Participatory Budgeting on League of Cities Agenda

December 3, 2010

The Participatory Budgeting Project co-hosted a workshop in Denver this week at the 2010 Congress of the National League of Cities, the annual gathering of municipal government officials. The session, titled “Participatory Budgeting: Building Community Agreement Around Tough Budget Decisions," described an experiment in democratic governance in Chicago’s 49th Ward, where the Participatory Budgeting Project helped guide residents in through a process to allocate $1.3 million in city funds.

In another session, 49th Ward Alderman Joe Moore also spoke about this exercise in participatory budgeting in a session titled “Fees or Flames: Is it Time for a New Social Compact between Government and the People?”