for funding, and thanks to strong support from community members and the Alderman, preparations for next year's process have already begun. Megan Wade Antieau and I have a new article in YES Magazine reviewing the process:

Chicago's $1.3 Million Experiment in Democracy: Participatory Budgeting in the 49th Ward

On Chicago's far north side, citizens are taking democracy into their own hands. Through the first "participatory budgeting" experiment in the United States, residents of Chicago's 49th Ward have spent the past year deciding how to spend $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars. Over 1,600 community members stepped up to decide on improvements for their neighborhoods, showing how participatory budgeting can pave the way for a new kind of grassroots democracy, in Chicago and beyond.
read more

Chicago Tribune: Spending out in the open for 49th Ward

Alderman Joe Moore of Chicago's 49th Ward has an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune on his ward's participatory budgeting process:

Spending out in the open for 49th Ward
From Chicago's City Hall to the halls of Congress, important policy and spending decisions have been made for far too long by a handful of politicians behind closed doors working in concert with corporations and special interests. This old way of doing the public's business has bred anger and mistrust of all levels of government.
...
As a Chicago alderman, I have embarked on an innovative alternative to the old style of decision-making. In an experiment in democracy, transparent governance and economic reform, I'm letting the residents of the 49th Ward in the Rogers Park and Edgewater communities decide how to spend my entire discretionary capital budget of more than $1.3 million.

Read more

PBP at Affordable Housing Conference

I'll be speaking about participatory budgeting as a tool for affordable housing at this conference on Saturday:

No MAHS: No More "Affordable" Housing Scams
Saturday, March 27
9:30 – 5 @ Hunter College West, 8th Floor
6 to 68th Street - Hunter College

Affordable housing programs were designed to fail. They do not serve low-income people, they are not permanent, and they benefit developers more than communities. They contribute to gentrification and displacement of communities of color. They rob our communities of the power to make decisions about our future. The longstanding affordable housing crisis has gotten worse with the current financial crisis, leaving us with vacant buildings, massive foreclosures, and even more homelessness.

This is a call for those who are tired of being told that their dream for truly sustainable housing, free from market pressures, is unreasonable, impractical, or naïve. This conference aims to create a space where we can radically re-imagine what is possible in our struggles over land, learn about some of the concrete skills to implement new strategies for community control over our resources, and build and strengthen ties within the housing, community and social justice movements.

There are other paradigms for community-based control of land and resources that can help move our communities forward!

NO MAHS is a forum for housing activists, tenants, squatters, community organizers and homeless people to discuss radical strategies for accessing, securing, and preserving land, community space, and truly affordable housing.

Panelists:

Setting the Context --
Commodification of Land: Frank Morales and Sam Imperatrice
History of New York City’s Housing Movement: Tom Angotti and Peter Marcuse
Current Affordable Housing Programs: Mario Mazzoni

Tactics for Control of Community Land --
Community Land Trusts: James Tracy and Alice Liu (San Francisco CLT)
Limited Equity Coops: Jessica Hall (HDFC), Marina Metolis (UHAB)
Participatory Budgeting: Josh Lerner (The Participatory Budgeting Project)
Community Planning: Ester Wang (CAAV), Julie Lawrence (Community-Based Planning Campaign)
Mutual Housing Associations: Val Orselli (Cooper Square)
Squatting and Occupations: Frank Morales, Rob Robinson (Picture the Homeless)

Purchase lunch on-site ($7.00) or bring your own.
Please let us know if you require childcare or translation services.

To RSVP or for more information, contact:
212-650-3328
communitylandnyc@gmail.com

Conference organizers: Peter Aleksa, Tom Angotti, Sam Imperatrice, Francesca Manning, Mario Mazzoni, Frank Morales, Felix Gottdiener, Avi Rosentalis, Mary Tek

Video: Participatory Budgeting in Chicago

There's a new video short on the 49th Ward Participatory Budgeting Process in Chicago:

Participatory Budgeting and Community Organizing: Update from Chicago

Participatory Budgeting continues to move forward in Chicago's 49th Ward, thanks in large part to community organizing. Since November, dozens of community representatives have been meeting regularly in six committees: Parks & Environment, Public Safety, Traffic Safety, Streets, Transportation, and Art & Other Projects. Starting with ideas proposed at neighborhood assemblies, they have been developing full project proposals - and doing the legwork necessary to make these proposals a reality.

