City of Cambridge Participatory Budgeting

Nada Zohdy, a recent graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, completed an independent evaluation of the City's pilot Participatory Budgeting process in June 2015 to inform us about what worked well and what we should change in order to improve the process.  We continue to refer back to this tool as we plan for the various stages of the City's second PB cycle with the Steering Committee.

Please click below to download and read the complete report.

Participatory Budgeting is back! 

The City received 24 Steering Committee applications from interested community members and we accepted all 24.  The new group met for the first time on Thursday, June 25 and there was great diversity, energy, and enthusiasm in the room. 

Above: Some of the Steering Committee members pose with Budget Office and Participatory Budgeting Project staff for a group photo.

The following people will serve on the Steering Committee for the second PB cycle in Cambridge:

On May 5, 2015, the Friends of the Community Learning Center (CLC) published a blog post on their website capturing CLC student and teacher reactions to the first PB process in Cambridge.

We had fun visiting CLC classrooms in December to explain PB and solicit students' ideas for projects, and more fun returning in March to pass out ballots and "I voted in Participatory Budgeting" stickers to students, some of whom were voting for the first time. 

We are planning to start the second PB process this summer so that we can wrap up voting by December and make the timeline more manageable for everyone involved. Before we launch the second round, we’d like to collect feedback from the community about what worked well and what could be improved through two primary channels:

• An in-person feedback session on Tuesday, May 5th from 6-8pm at the Citywide Senior Center (806 Mass. Ave.)
• An online survey

2,727 Cambridge residents age 12 and older voted in March to decide which Participatory Budgeting projects the City should fund. The voting results were as follows:

This post was submitted by guest blogger Becca Schofield, member of the PB Steering Committee.

From March 22-28, the City of Cambridge is holding a Participatory Budgeting VOTE for all residents 12 and older. Hundreds of people have submitted ideas for projects that would improve the City – this week, we get to choose which projects the City will implement.

The Chronicle recently published a story on PB in Cambridge.  Check it out! 

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20150318/NEWS/150316250

The 20 proposals are in!  Which projects will you vote for? Every Cambridge resident who is at least 12 years old will be able to vote for 5 projects on the ballot next week. Click here to read about them all! 

Thank you to everyone who volunteered as a Budget Delegate!  Between now and March, Budget Delegates are going to be hard at work doing research, community assessments, and site visits to narrow down the list of 380 submitted ideas into 20 project proposals for the ballot. 

Watch this video to see why one young man chose to be a Budget Delegate in New York City's PB process: 

We are still looking for people to volunteer as Budget Delegates and Committee Facilitators! 

The proposal development phase from January-March is where many key decisions will be made, including which projects will appear on the ballot in March.  Be part of that decision!