UPDATE -- The Greensboro City Council voted 5-4 to move forward with the plan Tuesday, but not before some heated discussion. According to the Greensboro News and Record, council members Jamal Fox, Marikay Abuzuaiter, Nancy Hoffmann, Yvonne Johnson and Sharon Hightower voted in favor. Council members Zack Matheny, Tony Wilkins, Mike Barber and Mayor Nancy Vaughan voted against it.
Greensboro City Council considers two resolutions at their meeting Tuesday night that could pave the way for a new process to give community members a say in how they want their tax dollars spent. If it is adopted, Greensboro would be the first city in the South to implement it.
It's called participatory budgeting. For instance, maybe your neighborhood park needs a new playground, or a new traffic light at that four-way stop. The process lets community members use allocated funds from city coffers to pay for local projects like these. Residents work with city leaders to develop proposals in their districts and compare costs. An election is held and community members vote on which projects will move forward.
“From our community outreach, we have heard bike lanes, community gardens and a lot of people are coming up with ideas to serve the homeless population,” says Vincent Russell, President of Participatory Budgeting Greensboro. ”We have ideas about creating shelters that could provide a safe place to go out of the rain that isn't under a bridge.”
Russell says they want more participation and diversity in the democratic process. One way of doing this is by making voting requirements less restrictive.
“In Greensboro we have been talking about making sure that at least 16 year-olds would be able to vote and you wouldn't have to necessarily be a legal citizen to participate in participatory budgeting. We have definitely been talking about that to make sure that more people's voices heard in the community,” says Russell.
Since 1989, Participatory Budgeting has been used in more than 1,500 cities around the world.
Here's what is before Greensboro City Council Tuesday night:
- Council will be asked to consider adopting a resolution to fund $100,000 for administrative expenses and program development costs to explore the participatory budgeting process in Greensboro. This funding would be expensed in Fiscal Year 2015-2016. The community group that supports PB would match the City's $100,000 with $100,000 of its own. Ultimately, the $200,000 will go toward staff expenses and to contract with Participatory Budgeting Project, a New York firm that has worked with other cities to implement PB initiatives.
- Also before Council is the reallocation of $500,000 as part of the FY 2016-2017 budget that would be used for the actual PB program in the community. The idea is that each of the City's five districts would receive $100,000 to determine how that money should be spent on certain projects or initiatives.
Follow Keri Brown on Twitter @kerib_news
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