Chicago’s 49th Ward will be among the first political jurisdictions in the United States to use participatory budgeting (PB) to decide how to allocate a public budget. Residents of the 49th Ward are using PB to decide how to spend the ward’s “menu money”—discretionary funds received annually by each alderman for infrastructure improvements in his or her jurisdiction. Since the mid-1990s, each of the 50 aldermen on the city council has received approximately $1.4 million in menu money each year. These funds must be spent on infrastructure projects. Alderman Joe Moore brought together a group of about 40 community leaders from diverse civic, religious, and political organizations in the ward to form a PB Steering Committee (SC) that would develop the rules for and lead the PB process.

The PB process began in early November 2009 with a series of nine neighborhood assemblies—eight in different neighborhoods and one ward-wide meeting for Spanish-speaking constituents. The neighborhood assemblies introduced the principles of PB and asked the participants to brainstorm ideas for infrastructure projects in the ward. At the conclusion of each meeting, interested participants volunteered to become community representatives, who are responsible for developing their neighborhood’s final project proposals.

In March 2010 representatives will meet with residents in a second round of neighborhood assemblies. Residents will have the opportunity to suggest adding or removing projects from the lists. Taking into account the residents’ feedback, the community representatives will then submit project proposals for a ward-wide final vote in April. All 49th Ward residents aged 16 and over are eligible to vote for up to eight projects.

One of the weaknesses of the 49th Ward’s first PB exercise has been limited participation among minorities, low-income people, and youths. The ward is one of the most ethnically and economically diverse in Chicago, yet neighborhood assemblies have drawn mostly older, white homeowners. At this stage, Alderman Moore’s staff is making additional efforts to include the input of underrepresented groups

In Europe the first experiments with participatory budgeting started in Grottammare, Italy, in 1994, in Salford, Great Britain, in 1996 and in Mönchweiler, Germany, in 1998. The spread of the idea in Europe gained further momentum from the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2001. A large number of procedures aimed at making budget planning more democratic can be found in Spain, France and Germany; there are also a handful of initiatives in Britain, Portugal und Poland.

The largest city with a participatory budget in Spain is Cordoba, with more than 300,000 inhabitants. The “citizens’ budget” introduced there is very similar to the Porto Alegre approach, particularly as regards the citizens’ de facto powers of decision and the fact that the main emphasis is on investments and projects.
The British city of Bradford has implemented a model that provides a fund for investments and projects in the areas of social work, the environment and culture, for instance. A committee largely independent of the municipal administration selects from a range of proposals in line with a jointly developed list of priorities.
The approaches adopted in France and Germany are as a rule more consultative in character. The administration has more powers of decision, and also modifies and prioritizes the proposals submitted. In the French town of Bobigny the mayor goes further than this, by presenting accountability reports at public meetings in each district
In Germany the government of the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen initiated the model project “Community citizens’ budget” in collaboration with the Bertelsmann Foundation. Early in 2001 the towns of Castrop-Rauxel, Emsdetten, Hamm, Hilden, Monheim a. R. and Vlotho were selected as project communities. A variety of instruments and models were tried out there; these were intended to lead to guidelines for further implementation in a special manual. As a result of a reorganization agenda being adopted in 2003, for instance, more developments took place in Berlin: it was decided to install a participatory process of drafting, adopting and monitoring the budget in the wards of Lichtenberg, Marzahn-Hellersdorf and Mitte.
As regards the course of public participation in budget planning, read more about the example of Berlin Lichtenberg.