Tag Archives: participatory budgeting

With only one org stepping forward, Seattle selects administrator for $30M participatory budgeting process born out of 2020 protests

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Seattle found only one candidate to run the city’s new $30 million participatory budgeting process. They got the job.

The Office of Civil Rights announced that a bid from the national Participatory Budgeting Project advocacy group has been selected to serve as the third-party administrator on the newly formed effort to shape a $30 million package hoped to address inequity by creating a system of more direct control of community spending in Seattle.

“Although we had hoped for more applicants, we were pleased to see a proposal from PBP, who were engaged in the application process and showed a deep understanding and experience with a community led PB process,” the announcement reads.

CHS reported here last summer on the Seattle City Council’s decision to pursue growing the city’s Participatory Budgeting resources under the Office of Civil Rights, breaking a logjam over what department might lead the effort forward.

The initiative was born along with the Black Brilliance Research Project out of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle. The $30 million falls under a $100 million package earmarked to address equity in the city by then-Mayor Jenny Durkan during 2020’s unrest in the city. Continue reading →

Seattle looking for organizations to help shape ‘one of the largest participatory budgeting undertakings in the nation’

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Just before Thanksgiving, Seattle City Hall wrapped up its $7.1 billion 2022 spending plan. Along the way, officials touted increased spending on the city’s three major crises: affordable housing, homelessness and addiction, and COVID-19 recovery. But plenty of community priorities were left behind.

The City of Seattle is now looking for help shaping the next step in trying to make sure more of those priorities make the final plan. This week, the formal “request for proposals” went out for “organizations and coalitions to provide administrative and consulting services” to assist in planning a new “participatory budgeting” process in Seattle that will begin with a $28 million funding package.

CHS reported in June on the Seattle City Council’s actions to move forward with a participatory budgeting plan in the city’s Office of Civil Rights. The vote moved forward a $30 million package hoped to address inequity by creating a system of more direct control of community spending in Seattle. CHS reported here on the plan and the Black Brilliance Research Project born out of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle. Continue reading →

2021 Neighborhood Matching Fund grants include $50K for new home for Estelita’s Library in the Central District

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Estelita’s Library's new sign hangs outside its new location

(Image: Estelita’s Library)

The first round of 2021 Community Partnership Fund Awards from the city’s Neighborhood Matching Fund will include thousands for community and arts groups across the city including powering the grand opening and expansion of social justice bookstore Estelita’s Library in the Central District.

The District 3 awards, listed below, are part of a roster of $826,000 granted across 20 projects in the city. Community groups receiving awards have pledged to match the money through local cash donations, volunteer hours, donated materials, and in-kind professional services.

District 3

$49,982 to Wa Na Wari for The BLOOM Food Justice Series to promote food justice and sovereignty in BIPOC communities. The project will recruit 12 BIPOC youth to participate in workshops and trainings with a curriculum spanning Indigenous knowledge systems, Black Liberation, urban farming practices, plant medicines, the healing arts, ways to combat environmental racism, and much more. BLOOM workshops, virtual talks, and public programs will be free and open to community. (Community match: $43,840)

Continue reading →

Office of Civil Rights to move forward on shaping Participatory Budgeting in Seattle

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The Seattle City Council Tuesday voted 9-0 to lift a key proviso on $1 million in spending to support creation of a Participatory Budgeting process in the city.

The vote will allow planning to move forward on a $30 million package hoped to address inequity by creating a system of more direct control of community spending in Seattle. CHS reported here on the plan and the Black Brilliance Research Project born out of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle.

Breaking a logjam over what department might lead the effort forward, Tuesday’s vote will put the Office of Civil Rights at the center of the process “to partner with community members to draft a Request for Proposals (RFP) giving additional opportunities for neighbors to guide” the participatory budgeting process. Continue reading →

After a year of protest, Seattle ready for next steps as Black Brilliance Research Project report sets path for new participatory budget effort

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A scene from the third day of Seattle’s 2020 BLM protests

From the Black Brilliance Research Project report

Months of Black Lives Matter rallies, marches, protests, and the occupied takeover of the blocks around Cal Anderson and Capitol Hill’s East Precinct have pushed Seattle to shift 20% of its police budget into a $30 million participatory budgeting process hoped to spur new spending on social programs, community health, and economic investment.

Friday, a team of more than 100 researchers, community organizers, and activists will deliver their findings to the Seattle City Council that will underpin the effort. The Black Brilliance Research Project’s 1,045-page report is only the start of what officials hope will be a new way of making decisions for the city’s communities.

“One of the things that I know from working in health and human services and and the needs of our community over these past 20 some odd years is that folks will come into our community they will have focus groups,” Latanya Horace of the Silent Task Force that contributed to the report said in a preview of the group’s findings earlier this week. “They will ask us what we — what they want to know about our communities. And they’ll take that information, go back and package it up and come out with a plan that does not include black folks doing the work for their own community.”

Tammy Morales, chair of the Community Economic Development Committee receiving the report, and the council’s representative for South Seattle, says the hope is for the city to scale up its early steps in participatory budgeting used on decisions around streets and parks and find a way to apply a similar approach to the bigger challenges — and opportunities — of social justice.

“This is a shift away from the city driving so much of this and letting the community do that,” Morales said. “These are communities that are typically left out. People who are disproportionately impacted should have a say. This is about shifting access to power and resources. The community is saying, ‘Let us decide the strategies.'”

For the researchers who worked on the massive, painstaking report and overcame a mid-stream reorganization of how the project was managed, Friday’s presentation is, alone, worthy of celebration given the months behind them and the challenges ahead.

“That research project ended up becoming the world’s largest black and brown community-led research in the world in the world,” Shaun Glaze said during the preview presentation this week. “That happened during a pandemic,” Glaze said with amazement. “Here. In Seattle.”

The report submitted Friday will set the framework for how the shift to helping communities “decide the strategies” happens in Seattle. Based on hundreds of hours of research and community surveys, the report provides outlines for the types of issues Seattle’s communities want to have more control over — and how that control needs to be shaped to make sure it works and fully includes Black, Indigenous and People of Color participants. Continue reading →

Black-led organizers, Sawant at odds with mayor over community’s role in how City of Seattle spends

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By Ben Adlin

After a summer marked by protests over police racism and brutality, Seattle officials and community organizers seem to agree that vulnerable communities deserve a greater say in the city’s budget process. But with little more than a month before the City Council adopts its 2021 budget, stakeholders still differ sharply over what that involvement will look like.

There are competing visions. Some focus on a $100 million fund proposed by Mayor Jenny Durkan to support initiatives aimed at benefiting Black, brown, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities. A task force made up of representatives from local equity organizations, selected by the mayor, would guide the process by issuing recommendations on how the money might be spent. Durkan’s office last week announced an initial list of more than two dozen members.

Others see another way — put forward by King County Equity Now, a Black-led coalition of community groups and businesses, alongside the group Decriminalize Seattle — and are skeptical of the mayor’s proposal. Little about Durkan’s plan, they say, would put sufficient power in the hands of BIPOC communities, particularly Black people, to undo generations of racist policies in the city.

Instead, KCEN and its partner groups are hard at work on the first phase of a grander budget scheme aimed at giving Seattleites a more direct say in issues that affect their daily lives. That process could eventually control up to $200 million, some organizers say—twice the mayor’s proposed BIPOC fund.

The two views represent contrasting visions of the growing push for participatory budgeting centered on the principle that the people most affected by public policies deserve a voice in how they’re made. Continue reading →