RICHMOND, Va. — Anyone who lives, works, or goes to school in Richmond can now vote on which projects they want to see completed in their neighborhood.
The Richmond People’s Budget is a community-driven participatory budgeting process allowing Richmonders to decide on projects that will be completed with $3 million of funding.
Votes can be cast in person or online through April 15. Anyone 14 years or older can vote.
About the Richmond People’s Budget
The development of the People’s Budget began with an idea collection stage last year that generated nearly 2,000 project ideas from Richmonders. Then, in January and February of this year, a team of three representatives per district turned some ideas into project proposals.
Those proposals range from adding shelters to Hull Street bus stops to building a splash pad at Forest Hill Park to repairing storm drains along Monument Avenue.
Below is a list of each district's project proposals.
Matthew Slaats, who currently serves as Interim City Council Chief of Staff, has spearheaded the effort to bring participatory budgeting to Richmond. He said the process is about more than just allocating money – it’s about creating transparency and building leaders in the process.
“Most people have no idea about how city government actually works, and so it’s about creating some transparency on the processes,” he said. “It’s really also about building leaders and communities. We’ve got 27 budget delegates that helped us create proposals that now have greater insights into how public works work, or how the parks make choices about projects.”
The amount allocated for each district’s projects varies: Districts 1, 2, and 4 will get $200,000; Districts 3, 5, and 7 will get $300,000; and Districts 6, 8, and 9 will get $500,000.
These determinations were made in part by consulting RVAgreen 2050’s social vulnerability index, which Slaats said helped them identify the communities most in need of funding.
“There’s this balance between, how do we both be as equal as possible, but then also recognizing that some neighborhoods deserve more? They haven’t been invested in the way they should be, and we need to make sure they get some other resources,” he said.
The Richmond People’s Budget will use ranked choice voting
Rather than voters picking a single favorite project proposal in their jurisdiction, voting for the Richmond People’s Budget will employ ranked choice voting.
Voters will be able to rank their top three project proposals in their district. If a proposal receives a majority of #1 votes, it wins the vote. If no project receives a majority, the project with the fewest votes is eliminated, and those votes are redistributed to the remaining projects based on the voter’s next choices.
“Rarely is there only one palatable choice in a long list of options, so feeling like you do get to have more nuance in how you’re expressing your preferences is something people really like,” said Liz White with UpVote Virginia, a nonpartisan democracy reform advocacy group.
White said ranked choice voting can be a tool for “making sense of a crowded field,” and pairing it with the People’s Budget is a chance to familiarize Richmonders with a new way of voting.
“There’s real dollars attached to this, and there’s real impact coming from this vote,” White said. “So it is the most incredible scenario for a practice round and get tends of thousands of Richmonders, hopefully, familiar with the idea that voting can mean ranking, that you really can feel like you more thoroughly made your voice hears in this crowded list of options by saying, not ‘This is my favorite,’ but ‘This is my top choice, my second choice, and my third choice.’”
Reflecting on the process so far, Slaats said the People’s Budget team has learned a lot and is taking this first cycle as somewhat of a pilot program – including the use of a ranked choice methodology.
“Maybe we learn that it’s really amazing, maybe we learn we need to do more education, maybe we learn that it’s not right, it’s not how we want to do things,” Slaats said. “Ranked choice voting was a really great opportunity to think about that and try to use this process to help explore how we make sure people’s voices are supported and heard in the effort.”
For more information about the Richmond People’s Budget, visit their website.
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