Our Money, Our Decision

Participatory BudgetingTakes Root in New York CityBy DONATA SECONDO & JOSH LERNER

"PB comes down to us," Morgan declared. "We are like a family now. Everyone iswatching, and we will succeed." Over the past two hours, this community leader inBrooklyn's Flatbush area had helped lead dozens of neighbors through a "participatorybudgeting" (PB) meeting, to decide how to spend more than $1 million from the city budget.Though the money came from the city, the power behind this experiment in democracycame from hundreds of community organizers and activists.

Participatory Budgeting was launched inOctober 2011 in New York City (PBNYC)-thelargest PB process in the US. A joint initiativeof four New York City Council Members anddozens of organizations, it allows New Yorkers

across the city to decide directly how to spend millions oftaxpayer dollars. By bringing together diverse partners todesign and implement the participatory process, PBNYChas emerged as a model for bottom-up, community-basedgovernance. And by coordinating this work across fourcouncil districts, it shows how to scale up local democraticprocesses, while still maintaining community control.

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Importing Democracy from Brazil

Participatory budgeting is a democratic process inwhich community members directly decide how to spendpart of a public budget. It generally involves a series ofmeetings in which community members and budgetdelegates identify spending priorities, deliberate on thesepriorities, develop spending proposals, and vote on whichproposals to implement.

In 1989, the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre launchedthe first full PB process. Since then, up to 50,000 peopleper year have decided how to spend up to a fifth of the city

budget. As a result, funds have been dramatically redirectedtoward slums and low-income communides. Eor example,in 1989, only 49 percent of tbe population had basicsanitation service. Afrer eight years of PB, 98 percent ofhouseholds had water, and 85 percent were served by tbesewage system.

PB was soon adopted throughout Brazil, then quicklyspread elsewhere in Latin America. In the past decade, ithas become popular in Europe, Africa, and Asia, reachingover 1,200 cides by 2007. Several eoimtries have passedlaws requiring local governments to use PB, and theUnited Nadons and World Bank have named it a bestpracdce of democratic governance. Tbougb most commonin municipal budgets, PB has also worked for states,coundes, schools, housing authorides, and communityassociations.

Six main benefits account for PB's popularity. Itdeepens democracy, increases transparency, and promotesgreater efficiency, increasing citizens' trust in government.It educates people about democracy and spending, andpromotes social justice by leveling the playing field anddirecting resources to communides in need. Lastly, it helpsbuild community, bringing neighbors together in pursuit ofcommon goals.

In 2009, our organizadon. The ParticipatoryBudgeting Project (PBP), helped Alderman Joe Mooreimplement the first PB process in the US, in Chicago's49th Ward. Each year since then, residents have decidedhow to spend over $1 million in ward discretionary funds.They have praised the opportunity to take ownershipover the budget and win concrete improvements for their

neighborhood. But the 49th Ward process has struggled toengage low-income people, youth, and other marginalizedcommunides. The turnout demographics have resembledthose of typical public meedngs and local elecdons, morethan the diverse participation common in Latin AmericanPB. With PB limited to one district, organizers have lackedthe resources and capacity to engage those communitymembers who faee the greatest obstacles to pardcipadon.

Take Two; New York Citv

As in Chicago, New York City Council Membershave their own discretionary funds. Each of the city's 51Council Members (wbo each represent about 160,000people) generally receives $3-11 million in capital fundsand $200,000 to over $1 million in expense funds. Thecapital funds are spent on physical improvements to publicspaces, while expense funds are used for social services andeducadonal or cultural programs.

The discretionary funding process has been sharplycridcized for lacking transparency and meaningfulopportunides for pardcipadon. The Council Speakerdecides how much eaeb district gets, using her own criteria.While Council Members may consult with local groupson how to allocate these funds, ordinary citizens are rarelyincluded. As a result, few residents understand how thebudget works, and even fewer have a say in how it is spent.

Though the City's 59 Community Boards offer aspace for budget pardcipadon, they have litde power. TheBoards propose local spending priorides to the Mayor,

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but most of their requests go unfunded. Their role in thebudget process is stricdy advisory. Often, they are alsodisconnected from and inaccessible to the populadon theyrepresent. Eew New Yorkers know about the Boards, andeven fewer participate in them. Could PB offer residents amore meaningful seat at the budget table?

In Eall 2010, we asked this quesdon at two publicevents in New York. Alderman Moore spoke about theChicago PB experience, and New York City CouncilMembers Brad Lander, Jumaane Williams, and MelissaMark-Viverito responded.

The three Council Members were intrigued, and inMarch 2011, they joined with their colleague Eric Ulrichto launch a collaboradve process. Each Council Membercommitted to letdng residents decide at least $1 million oftheir district's capital discredonary funds-a total of around$6 million city-wide.

