Conversation Highlights: Participatory Budgeting Info Session
We held our first Participatory Budgeting Info Session online on April 19, 2022. A good mix of participants from Ward Karhiio and Ward Nakota Isga joined the lively conversation. We will use this input to shape up each the process.
As we move forward with developing the Participatory Budgeting project, it will be driven by many conversations, and your input and ideas. We will take an iterative approach. We will continue to share conversation highlights like these along the way.
In case you missed it, we are sharing some of the conversation highlights here.
Slide Deck (PDF)
Overall Reactions
Overall, everyone is quite excited about this project, and the potential for COMMUNITY BUILDING, especially with WARD-SPECIFIC projects, as well as the possibility of wider ENGAGEMENT, a challenge many people face in various spaces, and a topic that invited a lot of discussions and questions.
“I don’t see a downside.” One member of a community league shared that they live in a diverse neighbourhood and is hopeful something like this project will spark the interest of lesser-engaged residents.
“It’ll be a little bit of a different process for us creating a project that fits within the funding constraints, but I think it’s a great opportunity to get some local initiatives off the ground.”
“Could be a great way to use community knowledge to make better use of underutilized spaces, which sounds like an all around great way to make neighbourhoods unique and add great assets to our wards.”
“Devil's in the details as always. Outreach strategies and simplifying the language is very important. There probably needs to be an educational component regarding ideas that are outside the jurisdiction of the municipal government.”
Criteria for the process and individual projects
With the help of the group, we discussed many aspects of the process.
“I gather this is a ground breaking project (neighbourhood funding) and the ground rules will become much clearer and rather more set as time passes. I am glad to be part of this process and look forward to the process and watching how it will unfold.”
The main challenge that the Participatory Budgeting Project seeks to address is climate and community resilience. By focusing on hyper local solutions, we want to facilitate a conversation about social and ecological transition as changes are happening all around our communities and society at large.
We are aiming for 10-15 small-scale projects with up to $2,000 funding (no minimum) in each ward. “It has to be accomplish-able, this isn’t just seed money - need to stay within a reasonable budget.”
Funds need to abide by the Ward Budget Policy, but can include honorarium for artists, Elders, and facilitators.
We are keeping this year’s pilot relatively small, to prevent too much red tape and navigation through the City system. This also depends on the type of projects that surface as not every project will require permits (for example). In any case, our ward offices are on hand to support with navigating the system.
There is not one particular target audience. It is however important that projects are submitted by residents in the ward that will take place in the ward.
There is also no age restriction - we are actively engaging schools and classrooms.
Engagement will be ongoing with intention. We aim to leverage our networks, with all of your help, to reach communities that don’t typically get involved in civic processes. We recognize that people will participate on their terms.
By putting the decision-making power in the hands of the community, we are flipping the process around. On top of that, by keeping the scale small, we hope this helps to decolonize traditional granting processes that have much embedded systemic barriers for many, especially equity-seeking groups. We hope any lessons learned can set an example for the future, whether within the City corporation or with other wards.
As much as possible, we encourage buying and using local - “I think it would be important to ensure projects support local business. For example building a “free library” by someone in the community versus buying from Amazon. How do we encourage using local resources?”
How will you submit your ideas? How will we meet and gather?
We don’t want the submission process to be restrictive. “I think it needs to be open to creativity, innovation and accepted through diverse modalities.”
Even if you already have some funding from another source (i.e., Street Lab for road safety), you can still participate in this project.
We invite you to the first workshop for brainstorming (date TBD). Through conversation, facilitation, and some cross pollination, your ideas will be further developed at the next workshop, at which time, ideas can then formally be submitted through an online platform - could be visual, social media, or by video - to ultimately tell a story about the issue you are trying to solve and what you hope your solution will accomplish.
Other ways of sharing and submitting ideas, “social media, a google form that is straightforward, a direct email to the councillor(s)” - social media is also a great way to engage young people.
In terms of gathering, because it will be facilitation-based and we do need everyone to talk with one another, we will keep going with the virtual format (especially given we are bringing folks from two wards together). If teams want to meet in person offline to discuss ideas more in detail, that’s entirely up to you.
Voting day - what could it look like?
Ideas will be shared openly on a digital platform. “Simply having a list of what is available where and by whom may allow collaboration or clarification of ideas. Once there is a group or list of projects, perhaps grouping them into areas of concern, then expertise may follow. May be a lot of similar ideas, not exactly the same but we could consolidate them in ways.”
We may opt for not just one-day but a wider voting timeline (i.e., a week).
With the help of local agencies and organizations, we can also have the option of voting in-person.
While we may not have full capacity for translation into various languages, we will do our best on an on-demand basis through the languages we do know within our offices but also with your help.
Name of the project
At the end, we had a soft poll to see what name might resonate the most with folks. Instead of “Participatory Budgeting,” most people leaned towards “Community-based budgeting” with some being drawn to the idea of “People’s Budgeting.”
