Participatory Budgeting Albuquerque will host a community forum on Thursday at city hall to gauge support for a more demo cratic style for the city’s financial planning. Valentine Antony, a UNM student and the lead organiz er for Participatory Budgeting Albuquerque, said the project would foster collaboration between citizens, elected officials and city agencies to make Albuquerque an “even greater city.”
“Albuquerque is a perfect place for Participatory Budgeting,” he said. “We have some ideas of how to make that happen, but ultimately the citizens of Albuquerque will decide how this project is shaped.”
Antony would like to see this project realize its goal of making public participation more fun and engaging to all Albuquerque residents, he said.
For now, this program would help citizens and government officials work together to plan a small portion of Albuquerque’s budget, focusing on projects that would benefit all residents, he said. Those projects would then be brought to all of Albuquerque’s residents for a vote.
According to PB ABQ literature, this project is like many participatory budgeting movements across the country that work to build capacities within communities to govern their futures more fully by having a direct say in how their public funds are spent and community projects are prioritized in their city.
The public forum is not the only event in Albuquerque’s budding participatory budgeting interest: Josh Lerner, executive director of the Participatory Budgeting Project, will give a talk on his new book, “Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Democracy.” The talk will be held at the School of Architecture and Planning on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m.
In his book, Lerner discusses how games and structured competition can help engage people and encourage participation in democratic processes.
“For PB to more deeply transform government, citizens must have the power to write the rules of the game from the start,” Lerner wrote in a paper for the Journal of Public Deliberation. “For PB to more deeply engage those who are usually left out, these groups should be invited to lead the process.”
Antony said participatory governments across the United States and the world were facing a crisis of civic engagement.
“Public participation is on the decline, and this is bad news for democracy,” Antony said. “One of the main reasons for this is that public meeting, forums and processes that seek to include citizens are designed for government, not for the citizen.”
Participatory Budgeting gives ordinary citizens the chance to make meaningful decisions about the future of their communities and an opportunity to experience the difficult policy choices their elected officials make on a daily basis, he said.
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According to the organization’s website, the project has spread across 1,500 cities in Latin America, North America, Asia, Africa and Europe.
“In cities like Vallejo, California, and Boston it has been used to fund projects like bicycle safety corridors so that riders can safely commute to and from work, new equipment in classrooms so students can have access to the latest technologies, and after-school programs so that children have a safe and supportive environment to grow,” Antony said.
Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistant-news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @mianfawadshah.
Book Talk:
“Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics”
With Josh Lerner, Author and Executive Director for the Participatory Budgeting Project
Wednesday, Oct. 8
5:30-7 p.m.
Garcia Honda Auditorium, UNM George Pearl Hall
Participatory Budgeting Albuquerque Community Forum
Thursday, Oct. 9
5:30 p.m.
City Hall, One Civic Plaza, Vincent E. Griego Deliberation Room
