City announces winners of first participatory budgeting round

The city of Boston will direct funding from its budget toward efforts to expand access to fresh food, implement rat prevention measures, and offer rental assistance for Boston youth, among six total priorities selected through residents voting in the city’s inaugural participatory budgeting cycle.

The winning projects were announced at a meeting of the city’s Participatory Budgeting External Oversight Board on Feb. 25.

“We have communicated [the winning projects] to the departments and everyone is very excited about starting to work on these projects,” said Renato Castelo, director of the city’s Office of Participatory Budgeting.

Six projects were selected out of a cohort of 14 proposals developed through workshops run by the city and voted on by residents in a month-long period from mid-January to mid-February. In total, the city will spend $2 million on funding the six ideas.

“The first cycle of participatory budgeting in Boston has shown the power of direct democracy, giving residents a real voice in how public funds are spent,” said a spokesperson for the Better Budget Alliance, a coalition that has advocated around the participatory budgeting process.

The priorities identified in the first round of voting will be implemented across the span of the city government, led by teams from the Transportation Department to the Office of Food Justice to the Office of Returning Citizens.

One winning project will direct $400,000 to fund grants to nonprofits to connect Boston residents facing food insecurity with fresh foods.

Another will use $500,000 to implement rodent-prevention measures in hotspots identified across the city. The work will invest in rodent-proof rat storage to limit food sources and will be monitored by sensor technology to track the effectiveness of the solutions.

Under the program, $250,000 will go toward funding grants to nonprofits to support incarcerated or formerly incarcerated youth aged 14 to 21 and access mentorship and skills training around things like home economics, grant writing, college prep, entrepreneurship, or trade learning.

And $200,000, through the round of participatory budgeting, will launch a pilot program to provide up to $5,000 in rental assistance to Boston youth from the ages of 18 to 24 or emancipated youth 16 and up. That assistance can be used to help cover late rent payments or move-in costs like first and last month’s rent, security deposits, and broker’s fees.

The city’s fifth project will support nonprofits through city grant funding to build community gardens on underutilized land for public access and use. The grants will prioritize areas where communities have limited access to affordable and nutritious food.

Initially, the city said it planned to fund five projects, but with $150,000 left from the $2 million set aside for the inaugural participatory budgeting round, the Office of Participatory Budgeting selected the sixth-ranking project — installing benches at the most trafficked bus stations across the city — for a reduced implementation.

Renato Castelo said that the Transportation Department will have to assess how it will be able to adjust the project for implementation with a reduced budget. The project was originally slated with a $450,000 price tag.

Voting took place from Jan. 15 through Feb. 15, with nearly 4,500 ballots submitted. The bulk of those ballots were submitted online — though Boston residents could go to City Hall to vote as well — with 4,449 submitted through an online form. Another 13 were submitted in person, according to the city.

Of the online ballots, Dorchester saw the largest number cast, with 1,026 across the neighborhood. Brighton saw the highest turnout, with 1.15% of the neighborhood’s population casting a vote.

As it gears up for that process, the city is conducting outreach to collect community feedback, as well as adjusting its guidelines for the process.

The Better Budget Alliance, which has advocated increased funding for the participatory budgeting process, said it would like to see increased financial support for the project in the next round. The group has long called for at least 1%, which last year would have been $4.6 million of the city’s budget to be dedicated to the process, and called on the mayor and City Council to incorporate the non-funded resident proposals into next year’s operating budget.

The city plans to launch its second cycle of participatory budgeting in July.