Participatory Budgeting
How taxes can be democratic & contributist
FARE
Free
uncoerced
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Free
Participation is voluntary and everyone who pays taxes in the community (regardless of citizenship or incarceration status) gets a voice and a vote. One point held back because the money is still collected by compulsion: this lets you chose where your taxes go, but they're still taxes.
Active
participatory
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Active
The entire proposal is participation. Residents brainstorm, delegate, research, cost the projects, and vote them into the ground.
Relational
builds community
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Relational
Neighbors argue about a park in a room together, and six weeks of delegate work turns strangers into collaborators. One point held back because sortition — while fairer — narrows who gets to do the relational work.
Effective
resources well used
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Effective
Residents are not city planning experts, so the dollars here may not be going to the technically optimal projects. But participatory budgeting is not just buying water fountains; it's buying legitimacy, civic engagement, and opportunities for more connected communities.
Impact
In 2011, four districts in New York City launched participatory budgeting, a process in which residents can decide how public funds are spent in their community. Now, it’s widespread in NYC for local physical infrastructure projects – usually around schools, libraries, streets – with the simple requirement that they cost at least $50,000 and will last at least 5 years.
Districts hold neighborhood meetings to collect ideas for community improvement projects. Idea collection is focused particularly on hard-to-reach communities, such as immigrants with limited English proficiency, youth, senior citizens, and public housing residents. Volunteers then research community needs and work with city agencies to turn ideas into concrete proposals.
As a resident, it’s a fun process. First, districts hold community meetings where residents brainstorm ideas and appoint volunteer delegates to shape them into proposals. Then, you get a description of a number of proposed projects in your neighborhood and get to choose, say, three of them that part of your community’s tax money will be spent on. Do you want to plant more trees on the streets? Build a lab for the school around the block? Buy an aquatic weed harvester for the local lake? While voting for your local politicians hopefully allows you to be indirectly involved in how the city spends your taxpayer money, it’s nice to feel like you are contributing directly to where some of it goes.
One of the coolest (and most contributist!) things about participatory budgeting in New York City is that anyone can participate. Regardless of incarceration status, citizenship, or age (you can vote even as young as 11!). If you live in the community and pay taxes in the community, you’re able to help direct where some of those taxes go.
Proposal: Participatory Budgeting
When I think of what a contributist society looks like, I think it has to include participatory budgeting in some form. To me, the biggest question is – how much of the budget should be decided by participatory budgeting? A positive about the NYC example is that it directly impacts the immediate community you live in, the schools your kids go to, the streets you walk on every day. Someone in Staten Island isn’t voting for what should be done in the Bronx, and vice versa. I think some amount of participatory budgeting should exist in every contributist community at this hyperlocal scale.