Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Participatory Budgeting topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Ithaca commission details participatory budgeting rules, youth track and Earth Day outreach
Summary
City staff and commissioners discussed forming internal and community working groups to run a participatory budgeting pilot that would reserve 10% of the capital budget for public voting, a small youth allocation, and public outreach at an April 19 Earth Day event on the Ithaca Commons.
Rebecca, a staff member for the city program supporting the Ithaca Green New Deal, told the commission on March 10 that Justice 50 commits the city to reserving 10% of the capital budget for participatory budgeting and described how staff plan to set up the process.
Rebecca said the city’s capital budget “is around $5,000,000. So 10% of that is 500,000,” and said staff will form two working groups: an internal group of city staff to set legal guardrails and implementation procedures, and a community working group made up of neighborhood and organizational “network nodes” who would both help design the process and encourage voting.
The staff working group will determine what the New York State Constitution and other legal limits allow the city to fund through participatory budgeting and will clarify who is responsible for implementing projects after voting. The community working group will be populated by recommended community members; Rebecca said the pilot year will also include a separate, smaller allocation for 12- to 16-year-olds, with the Ithaca Youth Council designing the youth process.
Savannah, a city staff member organizing outreach, said the commission will use the April 19 Earth Day event on the Ithaca Commons (12 p.m.–5 p.m.) to run a short, public-facing participatory-budgeting activity and to recruit volunteers. The planned “vote with your dollars” activity will give each participant mock money they can allocate across pictured project ideas; a QR code will link to a practice OpenGov page where residents can try the digital tool that the city plans to use for the official process.
Savannah also described shifts for volunteers: a setup shift (roughly 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m.), a main table shift (12–3 p.m.), and a cleanup/close shift (3–5 p.m.), and asked commissioners to sign up or respond by email if they cannot volunteer so staff can plan accordingly.
Commissioners raised participation and representativeness questions. Some members, including a commissioner who recalled that many visitors at last year’s event were from outside the city, recommended limiting feedback used for official decisions to city residents; others noted the Commons hosts countywide foot traffic and argued informal input can still generate useful ideas. Staff said the Earth Day activity is not intended to produce rigorous, representative data but to introduce participatory budgeting and collect informal preferences.
Commissioners and staff discussed outreach for all ages: lower tables and coloring activities for children, a bubble machine to attract families, and stickers and small takeaways. Savannah said the city will try to have stickers printed for the event and hopes to show a full suite of branding materials at the next meeting.
The commission did not take a formal vote on the participatory budgeting design at this meeting; staff said they plan to gather nominations for the community working group, convene the internal working group, finalize legal guardrails, and present a recommended process to council before midsummer so it can be implemented in 2026 after the fall budget adoption.
Ending: Staff will circulate detailed project lists and volunteer sign-up materials in follow-up emails; commissioners were asked to send nominations for community working-group members and to indicate volunteer availability for the April 19 event.
