Following the lead of neighbors Somerville and Cambridge, Boston is taking on a new initiative that allows the public to decide how the city spends a portion of its 2025 budget.
The first-of-its-kind citywide participatory budgeting initiative in Boston, dubbed Ideas in Action, will gather ideas from residents, giving them a say in where the city should invest an allotted $2 million in funds.
While the citywide initiative is new, participatory budgeting in Boston is not. Since 2014, Boston’s youth have weighed in on how the city should spend $1 million annually on infrastructure projects through its Youth Lead the Change program.
Ideas in Action, however, was established after a majority voted “yes” on a 2021 ballot question, Question 1, leading to the formation in 2023 of Boston’s Office of Participatory Budgeting.
The goal of the inaugural participatory budget is to “provide an entry point for residents to contribute to the city’s budgeting process,” said Renato Castelo, named director of the Office of Participatory Budgeting in June 2023.
“We’re trying to be very inclusive,” he added, “to ensure, especially, that those who haven’t had a voice in local government or … have mistrust of … government in general, can see the value in … sharing their idea and following through the cycle.”
A secondary aim of the process, he said, is for the city to use the data collected during each cycle to gain insight into residents’ priorities, consider new investments, and expand education around the city’s existing initiatives.
Castelo’s office modeled Ideas in Action after similar programs in Cambridge and Somerville, cities that kicked off their first participatory budgeting cycles in 2014 and 2023 respectively, and also looked at initiatives in New York, Chicago, and Durham, North Carolina.
Beginning July 1, Boston residents have shared their ideas for what the city should put the money toward, including increased green spaces, community organizations and speed bumps to slow vehicles. There are limits to eligible ideas, though. For example, the city will not fund construction on private properties or projects related to the MBTA.
Concerns and challenges
Community members have voiced concerns about the small size of the budget. Cambridge and Somerville, whose populations are roughly five and eight times smaller than Boston’s, each initially set aside $1 million for their participatory budgets.
Castelo said his office started with a $2 million budget for its pilot program because, “We want to make sure that we take the time to do things right, and in the meantime, you know, build trust with the community and community partners.”
But some say that $2 million for Boston, home to over 600,000 people, is inadequate.
Kathy Henriquez, a programs associate at the Center for Economic Democracy, said, “We are really excited for this process. Overall, this is something that we’ve been wanting for people to have access to,” but the budget hasn’t “felt meaningful for a good change.” She said she and her colleagues at the Better Budget Alliance will continue to push for 1 percent of the budget, or roughly $40 million.
The Better Budget Alliance, a grassroots coalition of about 35 community organizations, organized for the establishment of the city’s Office of Participatory Budgeting, and, once it was set up, helped draft a rulebook for Ideas in Action.
The coalition worked to ensure that equity was at the center of the process, which Henriquez said was important for people of color, immigrants and low-income residents who are typically excluded from budgeting processes.
“If people have power over the budget, they will feel more inclined to be civically engaged in all parts of their lives, because now they know how government works, and people are more inclined to also be more engaged electorally,” Henriquez said. “But I think overall … money equals power, right? And so giving people the power to decide what to do with public money, I think it’s just like a base in democracy.”
With the equity lens in mind, Castelo said, his office has been carrying out targeted outreach by collaborating with community organizations to connect with residents who otherwise might not engage in the process. These community partners held idea collection workshops throughout July.
As of Aug. 2, the city had received approximately 600 ideas, by Castelo’s count, significantly short of its 1,000-idea goal. The idea submission phase, initially set to run from July 1 to 31, has been extended to Aug. 15.
Residents can submit their ideas through Aug. 15 via the city’s web portal, www.boston.gov/departments/participatory-budgeting/ideas-action, by phone at (617) 635-3059, or in person at a Boston Public Library branch or at City Hall. Castelo said he encourages residents to submit ideas big and small, without feeling limited by the budget.
The Better Budget Alliance is set to host an independent idea submission workshop on Aug. 12 via Zoom to educate residents on the participatory budgeting process, which Henriquez said the city has not done sufficiently.
Once the idea submission phase closes on Aug. 15, Castelo’s office will consolidate the ideas to make them easier for the public to engage with. That batch of ideas will be whittled down to 15 on the ballot and, from there, residents can vote for their top five ideas to be funded beginning in February 2025.
Candice Gartley, executive director of All Dorchester Sports and Leadership, a neighborhood organization offering sports and enrichment activities, submitted an idea for a multi-use facility for community youth programming in Fields Corner.
“There are not enough spaces for our kids here to come to after school, to have a safe and nurturing space,” said Gartley, a longtime resident of Codman Square.
While she called Ideas in Action “an incredibly great idea that has been too long in coming,” she said she worries that other city projects will take priority.
“If there’s a new administration, there’ll be a different emphasis on something. I think it’s something that you have to move quickly on, and I think that’s a really hard thing to do when you’re dealing with many constituents,” she said.
Castelo also highlighted that as a potential challenge. City departments juggle multiple tasks, including providing basic city services, he said, so, while his office will see the winning projects through, those focused on infrastructure may not be first on the list for implementation.
But, for programs and services ideas, “People will be able to see the impact and the benefit of the process almost right away,” he said.
Measuring impact
Also challenging is how to measure the initiative’s success. Cambridge’s Budget Department has some metrics to point to. The number of voters in its participatory budgeting process has increased five-fold since the first cycle, up to 10,500 in its 10th and most recent cycle, which the city also marked by doubling its budget to $2 million.
Other than voter turnout and idea collection, Melissa Liu, Cambridge’s participatory budgeting and engagement coordinator, said her office has no other numbers that speak to the success of the initiative. Instead, the program relies on qualitative indicators, such as the experiences of the city’s volunteer budget delegates.
Castelo said his office will work with a contracted evaluation company that will draft a report of Boston’s pilot process to assess the project’s success.
Liu and her colleague Daniel Liss, principal budget analyst, said the scale of Boston’s project might be an obstacle but the initiative will evolve, as Cambridge’s has.
“Something that we’ve also learned with [participatory budgeting] is it can start with a very structured and formulaic approach,” Liu said, “but as you go on, cycle by cycle, you will learn things along the way that make it clear that, ‘Hey, maybe this system worked for one city or town, but perhaps not for us.’”