In this bipartisan effort. Lander (D, 39th District inBrooklyn, including Park Slope, Kensington and BoroughPark), Mark-Viverito (D, 8th District in East Harlem, partsof the Upper West Side and the South Bronx), Williams(D, 45th District in the Elatbush area of Brooklyn), areworking across the aisle with Ulrich (R, 32 nd District32, Queens), who is pilodng PB in The Rockaways. PBPagreed to serve as the lead technical assistance partner,and the Council Members invited Community VoicesHeard, a community organizing group, to serve as the leadcommunity partner.

Designing Participation from Below

To make the inidadve pardcipatory from the get-go, weformed a City-wide Steering Committee to help design andsupport the process. This committee brought together overforty organizadons focused on good government, research,policy, community educadon, and organizing-as well asCommunity Boards and community-based groups from thefour districts.

In July, PBP guided the Steering Committee throughtwo pardcipatory design workshops to map out the PB cycle,decide its rules, and agree on roles and responsibilides.Through popular educadon games, interacdve exercises,and small group discussions, pardcipants drafted the basicstructure and rules for the process. While deliberadon wasnot easy, the group always managed to transcend differences.

In between and after the workshops, pardcipantsreviewed and revised the rules. Based on these discussionsand feedback, we developed a PBNYC Handbook. Eachorganizadon voted whether to adopt the Handbook. A fewgroups dropped out during these discussions, but all 41 thatremained approved the Handbook.

Based on the plan developed by the SteeringCommittee, we next extended pardcipadon more deeply,by establishing a District Committee in each participadngdistrict. Composed of local organizadons, insdtudons, andCommunity Boards, the District Committees were taskedwith managing the PB process locally.

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Once the District Committees were in place, theCouncil Member offices began working with them toorganize the first public stage of PB-neighborhoodassemblies. At these meetings, held in October andNovember 2011, community members brainstormedcapital project ideas and selected volunteer budgetdelegates. Each district organized at least 5 assemblies,adding up to 27 total.

Starting in November, the delegates began meetingto develop their neighbors' ideas into concrete projectproposals. In Eebruary 2012, they are scheduled to presenttheir proposals to the community in a second round ofassemblies, and revise the proposals based on feedback.In March 2012, all residents of the districts 18 years orolder will be invited to vote for their favorite projects. Theprojects that win the most votes will be submitted to thecity for implementation, up until the million-dollar mark isreached.

Building and Supporting Community Power

Though it is too early to assess the full impact ofPBNYC, the initial stages offer two lessons for communityplanning and organizing. Eirst, participatory programs canraise more resources and support by inviting communityleaders to write the rules of the game. Unlike most suchprograms-and most PB experiences-PBNYC began byengaging a broad Steering Committee in designing theparticipatory process. In most cities, PB is government-led. As much as people participate on the ground, thegovernment usually plans and manages the process.Community members are sometimes invited to help revisethe rules, but not to write them in the first place.

Letting the community decide how it will be ableto participate is not easy, but it pays big dividends. Themain challenge is deciding who will decide. In New York,there was no pre-existing representative body for thedistricts, so we created one. Once we did, the SteeringCommittee-and then the District Committees-began toinject resources into the process. They raised funds and in-kind contributions, and arranged for food, childcare, andtranslation-ofren donating goods and services themselves-to make meetings more accessible. They staffed assemblies,helped train facilitators, and did extensive communityoutreach. Hundreds of organizers across the city havealready contributed thousands of volunteer hours. AsMorgan declared at the start of this article, the DistrictCommittees and Steering Committee took ownership overthe process and willed it to succeed.

The second key lesson is that, ironically, scaling upparticipatory processes can ground them more deeply inlocal communities. Coordinating PBNYC across fourdistricts has provided local organizers with more resources.Unlike Chicago's 49th Ward, PBNYC's scope has enabledit to attract foundation funding, extensive media coverage,and a large team of researchers and videographers.

The Council Member and Their Districts

District 39Brad Lander

District 45Jumaane Williams

District 32Eric Ulrich(Broad Channel& the Rockaways)

These resources have helped each district engage morepeople more deeply - including those who tend toparticipate the least.

Balancing power and responsibilities between theCouncil Members, the Steering Committee and fourDistrict Committees has at times been a challenge, withmany cooks in a brand-new kitchen. But building upthis infrastructure for community control has ultimatelyexpanded the reach of PB. In New York, bottom-up designand implementation has given the community power overnot only budget funds, but also the PB process itself Ifmore community members could gain the power to writethe rules and the resources to carry them out, perhaps theycould take back public control over public money-and evenchange the game of democracy.

Josh Lerner and Donata Secondo work at The ParticipatoryBudgeting Project, the lead technical assistance partner forParticipatofy Budgeting in New York City.

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