Participatory Budgeting in NYC

Anyone who's been following Shilton Parish Council over the last few months should hopefully be aware that it's looking to launch its participatory budgeting pilot project very soon. I spoke about it at the Annual Parish Meeting in April (which prompted sufficient interest that two people immediately submitted ideas as to what the £1,500 allocated to the project should be spent on!)

But June will see the official launch, with a feature in the upcoming June/July edition of BASIS (which I'll reproduce on this blog). I'm also hoping to generate some publicity in the local newspapers, but we'll have to see how interested they are in a local parish council trying out something different and innovative.

Until then, I thought I'd whet your appetite with a five minute video from a participatory budgeting project run by New York City Council. Now, Shilton may only be putting up 0.1% of the $1.5m that New York has, but I hope you see enough of the principle of participatory budgeting in action to get you thinking as to what you'd like to see local taxpayer money being spent on where you live.

What is evident from the film is the public involvement and engagement that participatory budgeting has generated in communities that might not otherwise have been interested in what their local council was doing. I'm hoping the same can happen in Shilton and Barnacle.