Are you a Boston resident with ideas to improve your community? What would you do with $2 million dollars to help our most vulnerable neighbors?
Boston residents can propose ideas to the City of Boston from now through July 31st. You can submit an idea by visiting participate.boston.gov/place/new. If other residents support your proposal, it could become reality. Your idea, no matter how grand or humble, holds the potential to transform lives.
How is this possible? We have a new opportunity in Boston called “participatory budgeting.”
Participatory budgeting is a democratic budgeting process that allows Boston residents to directly decide how to spend part of the city budget to solve community needs. This is all possible because, in 2021, our coalition of community-based groups, the Better Budget Alliance, mobilized residents all across Boston to vote yes for participatory budgeting on the ballot. Participatory Budgeting passed because the people of Boston wanted direct control over a piece of our city’s budget.
But why participatory budgeting? Out of the uprisings for racial justice in 2020 grew a consciousness of how city budgets can either perpetuate structural racism or help dismantle it and build a brighter tomorrow. The Better Budget Alliance formed across Boston to shift control of the city’s budget from a handful of electeds to everyday residents in neighborhoods most harmed by racism and disinvestment. Participatory budgeting is an urgently needed way to start repairing the pattern of disinvestment from our communities.
Our communities want to implement the solutions we know we need! Our coalition has facilitated workshops on participatory budgeting across the city. At these events, we heard Bostonians’ brilliant solutions to problems such as housing instability, mental health crises, unemployment of working-age young people, unsafe infrastructure and more.
This summer, democracy doesn’t have to be a mere spectacle flashing across our screens. Instead, let it be an invitation to step out of our homes and into the embrace of our communities. Picture us, shoulder to shoulder with our neighbors, not just dreaming of change but actively shaping it. Together, we ideate, propose, and we vote on how to best allocate public funds. In these shared moments, we rediscover the essence of real democracy, nurturing it like a garden. As we engage in this collective practice, we strengthen the muscles of decision-making, long atrophied by generations of disenfranchisement. Let’s reclaim our voices and redefine governance, ensuring our collective wellbeing blossoms.
Importantly, participatory budgeting stands as one of Boston’s rare democratic processes that embraces the participation of our undocumented neighbors. Regardless of your paperwork status, you hold the power to propose and vote in this democratic initiative. In addition, this process opens its doors for our youth, who often are left out of decision making. Boston’s participatory budgeting process invites residents as young as 11 years old to partake in shaping the future of their communities, their fresh ideas and creative perspectives contributing to the mosaic of our city’s vision.
Boston’s commitment to involving both youth and undocumented residents is more than a gesture; it is a dedication to genuine inclusion and democracy. It recognizes that the essence of democracy flourishes when every individual, regardless of their background, is granted a stake and a voice in the decisions that mold their lives. This is an acknowledgment that true democracy is not just about voting but about ensuring every heartbeat in our community feels heard and valued. In this collective endeavor, we affirm that our shared destiny is crafted by all, for all.
The Better Budget Alliance will continue to advocate this democratic process to be a truly equitable piece of civic infrastructure in our city. We are excited that Bostonians now have a say over a small portion of our public budget, and our vision is that, one day, participatory budgeting will be meaningfully funded so that residents have even more control over public dollars. We have called for a minimum of 1% of the operating budget to be placed under resident control. Although our city administration isn’t investing as much as they could and should on the people’s ideas, it is still important to demonstrate that we care. Everyday people can share ideas, a vision, and solutions for our communities’ needs.
Help your community now! Submit your idea before the end of July. Visit www.participate.boston.gov to share your idea or call in and record your idea through the multilingual Participatory Budget Phone Line at (617) 639-3059 Or you can join an in-person workshop hosted by an organization in your neighborhood: see the list of upcoming workshops at www.boston.gov/departments/participatory-budgeting/ideas-action.
The Better Budget Alliance is a grassroots coalition of community-based organizations in Boston working to increase democratic control over Boston’s public budget.