Each committee has been working as a team to assess project ideas, research their feasibility, and work through key details. To develop a proposal for a new bike path, the Transportation Committee has reached out to Loyola University and Chicago transportation officials, trying to build support for a preferred route and navigate the legal obstacles to implementation. The Public Safety committee met with the 911 Center and Police, and after reviewing the results of different public safety measures has shifted its emphasis from blue light security cameras towards more street lighting. Park & Environment has organized separate community meetings to discuss proposals for a community garden and dog park.

The community representatives are now gearing up for the final voting day (April 10th), when all ward residents age 16 and over will be invited to vote for up to 8 projects. Each committee is working to mobilize public support for its proposals, through the ward's participatory budgeting blog, other blogs, community meetings, and word of mouth. The Art & Other Project committee is even organizing an exhibition of proposed projects at a local art space. Many of the committees are thinking even further into the future and discussing how to continue organizing around their key issues after the voting. The residents of Chicago's 49th Ward are turning participatory budgeting into not just a vote over spending, but also an opportunity to organize their neighbors around improving their ward and their city.

PB in the Pacific

Some news from the Pacific: The organization Foundation of the Peoples of the South Pacific International (FSPI) has implemented 2 PB projects recently. One is called 'Making Resource Allocation Pro Poor and Participatory in the Pacific (funded by the ADB) and the other is a current project called 'People, Participatory Democracy and Policy: A PB Project' (funded by AusAid).

Most of the work around PB has been implemented to different extents in Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga and Kiribati. Based on funding, they hope to extend PB to other countries in the region in the near future. Thanks to Albert Cerelala of FSPI for this update!

Reportback: International PB Conference in Berlin

On January 21st and 22nd, Berlin hosted a coming-out party for participatory budgeting in Germany. After years of smaller seminars and local experiments in PB, around 200 politicians, public employees, practitioners, and scholars gathered for an International Conference on Participatory Budgeting Models. They discussed experiences from diverse cities in Europe, Africa, Latin America, and North America, bringing to light many differences in how PB is practiced and understood. Four particularly interesting debates and questions emerged from these discussions, revolving around the roles of vision, deliberation, decision-making, and change.

First, the different experiences had very different visions of the purpose of PB. What kind of world should it help bring about? Most of the Germany experiences were seen as tools for modernization, while the African experiences were more about good governance and the Spanish and UK ones more oriented towards social justice and empowerment. The vision behind the respective PBs has in turn shaped their practice, as described below. Do these diverse visions just represent the rainbow of different approaches PB, or do some of them arc off in fundamentally different directions? PB gained fame around the world largely because of its ability to redistribute resources towards populations with the greatest needs. If social justice is not part of the vision, could this sap the energy and popular support from PB?

Second, the PB processes included very different roles for deliberation. In Germany, there are relatively few face-to-face forums for deliberation, with many PBs allowing citizens to vote online without any deliberation. In Spain, deliberation is often about not only budget projects, but also about the criteria for evaluating these projects. These deeper deliberations aim to steer discussion towards the public interest, by asking people to evaluate projects through the lens of broad public priorities. In Africa, many deliberations consider not only allocations, but also budget revenues, searching for new ways to raise public funds. The processes that emphasize deliberation benefit not only from better spending decisions, but also from citizen learning and capacity-building, and from community-building.

Third, decision-making took many different forms, depending on who decided, about what, and whether these decisions were binding. Many experiences allowed ordinary citizens to decide on allocations, but most of the German ones deferred decision-making to city staff and politicians. In many Spanish cities, citizens could decide not only on budget spending, but also on the rules of the process, criteria for evaluating projects, and grading of projects according to these criteria. These decisions were generally binding, while in Germany the decisions were more often presented as recommendations to the city.

Finally, there were many concerns about change. Some German cities were wary of launching PB before they had found the perfect process, but as several of the international guests advised, the only way to move towards perfection is to start experimenting. PB processes are constantly changing, and many of the most durable ones have incorporated change as a regular part of the process. Every year or every other year, participants evaluate the process and make changes. Change is inherently part of PB and a result of PB – each year it inspires new and better ways of organizing the process. Hopefully the rich discussions in Berlin will encourage more cities to adopt PB, and to continue making the process more democratic, participatory, and empowering.

New Google Group

To replace the defunct participatory budgeting email list at topica.com, The Participatory Budgeting Project and the PB Facebook group are launching a new PB google group. The purpose of the group is to facilitate information exchange, discussion, and collaboration between people working with PB. We invite you to join the group at http://groups.google.com/group/participatorybudgeting/