The 9th District Council office released results this week from the City of Long Beach’s first “participatory budgeting” (PB) meeting with the public.
After nearly nine months of collaborating with volunteers, stakeholders and consultants, the 9th District Council office launched the “Empower Uptown Participatory Budgeting” process on Saturday, March 21, allowing residents age 14 and older to directly vote on how to spend $250,000 in city-infrastructure funds.
According to the 9th District Council office, Long Beach now joins the City of Vallejo as the second city in California to implement PB while Chicago and New York City have already been implementing the process as well. Long Beach is the first city in Southern California to implement it, according to the 9th District Council office.
The winning projects include: a Jordan High School digital marquee ($100,000) in 1st place with 1,552 votes; solar-powered lights at DeForest Park ($95,000) in 2nd place with 1,161 votes; and security cameras on corridors throughout the district ($100,000) in 3rd place with 997 votes.
“Introducing participatory budgeting has encouraged District 9 residents to become more civically involved and fostered innovative ways of visioning democracy,” said 9th District Councilmember Rex Richardson. “The PB process exemplifies the pure spirit of civic engagement and has allowed residents and city officials to collaborate on ways to improve our neighborhood needs. I’m proud of the work we’ve done together and that we are the first district to have the highest turnout per capita of any other participatory process in the nation at 4.9 percent.”
Since October 2014, over 240 residents were engaged during the idea-collection phase through five public assemblies and several outreach events to discuss local priorities and ideas for improvement projects in the 9th District. During the months of December through March, 52 community volunteers worked collaboratively with city officials to vet the feasibility and cost of those 259 project ideas, according to the 9th District Council office. They ultimately developed 11 fully formed proposals for the PB ballot.
