Ithaca participatory-budget pilot at Earth Day favors guaranteed income; City Hall courtyard slated for redesign

Commission members reported that a participatory-budgeting pilot presented at Ithaca’s Earth Day festival drew strong public engagement and that the top vote-getter in the paper ballot exercise was a guaranteed-income proposal.

Rebecca, staff member, said the festival table “showcased a lot of the new branding of the Ithaca Green New Deal, and introduced participatory budgeting as a concept and the voting platform to the public,” and that the physical paper vote resulted in a clear winner: “the project that won won by a long shot by more than double any other project. And that was guaranteed income.”

Why this matters: the pilot is intended both to test public outreach and to introduce residents to the participatory-budgeting platform before a broader rollout. The commission is pairing the pilot with a limited City Hall courtyard redesign pilot that was funded during the 2024 capital budget process, discussed in the meeting as approximately $50,000.

Commission members who staffed the Earth Day table — including Iris, Nick, Alex, David, Fernando and Scott — reported that the public activity used paper “dollars” to let attendees allocate five “dots” across proposal options. The commission also launched a digital version of the platform for a City Plaza pilot project; the digital ballot was open to all and asked respondents to self-report residency or enter an address.

Commissioners and members flagged confusion among some residents about what “pilot” means for future participatory budgeting choices. One commissioner said participants were uncertain whether the pilot was intended to generate design options or only to introduce the voting platform. Rebecca told the commission that the digital landing page includes more detailed explanatory content and that additional outreach and education will be needed because “probably very few people are actually clicking on it.”

The City Hall courtyard project was described as a 2024 capital-budget allocation to redesign the small plaza between City Hall and the conference center/library. The commission said the courtyard pilot was intentionally chosen as a lower-stakes, visible place to introduce participatory budgeting mechanics to residents and to test community interest in specific small capital improvements.

Several commissioners who staffed the event reflected that the in-person exercise provoked useful conversations about costs and trade-offs: “some items cost more to do than other items was actually a really good thing to have on those examples,” Alex, commission member, said, noting that cost differences made some voters split their allocations rather than spend all dots on a single item.

Discussion-only items recorded at the meeting include how to clarify language on outreach materials, whether and how project cost estimates should be shown on voting materials, and how the pilot’s results should inform a future, larger participatory-budgeting process. No formal vote or change to city code was taken at the meeting on the City Hall courtyard or the participatory-budgeting process.

Looking ahead: the commission plans further outreach, additional education about the platform, and to combine lessons from both the paper exercise and the digital pilot before proposing any formal program changes or recommendations to Common Council.