This story was originally published by City Bureau on November 9, 2020.
One of the people behind the People’s Budget is Paola Aguirre Serrano, the founder of Borderless, an urban research and design studio, and a 2019 cohort fellow at CUE. This year, she designed the People’s Budget bus tour with a focus on community engagement.
Thinking of your budget bus tours, what are community members most interested in funding in the budget?
People have an intuition about how much money goes into policing, especially this year with the uprisings. There’s a lot of frustration. After people do the [budget bus] table, set their priorities, we have this reveal moment: This is what the group wants. Do you want to know what the city of Chicago actually spends? Over a third of the money goes to police, and most of the allocation is for policing or carceral systems. Most allocations for policing in these exercises is around $8 to $10 out of 100, and when they see 36 their hearts drop. They know it but when they see it, it’s a different feel. Like really, you’re telling me it’s just $4 [out of $100] for health?
We need to invest more. It’s not enough that community organizations are doing this on their own. Participatory budgeting is such a powerful tool, yet we’ve done very little to engage our communities to understand and participate in a productive way around the budget. v
