Rethinking the Economy

This week, while millions of Americans vote whether Siobhan or Tim should be saved on American Idol, residents of Chicago’s 49th Ward will be voting whether the potholes on 1600-1750 W. Lunt Ave or 1000-1350 W. Morse Ave. will be given the ax . That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, Participatory Budgeting has come to the US! Alderman Joe Moore explains:

Residents in my ward have met for the past year — developing a rule book for the process, gathering project ideas from their neighbors and researching and budgeting project ideas. These range from public art to street resurfacing and police cameras to bike paths. The residents then pitched their proposals to their neighbors at a series of neighborhood “assemblies” held throughout the ward.

The process will culminate in an election on April 10, in which all 49th Ward residents 16 and older, regardless of citizenship or voter registration status, are invited to gather at a local high school to vote for up to eight projects, one vote per project. This process is binding. The projects that win the most votes will be funded up to $1.3 million.

Participatory Budgeting was developed in Porto Alegre, Brazil back in 1989, where as many as 50,000 residents spend up to 20% of the city’s budget. The idea spread throughout Brazil and other parts of Latin America, and in the past 10 years cities in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Canada have been experimenting with it. But Alderman Moore’s experiment is the first attempt to bring it to the U.S.

What kind of projects will 49th Ward residents choose from? Items on the ballot include new residential streetlights on 1500-1600 W. Greenleaf Ave. ($65,000), Speed Humps on 1100-1200 W. Greenleaf Ave. ($3500), 2 Community Gardens ($33,000), adding showers to Loyola Beach Park ($50,000), creating the first part of a new bike network in Rogers Park ($10,000), a one block free WiFi test site ($24,600), or 12 murals created by Chicago artists on CTA and Metra underpasses ($84,000).

Although the votes encompass only $1.3 million, Moore argues a lot more’s at stake:

It shouldn’t come as any surprise, then, that only 1 out of 5 Americans trusts government to do what is right most of the time. Citizens don’t believe their government listens to them and they don’t believe they have any power to affect public policy….

Rather than being passive observers of government [the hundreds of residents who've been involved have] become active participants in governing. More important, they know they have the power to make decisions, and that their government is not just hearing them but actually following their mandate.
Empowering people to make real decisions openly and transparently is the first step toward restoring public trust in government.

To find out about the winners, check out Participatory Budgeting in the 49th Ward after Saturday. And for more info about Participatory Budgeting, check out the Participatory Budgeting Project.