Participatory Budgeting in Chicago

Since its inception, PB Chicago has engaged over 13,000 residents in 12 different communities to directly decide how to spend over $18 million in public dollars.

In 2009, Alderman Joe Moore, of Chicago's 49th Ward, became the first elected official in the United States to use participatory budgeting (PB) to allocate public money.  With assistance from The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), Residents of the 49th Ward worked together to decide how to spend $1 million of his annual discretionary capital budget – the aldermanic “menu money.” Residents identified hundreds of project ideas, developed dozens of these ideas into full proposals, and then voted to fund street and sidewalk repairs, bike lanes, playground and park improvements, street lights, one hundred new trees, murals, and many more community projects. 

Idea collection in the 49th Ward

In February 2012, University of Illinois at Chicago's Great Cities Institute partnered with PBP and a broad coalition of aldermen, citywide institutions, and community-based organizations to launch PB Chicago, an initiative that aims to implement and expand PB processes and direct democracy throughout Chicago.  Working hand in hand with community members, PB Chicago allows citizens to have a voice in how public money is spent. 

In partnership with Blocks Together, PB Chicago worked with residents and organizations in the West Humboldt Park community to democratically determine how to use tax increment finance (TIF) dollars.  In the summer of 2014, a neighborhood town hall kicked off the first-ever PB process to allocate TIF money.  Later that year, residents voted to fund microenterprise lending for local businesses, a culinary workforce development program, a youth-designed skate park, and green roofs for buildings in a key commercial corridor.  

PB Chicago partnered with two organizations that work with youth  – Embarc and Mikva Challenge – to bring PB to Sullivan High School in the Rogers Park neighborhood. Sullivan's principal agreed to put up $25,000 for students to implement the PB process and democratically decide how to spend the money. Students from Sullivan completed an eight-week curriculum that guided them through the PB process.  The culminating vote engaged over 70% of students, with a new recreation room gaining the most votes.