Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Civic Engagement topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Nonprofit outlines participatory budgeting model and offers technical help to Hopewell
Summary
The Participatory Budgeting Project presented how residents could decide a portion of local capital or program funds; the group offered coaching or full technical assistance and asked the borough to identify a funding pot and an operations budget before implementation.
The Hopewell Borough Council heard a presentation from Nisha Thompson, New Jersey advocacy manager for the Participatory Budgeting Project, on how participatory budgeting (PB) would let residents directly decide how to spend a portion of public funds.
Thompson described PB as a multi‑step, community‑driven process: form a steering committee, collect ideas from residents, have volunteers draft feasible proposals with implementer input, place feasible projects on a ballot, and let residents vote on which projects to fund. “So the point of participatory budgeting is what people vote on gets funded, but that means it has to be a feasibility check,” Thompson said.
She gave examples from other cities—Newark’s youth PB process, Denver’s multi‑area infrastructure PB, and Los Angeles’ repair zones—to show how PB can be scaled and targeted. Thompson noted that PB requires operations funding for outreach, facilitation and project management and encouraged equity‑focused design, accessible ballots and multilingual materials.
Council members asked whether Thompson’s organization could assist a small borough with limited staff. Thompson said the organization provides coaching, runs New Jersey learning cohorts (noting funding from the Robert Johnson Foundation for a state cohort), and has a technical assistance team that can be contracted for full implementation. She said the timeline for a small borough with about 1,900 residents would be shorter than in a large city but still requires staff time and an operations budget.
Thompson offered to follow up with borough staff to identify the pot of money to be used for PB and to estimate the operations budget; she recommended meeting with neighborhood groups and offered to connect the borough with Freehold’s officials who run a successful local PB day. "We can do full implementation," she said, "but we also do coaching through the staff."
Council members requested a follow‑up email and asked staff to consider how much money the borough would commit and whether to hire technical assistance or run a staff‑led model with training.
Next steps: Thompson will follow up with borough administrator Jared and staff to outline options and cost estimates so council members can decide whether to include PB in a future budget cycle.
