After more than three years, the city of Seattle completed its participatory budgeting process, allocating $27.25 million to six different projects across the city.
Participatory budgeting is a form of financial decision-making in which community members have a direct say over where funds are spent; just over 4,000 people voted in the final allocation of this money.
The investments include $7.2 million for the construction of a community center for Native youth, $2 million to a civilian team to respond to mental health crises, $2 million to housing navigation and assistance for unhoused folks, $7.2 million for the staffing and maintenance of public restrooms, $7 million for urban farmers and food equity and $1.85 million for housing support for homeless youth and young adults. In addition to these investments, the city also spent $2.7 million on a contract with the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) to administer the process.
According to a press release from the Seattle Office for Civil Rights, voting was open to “anyone over the age of 15 who lives, works or plays in Seattle.” People were able to select their top four choices out of 18 available projects. Project ideas were submitted by Seattle residents and community groups.
The $30 million participatory budgeting process came out of the $100 million that then-Mayor Jenny Durkan pledged to invest in Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities in June 2020 in response to Black Lives Matter protests following the police murder of George Floyd. In September 2020, the Seattle City Council allocated $3 million to the Black Brilliance Research Project (BBRP), a grassroots research initiative that outlined how to implement the participatory budgeting process. At the time, BBRP researchers came under intense media scrutiny and criticism, which they said was a product of racist, anti-Black double standards.
Despite her pledge, Durkan refused to start the participatory budgeting process, which was originally scheduled to run from the spring to the fall of 2021, due to disputes with community groups about how to implement it. Under Harrell, the project finally resumed, with PBP receiving its contract in August 2022. However, the delay of more than a year broke trust with BIPOC communities, whose attention shifted away from the process. Most of the activists who had spearheaded the push for participatory budgeting did not end up overseeing its implementation.
The Harrell administration also appeared to distance itself from the whole project, doing very limited outreach and advertisement to members of the public and the media. All these factors contributed to the lackluster turnout during the voting period, which was held in October and November 2023.
The six selected initiatives will now have until the end of June 2024 to begin implementation. Some projects may be rolled into existing services or require city departments to develop new programming, similar to how city money is used when allocated in more traditional ways.
Despite the political setbacks, Seattle’s participatory budgeting experiment still resulted in investments in some of the key priorities outlined in the BBRP report, including housing, mental health, youth-specific support and crisis response. It remains one of the largest participatory budgeting processes implemented in the U.S. to date. Whether the city will someday try again in the future to democratize its budget process remains to be seen.
Guy Oron is the staff reporter for Real Change. He handles coverage of our weekly news stories. Find them on Twitter, @GuyOron.
Read more of the Dec. 6–12, 2023 issue.