Since 2010, Chicago aldermen have been using participatory budgeting to give ward residents a say in how some of the money in their ward will be spent. First implemented in the 49th ward by former alderman Joe Moore, participatory budgeting allows ward residents to propose and vote on capital improvement projects to be funded by the $1.32 million dollars of aldermanic “menu money” allocated to each ward by the city of Chicago each year. Most participatory budgeting projects have funded projects like road resurfacing, traffic safety improvements, and ward beautification, and the practice is currently active in nine wards.
PB Chicago first ran a pilot program in three CPS schools—Hyde Park Academy, Al Raby High School in East Garfield Park, and Steinmetz College Prep in Belmont Cragin—and now runs in ten elementary and high schools across the city. By the end of the 2020-2021 school year, 16 schools will have participatory budgeting programs.
“In the proposal they also had to include a persuasive paragraph and we talked about how politicians create persuasive speeches to persuade people to vote for them, so it was kind of like the same thing in class—you had to persuade people to vote for your project,” said Salgado. The students then voted on each others’ proposals based on whether the proposal was realistic, whether $2,000 would cover the costs, and whether the project would serve a significant proportion of the school population. Through in-class voting, the best eight projects were chosen to present to the school principal.
In the end, Kelly High School’s principal committed to working on all of the projects presented to him. “He was very impressed, and he actually e-mailed me and said, ‘All of them are great. I couldn’t choose,'” Salgado remembered. “‘So, I’m going to try my best to work on all these issues. Maybe not right away, but over time.'”
“It made me care about the class more,” said Qualls. “I feel like my proposal opened up more people’s eyes and a lot more people got used to the fact that there’s LGBTQ+ people in the school and that they don’t feel comfortable going inside the existing bathrooms.”
Advocates see the space created for dialogue between young people and community or school decision makers through participatory budgeting as the most valuable part of the process, even if the original proposal ends up being ineligible or not selected for funding during the formal ward or class process.
