By Claire Becknell, Published April 2, 2025
“Cities like Chicago, Boston and Providence, Rhode Island are using participatory budgeting to increase civic engagement at a time when trust in government is near an all-time low. Participatory budgeting, which has caught on with over 7,000 cities worldwide, gives local residents a voice in spending a set amount of city funds, usually around $1 million. What can Atlanta learn from their example?
Only 22% of Americans say they trust the government to do what is right, according to a recent Pew Research poll. Relatedly, the United States has one of the lowest voter-participation rates among developed countries. But these cities have found that participatory budgeting can engage even unlikely voters in local governance. […]
Rhode Island kicked off a participatory budgeting pilot in 2022, giving residents of nine central Providence neighborhoods a say in how to spend $1 million to improve their communities’ health and wellbeing.
The top-voted project was making park bathrooms more accessible ($368,000), followed by providing lead-free water filters to 2,000 households ($330,000), launching a peer mental-health training program for youth ($50,000), and improving bus stops ($253,000 – partially funded). Smaller initiatives ($30,000 each) included a bike repair program, life skills classes for young people, and planting fruit and nut trees around central Providence.
Outreach efforts started with word of mouth and mailers — then expanded to Spanish-language radio and community partnerships. “We had people show up saying, ‘I heard you on the radio. I’m here to vote,’” said Dominique Resendes from One Neighborhood Builders.
To fund the pilot, One Neighborhood Builders, a community development nonprofit, secured $450,000 from the Rhode Island Department of Health and Executive Office of Health and Human Services, plus another $550,000 in private grant funding.
One Neighborhood Builders collected over 300 ideas from residents, ranging from cleaner air initiatives to mental health services. A 17-resident steering committee helped narrow the proposals to 20.
Just over 280 people living in the nine Providence neighborhoods cast their votes over two weeks in June 2023 at libraries, community health centers, food pantries, schools, churches, and online. That included residents as young as 13 and noncitizens. Of those eligible to vote in traditional local elections, almost a quarter (22.7%) of voters for the participatory budget projects said they never, rarely, or only sometimes voted.
Resendes said the participatory budgeting pilot has strengthened relationships between residents and government entities, emphasizing that it helps people understand the bigger picture of how municipal decisions get made.
Despite strong community and government buy-in, organizers from One Neighborhood Builders said it can take a lot of initiative to implement participatory budgeting within traditional government structures. “There’s a momentum in government to keep doing things the way they always do things, which can be challenging to interrupt,” said Anusha Venkataraman.
It also requires significant resources beyond the funding, such as staff time and coordination. Without full commitment, Venkataraman warned, participatory budgeting risks being a half-measure, rather than a true shift in decision-making power to the people.
Venkataraman and Resendes both stressed that participatory budgeting shouldn’t be a one-off event, but an ongoing process embedded within local governance. That requires sustained support beyond the initial funding cycle.”
