The goal, according to assistant business administrator Barkha Patel, is to increase education about and engagement in the city’s budgeting process, as well as bringing in those who have not been actively involved in government decisions in the past.
It expands on previous city efforts to open the budgeting processes, like opening a trust fund for art-related projects, Patel said. This effort, however, has a much wider scope.
“I think the most important thing for us, outside of getting these projects funded, is just taking steps to make the budgeting process and the city spending decisions more transparent and accessible to people in general,” Patel said.
City residents can find the form for project idea submission, system analyst Andrew Hitti explained. There are seven questions that residents will answer to give context to their ideas, and submitters can include additional information, such as location and pictures. The submission form is available in six languages, and multiple submissions are allowed.
The pilot is leveraging an open source platform built through a graduate program at Stanford that has been used in other cities in the past, Hitti said. This allowed the city to vet the technology to ensure security of the platform before moving forward.
A key factor in the design was ease of use, Hitti said, to encourage participation as well as to keep the process stable should the program continue in years to come.
The next phase will involve the city evaluating the feasibility of various proposals. If the proposals are something that can be accomplished, they will be added to the ballots. Residents will then get to vote on the proposals within their ward.
To start, the city has allotted $300,000 to fund these projects. The pilot offers $50,000 for each of the city’s six wards, and the projects that residents vote on can either use the entire amount or split up the amount to fund multiple projects, he explained. Residents will vote for projects specific to their ward.
During the first virtual tutorial, held March 15, Hitti announced that submissions will be open March 21, 2022. Additional virtual tutorial sessions will be held in the future to show people how to vote and how to track the status of their submission, Patel added.
The submission period is currently flexible, Hitti said, allowing for the city to keep it open longer depending on the number of submissions received.
Patel said that the target is to have the winning projects selected by June this year, and then they will advance for adoption through the city’s budget. Based on its impact, the city hopes to continue the program and expand it with larger funding amounts.
Hitti also underlined the impact of this pilot’s timeline coinciding with city budget conversations.
“The fact that this is a program leading up to when the budget is going to happen will get a lot of people involved in that discussion while there’s time for that feedback to be heard, rather than after the fact,” Hitti said.
Patel also explained that the city has been transitioning to a more virtual environment for government services, with the example of virtual meetings. She said that this shift has helped to increase engagement, as people can participate on their own time. However, she also acknowledged that there are communities that may not be comfortable with this format.
To ensure accessibility, the city will be working with institutions like schools and libraries to offer in-person guided sessions on how to use the online submission tool.
